KingsOfKings
🍊 𝑳𝒆𝒕'𝒔 𝑻𝒂𝒍𝒌 𝑵𝒖𝒎𝒃𝒆𝒓𝒔 ! 🍊
The Future of Music Interview is a Q&A in which our favorite artists and producers share their visions of what’s next, weighing in on everything from AI to emerging scenes to the artists inspiring them the most.
When RZA, then known as Prince Rakeem, got dropped from Tommy Boy after his 1989 “Ooh I Love You Rakeem” single underperformed commercially, he knew he had to go back to the drawing board. It’s said that in order to break the rules, you have to grasp them in the first place. RZA already had enough experience to know what he needed to do: Corral a crew of fellow Staten Islanders and kick down the door of the music industry.
Wu-Tang Clan’s classic 1993 debut, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), boasts a grungy sound that seems uninterested in mass appeal. But it became a rap touchstone anyway. RZA asked his Wu-Tang cohorts to give him five years to guide their careers, and he mapped out a game plan that helped make several of them standalone stars with iconic solo catalogs. Since then, he’s delved headfirst into Hollywood, acting, scoring, and producing films, while also helming Wu-Tang: An American Saga, the rap-biopic TV series
RZA’s vision is undeniable, which makes him an ideal source to talk about the future of music. We talked to him about Afrobeats’ impact, why struggling with production gear might be a good thing, the possibilities and dangers of AI, and much, much more.
Who’s an artist that you expect to have a huge impact shaping the future of music?
Burna Boy is leading the pack. He’s having the best moment, but [I love] the Afrobeats and what’s coming from the motherland, the vibe that it inspires and our music out here. There was a lot of strong immigration into America in the Eighties and Nineties, and 2000s. A lot of the children from those different countries — whether it’s Nigeria, Liberia, Libya, Ghana — have second generations here and have a reference right back to their native culture and their native land with this Afrobeats movement.
If you look at Drake and Rihanna, or Beyoncé bringing in Afrobeats during the Lion King project, that vibe is something that within five to 10 years can be as influential and integrated as the South when [it] become the predominant sound of hip-hop.
You just mentioned Drake, Rihanna, Beyoncé. You see even more artists in the future trying to ingratiate themselves to Afrobeats?
If you look at the history of hip-hop, it’s always integrated culture. If you go back to this first big hip-hop hit, you’ll see that it’s actually Sugarhill Gang using the funk of Nile Rodgers and Chic. When you go further and we get into the Eighties, you’ll notice that every hip-hop artist had a reggae track on their album.
A couple of years later, everybody had an R&B track on their album. You get into the Nineties, and you get the big Method Man collaboration, and then you get a slew of that type of vibe that goes in. I skipped Run-D.M.C. with the rock infusion, Beastie Boys … but hip-hop always grabs something of it. And then eventually there’s artists that embrace it as a full and top the charts. I think Bruno Mars is a good example of embracing funk and R&B of the Seventies, Eighties, and Nineties, and then taking it to become one of the number-one artists in the world, modern day.
Are there any other current trends within music that you see growing bigger in the future?
Well, it’s a cycle, too. It seems there’s a bubbling underground-New York vibe coming back, which is interesting. But also, and this is my point of view, hip-hop has always been the voice of the streets, the gritty streets. No matter what part of the world the artists came from, it was rough upbringings.
More at link :
When RZA, then known as Prince Rakeem, got dropped from Tommy Boy after his 1989 “Ooh I Love You Rakeem” single underperformed commercially, he knew he had to go back to the drawing board. It’s said that in order to break the rules, you have to grasp them in the first place. RZA already had enough experience to know what he needed to do: Corral a crew of fellow Staten Islanders and kick down the door of the music industry.
Wu-Tang Clan’s classic 1993 debut, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), boasts a grungy sound that seems uninterested in mass appeal. But it became a rap touchstone anyway. RZA asked his Wu-Tang cohorts to give him five years to guide their careers, and he mapped out a game plan that helped make several of them standalone stars with iconic solo catalogs. Since then, he’s delved headfirst into Hollywood, acting, scoring, and producing films, while also helming Wu-Tang: An American Saga, the rap-biopic TV series
RZA’s vision is undeniable, which makes him an ideal source to talk about the future of music. We talked to him about Afrobeats’ impact, why struggling with production gear might be a good thing, the possibilities and dangers of AI, and much, much more.
Who’s an artist that you expect to have a huge impact shaping the future of music?
Burna Boy is leading the pack. He’s having the best moment, but [I love] the Afrobeats and what’s coming from the motherland, the vibe that it inspires and our music out here. There was a lot of strong immigration into America in the Eighties and Nineties, and 2000s. A lot of the children from those different countries — whether it’s Nigeria, Liberia, Libya, Ghana — have second generations here and have a reference right back to their native culture and their native land with this Afrobeats movement.
If you look at Drake and Rihanna, or Beyoncé bringing in Afrobeats during the Lion King project, that vibe is something that within five to 10 years can be as influential and integrated as the South when [it] become the predominant sound of hip-hop.
You just mentioned Drake, Rihanna, Beyoncé. You see even more artists in the future trying to ingratiate themselves to Afrobeats?
If you look at the history of hip-hop, it’s always integrated culture. If you go back to this first big hip-hop hit, you’ll see that it’s actually Sugarhill Gang using the funk of Nile Rodgers and Chic. When you go further and we get into the Eighties, you’ll notice that every hip-hop artist had a reggae track on their album.
A couple of years later, everybody had an R&B track on their album. You get into the Nineties, and you get the big Method Man collaboration, and then you get a slew of that type of vibe that goes in. I skipped Run-D.M.C. with the rock infusion, Beastie Boys … but hip-hop always grabs something of it. And then eventually there’s artists that embrace it as a full and top the charts. I think Bruno Mars is a good example of embracing funk and R&B of the Seventies, Eighties, and Nineties, and then taking it to become one of the number-one artists in the world, modern day.
Are there any other current trends within music that you see growing bigger in the future?
Well, it’s a cycle, too. It seems there’s a bubbling underground-New York vibe coming back, which is interesting. But also, and this is my point of view, hip-hop has always been the voice of the streets, the gritty streets. No matter what part of the world the artists came from, it was rough upbringings.
More at link :
RZA on How Afrobeats Will Reshape Hip-Hop
The Wu-Tang visionary gives the long view on trend cycles, the possibilities (and dangers) of AI, and why struggling with production gear might be a good thing
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