Post by jsofunky on Apr 18, 2006 13:30:39 GMT -5
It’s not a stretch to say GZA is the epitome of an emcee’s emcee. This man loves rhyming and takes his craft extremely seriously. As the ‘head’ of the Wu-Tang Clan he rose to prominence with sharp rhymes and layered lyrics that leave you discovering new meanings after almost every listen. We got up with the Genius to talk about his development as an MC, his feelings on ODB’s passing and of course rhyming, rhyming, and more rhyming. Oh did I mention his love for country?? Enjoy.
Halftime: I’ve always thought of you as the most serious dude in the clan, but then I seen the Dave Chappelle skit and it blew me cuz it was mad funny. How come that doesn’t normally come off in your music?
GZA: I don’t know. I’m serious when I write but I do have a sense of humor. I like to have fun and joke. I think the Dave Chappelle thing was cool to do because we were being ourselves although somewhat acting. We were being RZA and GZA and it wasn’t a reach for us. We weren’t going outside of our character and I thought it was a funny skit to have Wu-Tang trying to handle people’s finances. It was a good experience and it was funny. Also, Coffee & Cigarettes with myself, RZA & Bill Murray was just as funny as the Dave Chappelle thing. It was real cool. I like to laugh and have fun but I take emceeing seriously but I like to bug out every now and then.
Halftime: I want to talk about back in the days when you used to go around town just battling cats. There was a rumor that you and Jay-Z battled one time. Is there any truth to that and if so what was the outcome of that one?
GZA: Yea, that’s true. It wasn’t like a battle but we came across each other’s paths. Actually it was me and Dirty. We ran into Jay-Z in Bushwick. We used to go to Ansar Ru Allah community, it was this whole community of Muslims, to go buy the wheat pizza and they used to have this talent show every week. We weren’t performing against each other but we happened to run into him one time out there. We were like yea we emcee and he was like he emcee and we went back and forth with a couple of darts and that was that. He was very arrogant at the time….
Halftime: At the time? haha
GZA: Aiight, he still is. He was very thingyy. We weren’t as thingyy but we were just as confident. So we both had the vibe like yea you ain’t do nothing to me. We had the same type of attitude but it was all cool. He was rhyming much much faster, you remember how he used to rhyme. He was super fast back then. He’s a clever emcee, he’s always got it and he’s still nice. I’ll give it to him. He put his work in. But that was that it wasn’t no Kool Moe Dee vs. Busy Bee situation. We just went back and forth with a few verses and that was that. He was asked about it on MTV. Sway asked him like, ‘You battled GZA, you beat Genius?’ and Jay-Z was like c’mon man.
Halftime: Yea, that’s why I had to ask
GZA: It was that same thingyiness. He didn’t answer the question but he made it seem like ‘c’mon man.’ Real hardcore lyrical cats know. I don’t play when it comes to writing.
Halftime: We did an interview with Inspectah Deck and he told us one thing you taught him was how to keep his freestyles in sentences. How you write your verses is almost like writing an essay. Have you always written in that complete structure or did you grow into that?
GZA: Yea, I always write like that. I’m even stronger now. As far as writing and lyrically I’m even up a notch or two. But yea I told Deck that a while ago. He’s flashing back on me saying I learned from GZA to just write strong sentences. What I grew up to know as freestyle didn’t mean off the head. So freestyle was never about that for myself, it was just rhyming about no particular subject. I’m not a great off the head rhymer. I really don’t do that. I don’t have skills. I’m spontaneous but I don’t really get down like that. I like to write and craft my work. I think a lot of freestyle stuff or off the head stuff is corny nowadays. It just be killing me sometimes like usually I’m doing a show and someone is screaming out ‘freestyle!’ cuz they want to hear me say something off the head. Not saying I don’t respect that because I heard one or two cats in the whole history of emceeing that was really nice off the head. Everything else was just bullnuts to me. I watch BET freestyle Fridays and I’m like this is ridiculous man. They’d rather have two dudes come on and go off the head and not curse. Go off the head and not curse which is hard for a lot of emcees period. I don’t really respect that. I’d rather hear something well written unless you are really spitting something off the head that’s sounding alright. Especially the movie 8 Mile, it was a good flick but it brought more of that freestyle stuff out which really just messed it up. Now the majority of kids who battle are like ‘Look at your shoes kid’ and that nuts is annoying. All these corny similes and fake metaphors are kinda weak. If you take the dart Jadakiss threw at 50, he wasn’t talking about his physical appearance, clothes or looks but he was spittin though. In my opinion he was really spittin some stuff, he kept his flow and didn’t get into anything personal. He kept it on some lyrical stuff and for battling that’s what it always was for us through the years. For me it’s just about writing strong lines and catchy stuff that’s witty-unpredictable. Stuff that just stands out, not just a whole bunch of similes like I’m tall like this, your bad like that, you’re a Volkswagen and I’m a Bentley. That’s corny. It’s about being brief with something but haven’t it just as powerful. I always say what the average emcee can say in ten lines I can say in four lines and still be more visual than the majority of emcees out there. That’s what emceeing is for me.
