Pushkin. When Rizza put the nine members of the Wu Tang clan together, he didn't just form a rap group, he created a universe. Their debut album entered the Wu Tang Thirty six Chambers was released in nineteen ninety three, at the peak of what many considered to be the Golden Age of hip hop. It was so packed with the classic releases that, if you can believe it, Snoop's Doggie Style Tribes, Midnight Marauders, and Woo's thirty six Chambers all came out in the same month, But Wu Tang was different. Sonically. Rizza produced dark and gritty beats by manipulating old soul samples and splicing together sound bites from Kung fu films, and lyrically, all nine members had a unique style that was untouchable. Rizza spent three decades as one of hip hop's elite producers and has gone on to become an actor, director, and film composer, working with people like went In, Tarantino, Bill Murray, and Denzel Washington. Rick Rubin caught up with the Rizzar recently on Zoom. Riz says his creativity is peaking. In Quarantine, he reminisces with Rick about running around Staten Island with od B as a kid. He also talks about the time he almost left everything behind to move to Wootang Mountain in China. This is broken record liner notes for the Digital Age. I'm justin Richmond. Here's Rick, Rubin and Rizza. What's been going on, man, man yo. I've been sitting in my house doing doing zooms. It's been good because for me, I have the Rivers Room going for season two of Amernic Ossaga, So a lot of workers getting done. Ironically, like people are still working in and we're actually all schedule because the best of orders, we're all confusion. There's certainly distractions from the outside world. So it's a good time to get work done. I gotta agree, especially the kind of work that we do, creative work. Uh, it's like it's been for me. My creativity is it's it's peaking in a way, right, you know what I mean. Like it's like I've been in the gym and I've got creative muscles I need to use and they ever ready to use. I've been playing with the MPC. I mean, I think I mean a fifteen beat doing the quarantine so far, incredible. That's a yeah, that's a nice amount. And I'm usually that usually take a year to get that minute, you know what I mean from the way I've been working in the film, but be at home every day. You know what it is, right, the hours we used for commuting, it's gone, right, yeah, so those hours now come back to me and I get to play when it played playing those hours. How how has your relationship to making beats change from when you were starting to now? Wow, Um, the relationship changed in the sense of before I think I made Beast for the purpose of a purpose, you know what I mean, A purpose of it's going to be a record, a purpose of maybe I'm gonna get some money, for a purpose of being the best. I mean, I definitely wanted to be the best producer or the best hip hop producer in the world that had the summer I'm feeling. And now when I make it, I just make it as an expression of of almost like just entertaining myself, you know what I mean. There's no goal, there's no purpose for it. It's just like I'm just doing it, like just if if I was playing the video game. That's if I was playing my piano my beat machine becomes that fun moment for me to go down DJ a little bit of my old dal on my DJ set, take a couple of samples, you know what I mean, find some new sim sounds. It's just it's just that's my day. I'm entertained by that. You think if you could zoom out and look over your work from earlier when it was goal oriented to now, you think that the goal oriented part of your old work is what drove it or was it just one of the aspects. To be honest, the majority of my critically acclaimed work that you know, like thirty six Shameless, those beasts were made with no I could say no goal in the sense of or can I say, what's no economic goal? A lot of those beats was made because I was in my house, I had my beat machine, and I'm making beats. It's fun, you know, I mean, blame the pain that was made having fun. Maybe after I had a flood, you know that lost a lot of my tracks away, like in nineteen right before this whole, right before the big solo U Tank solo albums, right, so maybe ninety four then. But I had made record deals with people, right, so I had to turn out a lot of work. And I sat in that basement for years, turning out a lot of work, meeting deadlines, and I succeeded at that, and it still wasn't a lot of money. But I think when the money got involved, I think, at one point, and I'm not sorry to say this now a day, at one point, you know, maybe I was getting a hundred one hundred plus a track right and around that range, I'm not even making music unless you call me with that money, you know what I mean. So the money became the dictator of