it feels like you always have the answers, right?

And it's easy to say that "Oh, I knew, I knew, I knew".

And most things I won't be able to say

that I knew I was on the right course,

but for the Wu-Tang Clan, I knew.

Peace, whatup yo?

This is RZA, right here, from the Wu-Tang Clan

and this is the timeline of my career.

♪ I got too many ladies ♪

♪ I got to learn to say no ♪

♪ Ohh, We Love You Rakeem ♪

When I first started makin' music I was part of a crew:

me, Ol' Dirty Bastard, and GZA

called "All in Together Now".

And we had joined the manager named Melquan.

And Melquan thought that I had the lyrical talent

to be a solo artist,

so he put me in the studio to record songs, on my own.

But none were as catchy,

or as poppy as the hip-hop movement was at that time.

And so Tommy Boy suggested that I recorded a song

that had more of a pop appeal

and kind of fun, female-orientated song.

"Ooh We Love You Rakeem" became that song.

It became my first single as a recording artist,

my first release, my first video.

When you try to go and become an artist,

and you record a song, and you get a video,

you feel that life is gonna be all uphill.

But the song didn't work,

and so eventually Tommy Boy pulled the plug

on my album project.

There was a defeat in all reality,

but I think my determination

and my personality of not accepting defeat,

I didn't blame myself.

I didn't blame nobody.

I just felt like it was a bad move

and I gotta make a better move.

And so, even though I felt the defeat of it,

that defeat actually fueled me

to make sure my next attempt became successful.

♪ The ruckus, ten times ten men committing mad sin ♪

♪ Turn the other cheek ♪

♪ And I'll break your fucking chin ♪

♪ Slaying boom-bangs like African drums [we'll be] ♪

♪ Coming around the mountain when I come ♪

For me, creatively, I realized that the best thing

I could do is express myself, unfiltered,

uninfluenced by outside opinions.

If I'm feelin' good about it

and if my immediate crew around me is feelin' good about it,

something has to be good about it.

So I returned back to my hip-hop roots.

Was just makin' beats in my my basement,

making songs, spontaneous, based on a vibe,

and I was feelin',

it was all about, just coming with a natural,

unpredictable talent that I felt that I had inside me.

And that led me to start making beats

that was probably obscure,

very different from a lot of producers at the the time.

And it also led me to connect with my Wu-Tang brothers,

other MCs who also was hungry

for the raw style of hip-hop,

the style of hip-hop that was really based in lyricism,

and MC battles, and challenges.

And you take that energy

along with, I think, some of mythology

that we acquired through watching kung-fu movies

and reading comic books.

When we fused our natural lives together,

it definitely effected and created a product

that stands the test of time.

For me to go back and reflect

on the first sessions that Wu-Tang had,

I mean, there had to be something,

like Columbus discovering America,

like a new frontier.

But to get all nine members and all this energy,

bundled together in the studio session

was unknown of, unheard of,

and for me, it was just total excitement.

And as the producer,

I never left the studio.

You know, you look back and see me in old documentaries,

you'll see me just,

you could tell my Under Armours was smelling bad, y'all.

Because you could tell that I slept there,

I got up in the next day,

I kept goin', I kept goin'.

It felt, kinda, almost like mad scientist

tryin' to create something.

Exuberating, exhilarating, all the energies

that I felt recording that album

has never been captured again in our reality.

It was experimenting and going into what was unknown.

You know?

But bravely going into it, you know?

Creatively.

It's that style of bringing sound energy together

was definitely new

and as that mad scientist producer,

it was like the trip of a lifetime.

♪ Escape from your Dragon's Lair ♪

♪ In particular ♪

♪ My beats travel like a vortex ♪

♪ Through your spine ♪

♪ To the top of your cerebral cortex ♪

♪ Make you feel like you bust [buzz] from raw sex ♪

After going through the first five albums

into the "36 Chambers",

"Return to the 36 Chambers", O.D.B,

to "Cow" by Method Man,

"Only Built 4 Cuban Linx..." by Raekwon,

"Liquid Swords" by the GZA,

even "Ironman" by Ghostface Killah,

and maybe the Gravediggaz,

so all these records that came out,

all was platinum or gold, and critically acclaimed

and it was like the Wu-movement

felt like it was really firmly established in hip-hop.

