RZA: Y’all aint gotta be nervous to talk shyt about me, okay?! Feel free.
WildstyleMag.com: Some time ago you went to the U.K. to promote your new Digital LP…
RZA (interrupted the question and told a long story about a promoter in Lodnon): Ask anybody who knows me, in the last two months they never saw me angry. I wasn’t even angry at Raekwon after all the stupid shyt he said to me about the 8 Diagrams Album, RZA is a Hippie and that stupid shyt. That didn’t get me as pissed off as this dude from London.
Because he had me leave my house, leave my kids, leave my family and come all the way over here with my buddies. One of my buddies got locked up, one of my other buddies couldn’t pay his fukking rent, so we all wanted to get our money. But the promoter didn’t fukking pay the fukking money yo! Then at the o2 Arena, where 1.100 paying guests attended the show, I almost fighted with the show organizer because he wouldn’t give me the money. He said he gave it to that promoter. I stayed in London for two extra days out of my own pocket, payed for the hotel, looking for that motherfukker. I couldn’t find him and I never heard from him again.
There was one girl that knew him that came to the show and came to the hotel afterwards.
Two of my buddies both fukked her. I don’t know if that was his girl or not. Anyway, she told us that he was actually from America and he used her address to get his visa in London. And she had been looking for him, too.
I wonder why the promoter did this to me. Honestly, he actually wanted to give me the money in my hand but I told him not to. I said he should give it to me at the end. I trusted this motherfukker! At the day when the tour was over, he said we were leaving 9 o’clock. At 9 o’clock we’re waiting for him when the driver told us that he thinks he caught a train at 7 o’clock. So the driver took us to London, we wanted to go to James’ office. But the address that he gave me was a fake address! This place was in the hood of London, people were looking at me like “fukk you”, and then the driver also wanted me to pay him! This promoter put all of us in this situatuin! Damn, that n-gga is smart! He’s fukked up!
You know, I make a lot of money in my life, 50.000 dollars are nothing, but it still affects me because I was out here for a month! That’s not fair!
Wildstylemag.com: Since we are already talking about money and debts: What is the case about all the Wu-Tang members claiming you wouldn’t give them their money?
RZA: Ah listen, that’s a whole other story. Wu-Tang members saying I don’t give them their money is all falsehood. Everybody in the Wu-Tang got everything they’re entitled to and not only that, they got more than their money. I give everybody in the Clan more than I was supposed to give.
Let me give you an example from the music industry: You can put Suge Knight next to Wu-Tang, we both came up at the same time, Death Row – Wu-Tang, okay?! When Snoop Dogg left Suge Knight and went to Master P., they had to pay Suge Knight a million dollars for that, did you know that?!
When Wu-Tang - Raekwon, Ghostface, Inspectah Deck, Method Man - asked for releases of Wu-Tang production, what did I get? Zero, I gave it to them for free! When Ghostface wanted to sign to Sony Records although he was already signed to Razor Sharp Records, he had to wait for a process until the deal was done. Now I said “Ghost, don’t leave my company, man! If you leave my company, then Cap [Cappadonna] will leave my company. Y’all are gonna devalue my company. My company is worth 15 million dollars right now!”
If they come and take the artists from the company, the company is worth shyt. First Cappa signs. I was like “Ooh shyt, he is with Mike Caruso who has a true article about who he is”. And then Ghost lets Mike Caruso become his manager and leaves Razor Sharp Records. But before Ghost left, he had no money. I loaned him 100.000 dollars to leave me. Because that’s my brother. I don’t give a fukk about money when it comes to that.
Eva hold on, I need you as a witness. (Eva R.,Wu-Tangs lontime international representative, was just passing by) She said Wu-Tang said I took their money. What did Wu-Tang say recently about this tour? On this tour, did Wu-Tang say you gave me payment under the table? Now, did you pay me under the table? Did I get 15 cent?!
Eva: In fact I am even telling Bobby that he owes me 425 dollars for a suitcase in Prague.
RZA: Is Wu-Tang accusing you of taking the money right now? Are they accusing Jerome of taking money right now? Is Jerome a fukking nerd? Would Jerome take 5 dollars from a cat?
Eva: Jerome is the most ethical and beautiful person in the world.