my creativity, you know what I mean. So what I could say for nowaday and it could be from the blessings of being able to do to express myself in film or the blessing to express myself in other mediums, that when I make music, I'm making music purely for the expressing themselves, purely for my own entertainment. And maybe maybe it's the best stuff I ever made. Maybe it's not, but it sounds like from what you're describing your earliest and and maybe some say I think your most important work to breakthrough works were made without without that pressure from the outside. Yeah. I had a conversation with my woutang brothers about about a similar conversation, not as on the nose is this, but it was was talking about making an album right this is before we did our last album was called it Better Tomorrow. And you know I had to actually negotiate, you know, our neighbor brothers to get him to come and do the album undue and this much when do wanted that much? And I haven't go through it was a self funded album. In the beginning meeting, you know, I think I had I'll take a million hours and invested in myself, you know what I mean, into my clu So I broke everybody off hunt ads for dcs there or whatever. But I tried to bring it to that conversation, like yo, it's another course money to make music in the old days, the songs like take the song method that that song came about because he came to my house on a Friday night with the week Okay, I had an eight track recorder in my house, had a micah, had just made a beat because I was making beats all day. He showed up. He had a couple of comic books, two bags of weed, and some blunts. He had jestment is doing his his uh pharmaceutical work, and he came. He came forward some downtime. He rolled it up, we let it up, we smoked it. I picked the beat on a fuck the mic and he did the song. In fact, the electricity went out. We had to plug into my aunt's electricity downstairs and we recorded it right. And that's because that's what we wanted to do. And a lot of the woofs wool in the early days is that you will come to my trip and come hang out and make a song. You wanted to do it. So I'll try to be mind the brothers that yo. We used to make music because that's what we wanted to do. You came to my house. I didn't actually to come. I didn't pay you to come. It's that's what's the place. You came to let loose your verse, to hang out, smoke a blind, plays some video games, watching food flick you know what I name. Make some music, you know. So a lot of ours early stuff, a lot of songs. Even you listened to the ODB first album, it's just the first album, the thirty six Chambers. A lot of that is like remakes of what we did as kids, like we had the foundation listen Liquid Spards, that same routine and Liquid Spards when the MCS came, you know that we made that probably when we was fifteen years old with a pause tape you know what I name. And then when we got an album Deil, I'm like, yo, let's bring back that a whole routine we used to play and we did it and it became when it became How old were you guys when you made the first album? Um first album? Officially, I was twenty one. As far as the first just well just Just's album. You want to count that nineteen when he made Worse Margenius. Yeah, so not bad, no incredible, But you guys had already been percolating for five or six years. Yeah, yeah, running around New York trying. You know, they're trying. You know, I got a question for you. I got used with this of course. So rock the Bells, Yeah right, you program the drums on that one. And and then how about Jack the Rapper, Jack the Ripper with the seven or seven cow bells? I can't remember because I can't remember is that was that on the first album or the second album. If it was on the second album, I didn't produce it. It It wasn't even on an album. It was like like a B side single that I think you guys had dropped back at back. Honestly, can't remember. I'd have to listen back, I'd have to listen. But let me talk about Rock the Bells one moment if you don't mind, no, not at all. So Rock the Bells one of the hardest beasts to hit the streets, okay, and really a pioneering production for hip hop. And then The bell Man. Now that my producer, I could have imagine that that hit was a good tar hit, basically elpo with Jay It's all that's a right, yes, and it changes hip hop, it evolves it to be totally honest. And I'm only bringing this up to give me some points on this right because I remember being very egotistic about hip hop myself, Like you know, it took me. It took me, like I had to go to France and after the album called water Court, in the rest of the year two thousand and I had to travel around all these different countries and do music right, and I'm seeing rappers everywhere, and I realized hip