Halftime: I feel like I’ve noticed that more. I’ll be listening to some of your stuff and felt like it was too short. Even when me and Marcus were talking about Liquid Swords we were saying it felt like the album was too short. But then I started piecing it together and it’s like you said what you had to say and now it’s done.
GZA: That’s good thing when you put out and album and leaving people wanting more. Normally I always kick sixteen bars. I never go below sixteen. Some songs like Triumph I did eight because there were so many of us. If you take a song like Killah Hills or Queens Gambit that’s like fifty something bars straight through. All those songs like Labels straight through are like fifty something bars. What I mean is I don’t cut it short to say I’m just gonna do four bars. My point is if you are gonna do sixteen make your sixteen seem like thirty-two. I love talking about hip hop and rhyming. What a lot of emcees do is put too many unnecessary details trying to be visual.
‘He rang the bell / I walked to the door / opened it / he was looking at me up and down / I told him to come in and sit at the table / and I went and poured him a drink’
Come on man. You should be able to say what took you twelve lines in four lines.
Halftime: I noticed the way you had the song titles in the back of Liquid Swords that was really creative.
GZA: That was something we thought of after we finished the album. It’s just about being creative. It takes me a while to write sometimes because I’m always reconsidering words. I go line for line. Every time I write I try to go line for line. It’s a puzzle to me. That’s how I write this has to fit here and that has to fit there. If I look that to ‘Word’s from The Genius’ I could look at that now and say I could have polished that up better because I’m better as time goes on. But I was good for that time. I was probably advanced for that time. Nowadays I feel the same way when writing. There are certain things I’m not gonna do like using slang when it’s ran into the hole. You’ll never hear me refer to money as cheddar or cheese. When cheddar first came out they ran it so much it was provolone.
Halftime: What other words are on you’re do not rhyme list?
GZA: I use just about every word. If I’m using cheddar I’m talking about cheddar. I’m not referring to money. I’d rather use old slang like cash or dough. Just something simple. It’s a lot stronger depending on how you use it in the sentence. I may just say money.
Halftime: I liked how you phrased it on the latest album when you said ‘patriotic hustlers that kill for presidents.’
GZA: Conceal the truth but can’t hide the evidence. That’s a lot of cats nowadays. They always get caught. Lots of emcees use these lines but something you’ll never hear me say is you can catch me or you can find me. ‘You can catch me in the V.I.P. or you can see me on a..’ Not to knock those lines cuz a lot of people may read the article and think I’m getting at them. I’m not getting at you because hundreds of emcees use those, but its real simple and plain. It’s just something that I don’t do. I say this in every interview I don’t rhyme about clothes because in my writing it’s unnecessary. If I speak about a jacket it’s his jacket. His jacket fell off I don’t need to tell you the name, like ‘he shot up his Pelle Pelle or chinchilla.’ Knock it off. It depends on how you use it. Some people might have used it in a slick way but once I heard it fifteen times I don’t need to say chinchilla. I’ll speak about another fur or I’ll just say fur. It’s simple and plain but it would come off a lot stronger depending on how you use it in a sentence. I say vehicle or car. I might use the word ‘nova’ but I’ll be talking about a star while the average emcee will be talking about a car. There are many things to write about that’s why I don’t understand why so many emcees talk about the same nuts. I said in the Masta Killa song ‘Life in the hood is an award winning film / lived out by savages who can’t escape the realm.’ It’s award winning in their eyes because it’s all they talk about. Like the one you said early ‘patriotic hustlers that kill for presidents’ that’s still in the hood.
‘I come from a place where they say death comes too soon / on the block where the hoods dance to a different tune / every night, every day hotels and foul play / it turns fatal in this hostile land of AKs.’ It’s more visual, it’s not like ‘yo son they was holding the block down / he hit him in front of the store / he was slinging keys.’ A lot of emcees think that if something is real bloody then it’s so real and so visual. I blew his brains out and they splashed on the back seat. That’s not visual.