So after all these solo albums,

it's now time to regroup and go back in the studio

and try to recapture that team of energy

that we did on "36 Chambers".

I was probably at my best creative self.

I had gained some knowledge on music theory.

My music equipment was advanced at that stage as well.

It wasn't the same as when we was doing the first album

where we all was in the studio,

you know, sharing a big [indistinct],

sharing a sandwich.

It was like, now success was tasted by everyone.

It wasn't egos,

it was more like everyone now wanted to come back together

and prove that Wu-Tang could be number one.

I asked these guys to give me five years

and I promised we would be number one,

so now it was time to live up to that promise.

We actually all headed to California,

and we had what they called the Oakwood apartments.

And we rented out fifteen apartments.

We rented out two studios

and these studios was going 24 hours a day.

It was really like the studio was kinda like a barbecue,

you know what I mean?

Because there was so many of us there

and so much talent being recorded.

We rocked that place.

It came out and it was number one on the Billboards.

We shipped two million records in the first couple of weeks.

And it was a double album.

And so that means it ended up grossing the industry

about 40 million dollars, yo.

And that's, like, Hollywood numbers,

you know what I mean?

We felt like Hollywood stars.

We definitely felt like we were sittin' on top of the world.

I felt it, as a producer, as a MC,

but more importantly for me,

I think I felt that what I considered the nine greatest MCs

in the world had arrived to their destiny

to show the world that they was number one.

It was our triumph.

[melodic hip-hop beat]

- Ghost Dog, Power Equality.

- Always see everything, my brother

- So after "Wu-Tang Forever",

if any fans of Wu-Tang would listen to the album,

you would know the songs like "Reunited"

and you would hear loud violins being played

and you would hear that certain melodies

and certain chord progresses are starting to grow.

It's starting to become more classical in production style.

So music theory is evolving more and more inside of me.

And then, having a chance to be friends with Quincy Jones

and have a lot of conversations with him

about jazz theory and what music should be,

and then one day in my office,

a guy named Dreddy Kruger shows up at my office

with Jim Jarmusch.

And Jim Jarmusch, I think they met each other,

they had the same weed dealer.

He shows up and he says that he has a film

he's working on called "Ghost Dog"

and he want me to be the composer.

And it clicked for me,

it's like "wow, I was headed to be a composer".

And it all just fell in place.

I had conversation with Quincy Jones,

he composed his first movie at the age of thirty,

and I think I had just turned twenty eight

and I was like "well? If I start now, maybe I can catch up

and be, you know, as great as you one day".

When you want to go from hip-hop music to scoring,

it's not an easy transition.

In fact, if you hear Jim tell you the story,

I could've been, up to that day,

the toughest composer he worked with

because I didn't understand the technical,

logistical side of what composing was.

Jim, he tells the story and we laugh about it,

that I would show up to the scoring session

with a deck full of music,

but not placed properly in the movie

and I would show up at eleven pm at night,

me and O.D.B. with a couple of 40s.

It was like "here's the next few pieces

of music that I wrote for the movie",

and he has to go and figure out like "wait what do I do?".

I said "well that's for that scene",

but you can't do like "but that's for that scene".

It has to be like "there's an in; there's an out".

There's a queue sheet.

There was no queue sheet for "Ghost Dog".

[intense beat]

"Kill Bill", I think was one of the coolest things

that happened to my career, to that date.

I mean, having number one albums

and going to platinum records, of course, is great

but a movie score on such a big film.

I think we got nominated for BAFTAs and Oscars.

It was just a different, a different experience for me.

And working with a great mind like Quentin Tarantino,

a great creative mind,

a music lover,

and eventually a mentor of mine.

When he had the script of "Kill Bill",

he put it in my hands,

said "I want you to read this".

And I read it and I was just amazed by it.

I think it was 200 pages

but in the original draft of the script

he had, like, the sound effects written in it,

'cause you know, I make my music like that,

so I'm like "this guy is in the same mind frame".

I actually realized that I wanted to learn

about film directing,

and he was interested in learning about music production.

We said we would exchange ideas

and that led to me going to China,

on-set with my composition notebook and writing,

and taking in lessons about film directing.

From angles, to what a DP does,

what the production designer does.

I just spent time studying

and Quentin was a gracious teacher.

It may be around the final week of shooting in Mexico,