hop as a world wide but it did have his roots in America. Right. But at one point people said hip hop was black music. Wait a minute, and I said in an interview, wait a minute, and I was said, I'm glad that I was why I said, Rick Rubin may rock the bounce. Okay, that's in the early phasis of hip hop. So I'm not gonna say that as the black and white music. Because Charlie Chase and and and the and the and the Fielders four, he had Tito in the group. We got Rick Rubin producing the early drums on L L. Cuge probably run DMC. Okay. Point I'm making is that you got the Latin brother, you got the white brother, you got the black brother or naked hip hop. So when I so when I was going through you know, going through that to the to these countries, you know, they was like, yeah, black, you know block, I know, hold on hip hop. We can't say it's an American right. We should say American before we said it, because actually it's been pioneers from every aspect of our culture. Hip hop is actually a melting pot of our culture. It's true. But maybe that I will say in the early days, I always felt like the only white person in the room for a long time. Right. Look, you know what, in the early days, even in my hood, there's only one white dude that lived in the project. But that was I'm mad. You know, if you got dog chocolate, you put a muspoonful of milk in it, it breaks it down a little bit, you know what I mean. So point on the point being made is that hip hop is was one of the first, not one of the first, but definitely part of the American culture that is emerging of different people from walks of life, you know what I mean. Now, Now, the Asian influence may have not been identified or identifiable or in it, and it came in but it but it was in it in a even my sterious way. If you go back and talk to Grand Master Flash and talk to some of these guys, you realize that some of their names, some of their vibes did come from Come to Movies. Right. You go back and you talk to some of the breakdances, you'll see that they picked up a couple of moves from some of the forty seconds three Come to Movies, Right. But it still it didn't but it wasn't identifiable. Then woul Tang comes and we put it right into music. Basically, hip hop is that culture that allowed the entire spectrum of American culture to exist creatively and caban and then eventually become the culture of the world. What was the what was the hip hop scene that you grew up in? Like, what were you seeing around? For me? The first time I heard hip hop was on stat Nolan nineteen seventy six. It was a DJA named DJ Jones. The other guy named was Quincy. These these are unknown DJs who who who unknown to the rest of the world and uh and then an MC named MC punch And they would bring that system out between the building two forty and two sixty park Hill, there was a parking lot there. They would plug up and they would do their jams. How many people would come, maybe, you know, eighty ninety even if one hundred people the whole because it's park Hill, so everybody from all the kids, from all the builders would come. I shouldn't be out there. I got my ass well from being out there because I'm I'm seven eight years old, mesmerize, hypnotized by the music and what he was playing was apache that deep, that vibe, it it was whatever that song made me want to get on the floor and roll around, you see. And the first thing I did was I tried to len how to do it wasn't even called breakdance and was called freak style or freaking freaking off through the freestyle, you know what I mean. And so that was my first thing. But then when the rapper was like dip dip dive so socialized to clean out to ears, then you open your eyes right that that was probably a rap that he probably got from someone else. Who knows, right, because somebody rappers said it, but it hit me and my cousin just a couple of years older than me. He's the one that took me to the block party. He was already writing lymics at that time, you know what I mean, Because I was living down South for a few years. So I just got back from down South, so imagine it. I'm coming back from down South for seven years old, going on eight. I hear this music. I'm mesmerized. How how popular was the music at that time? Would you say everyone your age liked it or no? I won't. I don't know if everyone my age liked it, but I think no more than a hundred and fifty people knew how to do it, you know what I mean. Unity, It was a small still a very small community, small community. Just A told me he got it from he learned it from the Bronx, from sound View Projects. He had a cousin up the sound View Projects. He would go to their house and people will bring out sound systems there and they would do it. That's where it hit him. So so my style really could be traced back