Halftime: I just wish more cats would rhyme about what they are really doing. Then I think I could relate more. If you’re going to school then rhyme about school or if you struggling at a 9-5 then talk about that. Not a lot of people are doing that.
GZA: It’s just that most cats say they rhyme about what they live but most of it is boring. We all know somebody from the hood. If you from the hood you know people who either murdered somebody or know somebody that got murdered. We all know someone. How many people you know that say they gonna write a book about their life. We all feel that way. It’s all about how you put it. What’s gonna make your story interesting and different from all the cats that sold on the block and turned their money? It’s not only about what you lived, you should be able to use your imagination. You should be able to create stories and bring people into you’re world and make it believable. A lot of times I make up stuff and blend it in and take the best of both worlds and make it believable. That’s what a lot of artists aren’t doing. They want to write about what they’ve seen or lived and not about what they think. It’s ok to think. There are so many things to write and talk about in the world. I could write a song about being in an elevator and make it interesting. Can you imagine watching a movie that takes place in one room but keeps you interested the whole time? Artists don’t seem to have that in them.
Halftime: When we came up it wasn’t the beginning of hip hop but we were around for the Kanes and Rakims. I see the hip hop landscape and I understand it but it still strikes me like how did it get so wack. But Marcus was saying maybe it’s a generational thing and cats today are gonna be like d**n this is when hip hop was dope. But I can’t help feeling like the skills have just eroded.
GZA: Nowadays it seems like its cool to be dumb. Emcees were a whole lot more lyrical back then. Like Rakim, how can you have stuff so hard but so commercial. That’s what emceeing is about. Not being commercial and watered down or gimmicky. He didn’t use profanity and I don’t think he did it on a Will Smith level like ‘I don’t curse.’ Will stressed that. I don’t use profanity either really. I haven’t on the last few albums. I might say one or two words that you can censor but it’s not in my writing. It doesn’t come out like that, but it still has that hard aura. Kane was doing lyrical songs that were hard and commercial. A lot of cats from that era were very lyrical. You can name at least ten emcees back then that was in the spotlight at the same time that was all lyrical and all different. Try to name ten now in the spotlight. They are all similar. Everyone is following and biting. No one is really writing anything lyrically profound. We are giving emcees the title of greatest and they weren’t lyrically skilled like that. Come on now.
Halftime: I guess that’s what’s really getting to me. Back then the dopest artists were in the forefront. Now you can find dope artists but you have to search mad hard to find them.
GZA: I used to walk around town battling cats on some lyrical stuff. The song I did off the last album called ‘Audo Bio,’ that was my introduction to hip hop. How me and RZA used to go to the Bronx. I said
‘Me and RZA made trips to the BX / a mass of ferocious emcees, a town of T-Rex / giants in every way / rap flows for every day / we knew we would get a reward with a price to pay / the basic training was beyond entertaining / just a cadence of a verbal expression self explaining / I wore my boots out from constant walks across the borough.’
That was our history. We used to challenge brothers. We kept it lyrically sharp, challenged the best, walked all around and kept it respectable. Battling was on a respectful level. It was about verbal skills not smashing a cat out. Emcees just don’t have it nowadays. A lot of songs sound like they are off the head. ‘Here I am doing an interview / asking me a question don’t know who / I’m sitting in my crib / inside my son’s bedroom / ladies on the front…’ That’s how most rap sounds nowadays. It sounds ridiculous. That’s why I said ‘half these rap lyrics ain’t thought provoked / just a lot of beef till they get caught and smoked.’ That’s a metaphor cuz you smoke beef. Then I said the problem is never cured like you gotta cure pork or beef. That’s how I write.
Halftime: Where do you get your inspiration to write stuff like that. I heard you watch a lot of the History and Learning Channel.
GZA: Yea, I watch a lot of that. First, I think it just has to be in you. But emcees have to watch more stuff that you can learn from to expand your mind. I got a demo from a kid the other day and he’s talking the same nuts on every track. ‘Ya’ll don’t want it, ya’ll don’t want!!’ Just beefin. Every track was and we sling those things and we bag those things. That’s not the visualz.
Halftime: I said that about how Houston is coming back right now. Some of them can rhyme like I feel like Slim Thug can rhyme but I peeped the album and by the fourth track its like son you’re really saying the same nuts over and over again.