RZA: Exactly, they accuse him of being a crook. They accuse anybody…
Eva: …they accuse anybody. If you had 15.000 dollars right now that Ghost thinks is his, he would jump at you and say: “You took my money, come on, give me all your cash!”
RZA: Did Ghost jump at you for the cash? Three days ago?
Eva: Yes, three days ago. He told me to give him all my money. I called the police for a second, but then I cancelled the police again.
RZA: Now, I am not disrespecting Wu! We’re from the hood! So we don’t trust nobody! That’s just how it is, you know.
Eva: Yeah, that’s the difference
RZA: You find people who say something like “Yo, RZA just bought a new house” - I just did five fukking movies scoring, man! You know how much money I did out of Kill Bill? You know how much money I made out of all these movies and shyt? Yeah, I can buy a fukking new house! I didn’t buy it from the Wu-Tang money. But, they won’t think that because somebody’s in their ear like “Yo, how do God get this, how do God get that? Yo, how you do this, yeah, the nikka must be getting all your royalties, the nikka is getting this, the nikka is getting that.”
There’s a lawsuit at the moment between me and Ghost. Do you know what the lawsuit is about?! Check out what the lawsuit is about: He has an accountant and a lawyer that tell him that for all the songs that I wrote over the years I should have gotten less money! You know, when you make a Hip Hop song, 50 percent of the publishing goes to the producer or the music, and another 50 percent goes to the lyrics. Is that the same in Germany?
Wildstylemag.com: Yes.
RZA: Okay. Ghost has a lawyer that says I should have only gotten 20 percent and that Ghost should have gotten more. So therefore they took all these times that I got 50 percent, added them up and said I owed them about 300-400 Grand. How the fukk can that be Ghost?! Everytime you put an album out with any producer you do the same thing. Now you are going to change it on me? Not only did I make the beat, I probably gave you some of your lyrics and sat in that fukking studio for months! Because they come in, rap, smoke and go. You know what I am saying?! I’m here for months!So there it is, you can decipher that, haha. You get nothing but the truth from me.
Wildstylemag.com: This situation between you is pretty difficult and seems messed up. You are in a Clan, whose members are acually even your family members, and then you have lawsuits between you and money is involved. How does this affect you emotionally?
RZA: It’s funny though. It affects me mostly badly because I have a family, too. I have got a fiancé, I have got children and they look up to Ghost or Rae as their uncle. You know, Raekwon comes to my house and kisses my babies. Just as U-God who I know since we were kids. So when U-God went for filing the lawsuit for 170.000 dollars against Wu-Tang Productions, I was like “U-God, if I did owe you 170.000 dollars, you wouldn’t sit here after 10 years and say you were missing 170.000 dollars after everything I did for you. I would have swallowed that shyt.
He’s asking me for 300-400 Grand! When I did Wu-Tang Records, nobody signed U-God before. He never had a record deal. He only had a record deal on my company. I put 700.000 dollars in his hands baby, in your fukking hands, nikka. And I did videos, 200 Grand video here, video there, for you out of my company. And you only sold 200.000 records. That means my company lost money of you, Sun. So don’t come to me like I ever owed you something. But I asked him why he thinks I owe him 170.000 dollars. He said he didn’t get his mony of the last 8 Diagrams album and of the last tour. So I asked him how much money he didn’t get out of that, he answered 4.000 dollars. “Where do you get 170.000 from 4.000 nikka? Oh, your lawyer got you gassed up?”
And what happens to a lot of artists in the music industry right now is the following: The music industry is plummeting real fast. So as the industry plummets, what happens is that there is no deals being made. If there’s no deals being made rappers, what happens to the lawyers. They’ve got to close their firms, they can’t make no money. How can they make money from the client now? Litigation! And that’s why you will hear this coming up. Not only Wu-Tang, you’ll here it popping out throughout the industry, you’ll hear somebody suing somebody, because there are lawyers advising to sue, so the lawyers can keep their retainments.
I told Ghost right in court to come over to me. Ghost is my brother, Ghost has got babies from my sister, did you know that? I’m the uncle of his children, my little sister has two babies from him. I was like “Yo Sun, we’re in court, look how stupid this is. They got us in court not talking to each other”. His lawyer tells him not to talk to me. Why? Because they don’t want the truth to come out. The lawyer costs Ghost 1000 dollars a day, he costs me 1000 dollars a day and this case has been going on for 2-3 years!