to the Bronx, from the just you know what I mean, he boarded the stat now. Um, and then of course you know, by the age of nine, I started writing lyrics. But in hip hop is still new. It's never been on the radio yet, you know what I mean. Um, I don't think even w BLI, HBI whatever, HBI, w HPI hasn't hasn't hit it yet. Remember mister Magic, don't mister Magic. No Supreme Team. Yeah, but you're still talking seventy eight, seventy nine. That sugar Hill Game comes in seventy nine. But anyway, it wasn't a lot of people doing it, answer your question, and it was mostly DJ's catching a break beat. The samplers wasn't happening. I remember the first time I heard a sampler. I mean, you know, of course Molly in the early days, but that's like Marley's one eighty eighty five. Now, yeah, he comes in and when ye, when ye rock the bells for us. I don't know. I'm not good with dates, but but I know, I do know that when we made those first records, there was not a sampler yet. We didn't yet happen exactly, no sampler exactly. So that's the point I'll make. No samplers. So it's just the break beat, the DJ cutting it in. Maybe you had a four track, right, yeah, and so it was primitive. But I do remember hearing Flash ran Master Flats had a song called Flashes on the beat box, like An and Me and Dirty went the fourteen Street because fourteen Street had all the electronics stores, remember that, of course, and we tried to go and find what the heck was a bat box, and we end up getting was one of those rhythm boxes that they use in church her rhythms. Yeah, and we now, I don't know if that's the Is that what the Flash is talking about? No, I don't know. I don't think I think so, but maybe maybe, Well that's the first thing I've ever had. Those were like like rhythm like rhythm king. It's like it just has like a bunch of buttons to pick the style of beat. You don't you don't program a beat. You don't program it. It has pre program beat and you can just control the tempo, control the tempo. But if you press two of them together, yeah, it will do something awkward absolutely well if you keep holding the phil In button. Yeah. Yeah. So that was the first That was my first way of trying to produce. I had two time tables and one of those beat rhythm boxes. And then one day there's a guy on stand allan named uh silly phil Right. He comes outside with a six h six drum machine. Now, I mean that changed the game. But we thought that was the masterpiece, right, But then Doctor Rock or the fours MDS or foursomcsmember remember DJ Doctor Rocke. So Doctor Rock he comes out with a seven h seven. So this is nineteen Now I'm going I might I might be in nineteen eighty two. Now I'm in eighty two, nineteen eighty two, eighty three, the seven h seven is on the block. Doctor Rock has it, and he invites me, Justiz and odb Over to do a demo. I'm fourteen years old, yeah at most, and we recorded a demo and we just felt like we was headed. We was gonna be on top of the world. And this is before the fourso mds had dear Tommy Boy deal. They they gonna get a Tommy Boy deal for another year maybe. So anyway, point being made is that the seven h seven was like the machine that has And then I had a DJ on Stanton Island named Scotty Rock right not to because not to be complete with Scott mo Rock, but his name was Scotty Rock and he came. He brought the nine O nine. He had a pair of s, he had a pair of twelve running techniques and a nine on nine drum machine. And I stayed at his house every day after school making beats and making demos with him and another guy named b Dub. And we had another guy from my high school named DJ Skain who also had to had a dope echo machine had to He's the one that he asked. He's the one that had the Yamaha Forts track, you know what I mean. And I borrowed it. I bawed this and balled that and balld that wanning over my house, and I just started making neighborhood albums. Me and ODB would make albums and put him out in the hood. But that's that's my earliest memories, memories of hip ho hop. You know, going back from eight to fourteen. I have to ask you what was ODB like as a kid? Wow? Beautiful, funny, crazy? Uh at this age to say, around the age of nine, ten eleven, um he lived, he lives in Brownsville. Then he is a movie se up. But I was going to point out he was one of those kids that we had this thing called cat agility. So cat agility means you you got to jump from one balcony to another, run up the walls and order. This is before popcor It is basically the foundation of popcorps. And old Dirty was nice at it. Yo. Was it inspired by the Kung Fu movies? It may have been. I just feel like kids. It's like some kids that always started doing something, you know, not kids. Uh can you jump from this bank to this year, about this to this? And then