GZA: It’s like a repeat
Halftime: They even used the same slang. It’s like candy paint, trunk waving, sipping on some sizzurp. I’m alright already. Everything is candy paint. Even cats who can rhyme aren’t even advancing it.
Halftime: I’ve always thought of you as the most serious dude in the clan, but then I seen the Dave Chappelle skit and it blew me cuz it was mad funny. How come that doesn’t normally come off in your music?
GZA: I don’t know. I’m serious when I write but I do have a sense of humor. I like to have fun and joke. I think the Dave Chappelle thing was cool to do because we were being ourselves although somewhat acting. We were being RZA and GZA and it wasn’t a reach for us. We weren’t going outside of our character and I thought it was a funny skit to have Wu-Tang trying to handle people’s finances. It was a good experience and it was funny. Also, Coffee & Cigarettes with myself, RZA & Bill Murray was just as funny as the Dave Chappelle thing. It was real cool. I like to laugh and have fun but I take emceeing seriously but I like to bug out every now and then.
Halftime: I want to talk about back in the days when you used to go around town just battling cats. There was a rumor that you and Jay-Z battled one time. Is there any truth to that and if so what was the outcome of that one?
GZA: Yea, that’s true. It wasn’t like a battle but we came across each other’s paths. Actually it was me and Dirty. We ran into Jay-Z in Bushwick. We used to go to Ansar Ru Allah community, it was this whole community of Muslims, to go buy the wheat pizza and they used to have this talent show every week. We weren’t performing against each other but we happened to run into him one time out there. We were like yea we emcee and he was like he emcee and we went back and forth with a couple of darts and that was that. He was very arrogant at the time….
Halftime: At the time? haha
GZA: Aiight, he still is. He was very thingyy. We weren’t as thingyy but we were just as confident. So we both had the vibe like yea you ain’t do nothing to me. We had the same type of attitude but it was all cool. He was rhyming much much faster, you remember how he used to rhyme. He was super fast back then. He’s a clever emcee, he’s always got it and he’s still nice. I’ll give it to him. He put his work in. But that was that it wasn’t no Kool Moe Dee vs. Busy Bee situation. We just went back and forth with a few verses and that was that. He was asked about it on MTV. Sway asked him like, ‘You battled GZA, you beat Genius?’ and Jay-Z was like c’mon man.
Halftime: Yea, that’s why I had to ask
GZA: It was that same thingyiness. He didn’t answer the question but he made it seem like ‘c’mon man.’ Real hardcore lyrical cats know. I don’t play when it comes to writing.
Halftime: We did an interview with Inspectah Deck and he told us one thing you taught him was how to keep his freestyles in sentences. How you write your verses is almost like writing an essay. Have you always written in that complete structure or did you grow into that?
GZA: Yea, I always write like that. I’m even stronger now. As far as writing and lyrically I’m even up a notch or two. But yea I told Deck that a while ago. He’s flashing back on me saying I learned from GZA to just write strong sentences. What I grew up to know as freestyle didn’t mean off the head. So freestyle was never about that for myself, it was just rhyming about no particular subject. I’m not a great off the head rhymer. I really don’t do that. I don’t have skills. I’m spontaneous but I don’t really get down like that. I like to write and craft my work. I think a lot of freestyle stuff or off the head stuff is corny nowadays. It just be killing me sometimes like usually I’m doing a show and someone is screaming out ‘freestyle!’ cuz they want to hear me say something off the head. Not saying I don’t respect that because I heard one or two cats in the whole history of emceeing that was really nice off the head. Everything else was just bullnuts to me. I watch BET freestyle Fridays and I’m like this is ridiculous man. They’d rather have two dudes come on and go off the head and not curse. Go off the head and not curse which is hard for a lot of emcees period. I don’t really respect that. I’d rather hear something well written unless you are really spitting something off the head that’s sounding alright. Especially the movie 8 Mile, it was a good flick but it brought more of that freestyle stuff out which really just messed it up. Now the majority of kids who battle are like ‘Look at your shoes kid’ and that nuts is annoying. All these corny similes and fake metaphors are kinda weak. If you take the dart Jadakiss threw at 50, he wasn’t talking about his physical appearance, clothes or looks but he was spittin though. In my opinion he was really spittin some stuff, he kept his flow and didn’t get into anything personal. He kept it on some lyrical stuff and for battling that’s what it always was for us through the years. For me it’s just about writing strong lines and catchy stuff that’s witty-unpredictable. Stuff that just stands out, not just a whole bunch of similes like I’m tall like this, your bad like that, you’re a Volkswagen and I’m a Bentley. That’s corny. It’s about being brief with something but haven’t it just as powerful. I always say what the average emcee can say in ten lines I can say in four lines and still be more visual than the majority of emcees out there. That’s what emceeing is for me.
Halftime: I feel like I’ve noticed that more. I’ll be listening to some of your stuff and felt like it was too short. Even when me and Marcus were talking about Liquid Swords we were saying it felt like the album was too short. But then I started piecing it together and it’s like you said what you had to say and now it’s done.
GZA: That’s good thing when you put out and album and leaving people wanting more. Normally I always kick sixteen bars. I never go below sixteen. Some songs like Triumph I did eight because there were so many of us. If you take a song like Killah Hills or Queens Gambit that’s like fifty something bars straight through. All those songs like Labels straight through are like fifty something bars. What I mean is I don’t cut it short to say I’m just gonna do four bars. My point is if you are gonna do sixteen make your sixteen seem like thirty-two. I love talking about hip hop and rhyming. What a lot of emcees do is put too many unnecessary details trying to be visual.
‘He rang the bell / I walked to the door / opened it / he was looking at me up and down / I told him to come in and sit at the table / and I went and poured him a drink’
Come on man. You should be able to say what took you twelve lines in four lines.
Halftime: I noticed the way you had the song titles in the back of Liquid Swords that was really creative.
GZA: That was something we thought of after we finished the album. It’s just about being creative. It takes me a while to write sometimes because I’m always reconsidering words. I go line for line. Every time I write I try to go line for line. It’s a puzzle to me. That’s how I write this has to fit here and that has to fit there. If I look that to ‘Word’s from The Genius’ I could look at that now and say I could have polished that up better because I’m better as time goes on. But I was good for that time. I was probably advanced for that time. Nowadays I feel the same way when writing. There are certain things I’m not gonna do like using slang when it’s ran into the hole. You’ll never hear me refer to money as cheddar or cheese. When cheddar first came out they ran it so much it was provolone.
Halftime: What other words are on you’re do not rhyme list?
GZA: I use just about every word. If I’m using cheddar I’m talking about cheddar. I’m not referring to money. I’d rather use old slang like cash or dough. Just something simple. It’s a lot stronger depending on how you use it in the sentence. I may just say money.
Halftime: I liked how you phrased it on the latest album when you said ‘patriotic hustlers that kill for presidents.’
GZA: Conceal the truth but can’t hide the evidence. That’s a lot of cats nowadays. They always get caught. Lots of emcees use these lines but something you’ll never hear me say is you can catch me or you can find me. ‘You can catch me in the V.I.P. or you can see me on a..’ Not to knock those lines cuz a lot of people may read the article and think I’m getting at them. I’m not getting at you because hundreds of emcees use those, but its real simple and plain. It’s just something that I don’t do. I say this in every interview I don’t rhyme about clothes because in my writing it’s unnecessary. If I speak about a jacket it’s his jacket. His jacket fell off I don’t need to tell you the name, like ‘he shot up his Pelle Pelle or chinchilla.’ Knock it off. It depends on how you use it. Some people might have used it in a slick way but once I heard it fifteen times I don’t need to say chinchilla. I’ll speak about another fur or I’ll just say fur. It’s simple and plain but it would come off a lot stronger depending on how you use it in a sentence. I say vehicle or car. I might use the word ‘nova’ but I’ll be talking about a star while the average emcee will be talking about a car. There are many things to write about that’s why I don’t understand why so many emcees talk about the same nuts. I said in the Masta Killa song ‘Life in the hood is an award winning film / lived out by savages who can’t escape the realm.’ It’s award winning in their eyes because it’s all they talk about. Like the one you said early ‘patriotic hustlers that kill for presidents’ that’s still in the hood.
‘I come from a place where they say death comes too soon / on the block where the hoods dance to a different tune / every night, every day hotels and foul play / it turns fatal in this hostile land of AKs.’ It’s more visual, it’s not like ‘yo son they was holding the block down / he hit him in front of the store / he was slinging keys.’ A lot of emcees think that if something is real bloody then it’s so real and so visual. I blew his brains out and they splashed on the back seat. That’s not visual.