every day it got more and more and next thing you know, it's five kids and we are running in the road and I was running with him. I wasn't never as good as him. He was like a national. He could run up the wall to do a flip. So when Brave Dance it came out, he could do the windmill. I had to set the poplock and I cannot woke the floor. And you know, he got into hip hop first as a DJ, you know what I mean. I kind of forced him to be an MC. You know what I mean, Like look like you know, I was his younger cousin, but I had I was taller, you know what I mean, And I had had had a little spirit, like a little pushy spirit. I think that at that age I had got knowledge of myself at eleven and a half, you know what I mean. So you know, by the time I'm fourteen, I'm already you know, young Malcolm x mine, you know what I mean. And and that energy kind of uh was pushy. How how do you decide to form? When I think of Wu Tang, For me, it's the first group of its kind. It doesn't feel like a continuation of a lineage. But for you who did you did you feel like it was part of a lineage of groups that had come before. To be honest, it felt I mean, look, there's other groups. I gotta give respect to Cold Crush brothers, like I said, Fantastic Freaks or the Fantastic you know, the Fantastic Five, the Furious Five, Treacherous three till there's four. I mean, I give all respects to those brothers. But I didn't see Woutang clan as none of that. It's not it's it's nothing of those. It was more of a Kung Crue clan, you know what I mean. So there's there's certain movies that just really touched me when I was young. You know, there's a movie called The The Brave Archer. And in this movie The Brave Archer, there's a banker clan. There's hundreds of them, man, and and you know them, you know, or even Shallon, you know, the Shalon movies. Just like there was a movie where if every Shalon guy Shalon got burnt down and everybody had to flee and take their secret techniques and you're a new one. When they had certain hand signals that became like my psyche, you know what I mean, The Five Deadly Venoms, you know what I mean. The Ten Tigers of Quantan, in fact, the ten Tigers of Quanta um or Canton if you've fronounced it properly. It's probably the the movie that I could have modeled. Some of the Wou Tang members asked, you know what I mean? And there's another movie called The Eight Diagram Pole Fightless with eight brothers all fighting for the country, layalless. And those two movies could be the movies that inspired me to realize that we can move as a clan, you know what I mean, Not just five deli ventos, because five is a lot too. Yeah, you know what I mean, but the move as a clan. I would think that I kind of was inspired by the art of martial art films, the shivalry, the brotherhood, the one man would die for the other. How do you how do you get into martial arts films? My first movie I ever saw was Tom Sawyer Huckleberry Finn movie. My second movie it's Star Wars. My third movie is The Swarm In. My fourth movie is a double feature, which was a Bruce Lee movie called A Furia the Dragon, which was that's an edited movie of all his Cato things but together, and Black Samarai with Jim Kelly. Right, those are my first five movies, and if you look at me as if you look at what that means to me. The force is my spirituality, right, Lightsaber, the swarm, killer bees, who tank killer bees? Okay, the kung Fu movies is all of my blood, you know what I mean? And I think the writing of Mark Twain and the storytelling is all in my blood. I think those early movies really like imprinted it something on me. And plus the people who I was seeing him with. I was seeing with my uncle who was just you know, a father figure in my life. He's the one that that took the time to take me to see a movie, you know, and we're talking, you know, the the man who would take it to the movie and talked to you after the movie was over, which I now doing my children out. We don't we don't just watch a movie. We watch it after the movies, don't. We sit down and we spent fifteen to thirty minutes, maybe even an hour depending on the movie, and we talked about it. So those movies probably uh have the big inspiration, but the kung fu movie had the biggest And so then what my cousin Vince had took me down to forty seconds stry it was a kung Fu triple feature, so you can imagine for a dollar fifty and so that became my my my stimulation to the point that by the time I was a teenager, me and od B, we would play hooky and those students, you know, were those kids in the theaters would a joint cut in school watching movies. We'll be back with more from Rizza after a quick break. We're back with more from Rizzina. How much would you say, um, smoking influences your creativity. That's a great question. I