Halftime: I just wish more cats would rhyme about what they are really doing. Then I think I could relate more. If you’re going to school then rhyme about school or if you struggling at a 9-5 then talk about that. Not a lot of people are doing that.
GZA: It’s just that most cats say they rhyme about what they live but most of it is boring. We all know somebody from the hood. If you from the hood you know people who either murdered somebody or know somebody that got murdered. We all know someone. How many people you know that say they gonna write a book about their life. We all feel that way. It’s all about how you put it. What’s gonna make your story interesting and different from all the cats that sold on the block and turned their money? It’s not only about what you lived, you should be able to use your imagination. You should be able to create stories and bring people into you’re world and make it believable. A lot of times I make up stuff and blend it in and take the best of both worlds and make it believable. That’s what a lot of artists aren’t doing. They want to write about what they’ve seen or lived and not about what they think. It’s ok to think. There are so many things to write and talk about in the world. I could write a song about being in an elevator and make it interesting. Can you imagine watching a movie that takes place in one room but keeps you interested the whole time? Artists don’t seem to have that in them.
Halftime: When we came up it wasn’t the beginning of hip hop but we were around for the Kanes and Rakims. I see the hip hop landscape and I understand it but it still strikes me like how did it get so wack. But Marcus was saying maybe it’s a generational thing and cats today are gonna be like d**n this is when hip hop was dope. But I can’t help feeling like the skills have just eroded.
GZA: Nowadays it seems like its cool to be dumb. Emcees were a whole lot more lyrical back then. Like Rakim, how can you have stuff so hard but so commercial. That’s what emceeing is about. Not being commercial and watered down or gimmicky. He didn’t use profanity and I don’t think he did it on a Will Smith level like ‘I don’t curse.’ Will stressed that. I don’t use profanity either really. I haven’t on the last few albums. I might say one or two words that you can censor but it’s not in my writing. It doesn’t come out like that, but it still has that hard aura. Kane was doing lyrical songs that were hard and commercial. A lot of cats from that era were very lyrical. You can name at least ten emcees back then that was in the spotlight at the same time that was all lyrical and all different. Try to name ten now in the spotlight. They are all similar. Everyone is following and biting. No one is really writing anything lyrically profound. We are giving emcees the title of greatest and they weren’t lyrically skilled like that. Come on now.
Halftime: I guess that’s what’s really getting to me. Back then the dopest artists were in the forefront. Now you can find dope artists but you have to search mad hard to find them.
GZA: I used to walk around town battling cats on some lyrical stuff. The song I did off the last album called ‘Audo Bio,’ that was my introduction to hip hop. How me and RZA used to go to the Bronx. I said
‘Me and RZA made trips to the BX / a mass of ferocious emcees, a town of T-Rex / giants in every way / rap flows for every day / we knew we would get a reward with a price to pay / the basic training was beyond entertaining / just a cadence of a verbal expression self explaining / I wore my boots out from constant walks across the borough.’
That was our history. We used to challenge brothers. We kept it lyrically sharp, challenged the best, walked all around and kept it respectable. Battling was on a respectful level. It was about verbal skills not smashing a cat out. Emcees just don’t have it nowadays. A lot of songs sound like they are off the head. ‘Here I am doing an interview / asking me a question don’t know who / I’m sitting in my crib / inside my son’s bedroom / ladies on the front…’ That’s how most rap sounds nowadays. It sounds ridiculous. That’s why I said ‘half these rap lyrics ain’t thought provoked / just a lot of beef till they get caught and smoked.’ That’s a metaphor cuz you smoke beef. Then I said the problem is never cured like you gotta cure pork or beef. That’s how I write.
Halftime: Where do you get your inspiration to write stuff like that. I heard you watch a lot of the History and Learning Channel.
GZA: Yea, I watch a lot of that. First, I think it just has to be in you. But emcees have to watch more stuff that you can learn from to expand your mind. I got a demo from a kid the other day and he’s talking the same nuts on every track. ‘Ya’ll don’t want it, ya’ll don’t want!!’ Just beefin. Every track was and we sling those things and we bag those things. That’s not the visualz.
Halftime: I said that about how Houston is coming back right now. Some of them can rhyme like I feel like Slim Thug can rhyme but I peeped the album and by the fourth track its like son you’re really saying the same nuts over and over again.
GZA: It’s like a repeat
Halftime: They even used the same slang. It’s like candy paint, trunk waving, sipping on some sizzurp. I’m alright already. Everything is candy paint. Even cats who can rhyme aren’t even advancing it.