there, um, and I gotta be honest, right, I started creating before I was smoking. I created a lot doing my smoking. I got to an argument with my little brother about five years ago. My little brother he's in a group called Killer Army, and you know, he's he's he's he's maybe eight years nine years younger than me. And so he's the guy that looked at me, learned from me, and continues and hip hop. You know, he wanted you know, he's he's he I'm like his big brother that he's copient. And the more I got into drugs and more he got drug I smoked it. He smoked it. Okay, whatever I did, he did. If I chewed it, he chewed it, and uh, I stopped about five years ago. I don't like I haven't you know, I don't even smoke weed right now, you know what I mean. I just chilled out like I'm good. Like if I smoked weed. Now it has to be a total celebration of something great. I gotta get the Grammy or the hostile, something really great for me to say, I'm want to celebrate with that, with that drug and nothing to guess that I smoked enough for two lifetimes. But the point I want to make is that he was like, yo, because I told him you should quit. You know, you just quite especially the hard drugs, you should quit them. And he was like, nah, many crazy, all the greats. Man made this ship of the drugs, Jimmy Hendricks, Jane Brown, Jannys jep He started naming motherfucker's the even you that's the Wait a minute, let me think about that. I said, Nah, I made thirty six chambers sober because remember I went on trial. I cook and get high and I just kept making music and doing things sober. I said, Actually, I made my company. Everything I did was the best. Met was the sober me. Right. He was like he didn't believe it. I said, yeah. Then I said, you know what, two nice. When I went to do my movie Man with the Eye insist, I sobered up. I had to be I wrote it. I went to China. No drugs in China anyway. I stayed there for nine months and I directed a film. I couldn't afford to be high, and I was able to operate all my creative abilities. So I'm only saying that I made a lot of music while Bobby digitals and all type of ship. Bro. But I honestly gotta say, and I can speak from the truth that my creative energy is not generated from drugs. It's it's a self generating desire to create. And like I said, I made fifteen beats so far on this quarantine. No drugs in my house, bro, tell me about what was it like living in China for nine months? Thanks for asking, But that was the first world I'm gonna say, lonely. And it's not a lot blocks over there, Bro, I sold like two blocks in nine months, you know what I mean. Let's say, let's say came over with me, you know what I mean, not a lot of us over there. I'll tell you how lonely. It was. Now we could say in America we got red system. All right. If you know, an average black guy dressed him in my hoodie stown and I don't know I made dressed. If I come across an average white guy, he might feel like, Yo, what this dude gonna do? Right, I'm in China, bro at an elevator, about to go to my room whatever, sitting there, and here comes a white guy, average white guy from the Midwest. He he hits the button. He looks at me. I look at him. How you knowing that my name is Bob? I think what's your name? We became immediate friends, Bro, because first of all, you don't even here in English, okay, and we talked about sports. He was out. That's what you're going out here. He's out my head with the fort the Fourth Corporation building a whole new plant. I'm there, I'm building a plant. It's what you're doing something. I'm making a movie. We became for him. So now, maybe in Arabica that wouldn't have happened. Even the gout in the elevator that got the offer, But it was so lonely that even they here, somebody speak your own language and understand the culture of what America because it's a different we have a unique coaching bro, good, bad or ugly, it's different, you know what I mean? And when I was over there, I recognized that I felt that describe a bit about that culture, like what are some of the differences for those of us who haven't been well on a on a micro on a I'm gonna macro first, on a macro level, it's almost like everything looks like it's like the building looks like the building is gonna be you walk in, the building's going to be the same, right, but it's not going to be the same because the coach it's a communist country. Bro, Okay, you did them a common zoon. That means that the freedom of speech, the freedom of what you want to say. It's not really like that you can't say it like I couldn't say they like they had to check my script and make sure that I was saying the right shiit yo. Now I respect that, I respect their culture. But if you want to know about censorship and and being controlled at the highest level, but that's what they do, you know what I mean? And it's law. Any of the things that were you were not allowed to do anything that you said or any themes in the movie that were questioned. I couldn't. I couldn't say Shalon in my movie because because Shalon is historically a place in China that's historically real, and so they didn't want me to dampen their culture by saying Shalon in my movie on a story that wasn't real to shout l now, I don't know why, because I don't see a hundred movies with different stories about Shallette, and I've been to China. Vary sounds. So I went on the pilgrimage to China as well. And when I went on that pilgrimage, it was one of the greatest sxpienities of my life because I went to Shalotte Temple, I went to Woutang Mountain and and the history of their culture, of what they preserved in their culture, it's a blessing for the entire world because they got history four thousand years still contained beautiful and when I went there, it's not commercialized. Well, when I went it wasn't commercialized yet Shalon became a little commotionalized based on a lot of movies and a lot of tourism Wu Tanging Mountains. It's hard to get to first of all, it's not as easy to get to a shallete. And when I went there, it was really interesting because they had a different type of serenity about them, you know. So Wu Tang malant is considered the birthplace of tai Chi Zingy and bah Wah of course, and the months there. Although they're not celibate, they don't practice selimancy, but they practiced internally before external right, and it shows in their demeanor because their smile starts from their belly and it comes out their face, you know what I mean. And it was big strong smiles, big strong energy. If I didn't have a family, and this is gonna sound funny because does only happened to me twice in my life. Now my Jenny is both let me. If I didn't have a family and children back home, I would never have left. I felt almost like Superman when felt when he left pripped on and landed on earth. That happened to me at the Ru Tang Mountain, and then it happened to me when I was when I visited Africa, when I went to visit ghost Face, he was in Africa and I had to go. I promise Monatico I would visit him, and so I visited him. Promise I had to keep. But something about the way the sun was hitting me, it felt like, wow, I understand what Superman feels like. So the Star Wars, the forcing Star Wars was your first introduction and spirituality basically from yah on the Baptist church. Ye tell me about that, like, tell me about all of your the roots of your spirituality from the beginning. Well, yeah, first, of course, a Baptist church. You know, I went to church. My mother said me to church. My uncle who took me to church. But my uncle who took me the church, the same one who took me to see Star Wars. The church was scary to me, you know what I mean, when people stopped falling out screaming the Holy Ghost and all that. Man, I ain't want to stand them parts of that. Was it a very musical service that you went to, Yeah, it with musical services, but somebody always caught the Holy Ghost, bro, And I'm like, how could the ghost be holy? You know what i mean? And I'm looking you know, I mean, you gotta think the Exorcist is out too. All right, So the Holy Ghost don't add up to me. But I didn't understand what that meant, and I didn't understand how they was displaying it. So that pushed me away. Star Wars attracting me. Okay, so that's my first like personal attraction. The church was forced on me. Yeah. Ten years later, of course, still church was being pushed on me until around the age of eleven eleven and a half, my cousin Schulza taught me about the mathematics and about Islam. And it was there that I began to study. In my studying the Islam and studying our lessons. Our lessons mentioned Buddhism and mentioned the Indians, and mentioned Jesus, you mentioned the plos of Muhammad, you know what I mean. And so it's just so. So it's then it being that it mentioned all those religions, I began to research those religions and understand, you know, because in our lessons and it's like in the lessons it mentions the Bible. There's a version of it from the Book of Ezekiel. If you read the Book of Ezekiel, what what a book? Okay, there's also a lesson from the from the Book of Matthew. What another beautiful book. But then it tells about then it's a lesson about Buddhism. It's like, wait a minute too. So I had to study that. But I got deeper into Buddhism and Taoism because when I've seen thirty six Chambers of Shall and there was a quote in the movie that just pierced my heart. And the quote was the five colors blond VII repeat, repeat that one more time. He said, the five colors blinds the eyes, the five tones deafens every year without wisdom, no game. That was in the movie that sent me right to Chinatown. Looked at for books and I found the couple, you know what I mean? Um and uh and And I've never turned away from that, always kept researching that um and that led to Taoism. How did how did Jessy get into the mathematics? Do you know? I think I think my cousin of life from Ou the Queens may have inspired him. And as the far as far as I know, far as the root of it, you know, so it started with life. That's what he took from this verbal from them telling me and then him telling me and what what what the reason why the mathematics was it through Nation of Islam at that point, do you think, yeah, because that was around at the time, Like that's what was hot in the neighborhood. You had to be the nation. Nation of Islam is a foundation. And then a man named Climates thirteen next Smith breaks away from the Nation of Islam and he starts teaching the right to the youth. I think what he did, if we could talk about that, is that usually if you're in a Nation of Islam, and I know, I can't someone speaking this by here. This is not personal experience. I haven't joined the Nation of Islam to notice. But for what I was told in the Nation of Islam, you have to go through like a period of time or a period of service before you're given one hundred or twenty lessons, right, and that it could take you five years to get that ten years either get all you know, whatever it takes. The father took those lessons and put them in the hands of the youth in one day. Okay, you could study at your own pace. I lunk the whole hundred twenty lessons in seven months. By the time I was twelve, I knew it. That's you know, there's grown men who didn't know it, you know what I mean. So the beauty of it, I think is that it just allowed it pushed me into deep study. But let me share something that the mathematics did, right. It had this lesson that I heard people talking about, like in the neighborhood, you got the twelve Jews, you got the twelve Jewels. Everybody would say this, right, And I'm like, what are they talking about? Twelve Jews? And I lived in Brooklyn Browns at the time, so twelve Jews. I thought they were saying the twelve Jews, like twelve Jews. Rights, that's what it sounds like, the twelve Jews. And at the same time, my mother had gave me a gift of Bible stories, right, So because I'm I'm gonna leven years old and I'm reading about Joe, Abraham, lot Uh, Samuel, David Solomon, I'm beating about all these great, great great men, right, and and these small Bible stories. I'm memolizing stuff. The one thing about me, Rick, I gott a good memory. So I'm memolizing this stuff. And then they say the twelve Jews. I'm thinking, like the twelve Sons of Jacob was twelve right, you know so, But it wasn't twelve jews, I mean, Jay Jay, it was duels, yes, and those twelve jewels was knowledge, wisdom, understanding, freedom, justice, equality, food, clothing, shelter, love, peace, happiness, beautiful and it said it. But man obtained that he's truly wealthy. And I went on a mission to obtain that, you know what I mean. And uh, I feel like I got it, you know what I mean. Because it's because at the end of the day, food, clothing, and shelter, as long as there's food on the table, clothed on your back, and some type of selling to you good yo, you know what I'm saying. I know I've been blessed, you know, to have a nice home, you know what I mean. But even when I was fourteen years old living in an apartment with nineteen people, because I had those twelve jewels in my heart, I was still good sleeping on the floor, you know, I mean, next to three other people. And then it never I'm never was unhappy, you know what I mean. So those things are are more valuable than some of these physical material things. Yeah, it's like the outer pleasures are much more temporary than the inner Wisdom. We'll be back with more Rix Conversation with Rizza after the break. We're back with the rest of Ricks Conversation with Rizza. So technically on the new beat your making, technically, how are you doing it? What equipment are you using? Oh? Um, I'm using MPC still as the as the as the brain of things. But I played with all the programs. You know, I may play with uh logic. I played with able t UM. I got a great keyboard that I'm I'm really loving right now called the wad Off. It's a great sim. I like doing the physical sims, you know what I mean. So, UM, I use the physical sims. I got my UH, I got the UM. The Artaria has a great sim as well called the group uh. And just really those two SEMs mixed with the MPC UH. And of course I've got my DJ set up, so yeah, you know, and through other toys I keep I keep toys, but the MPC is the brain right now. And what's your h Craig digging? How does how do you find how do you find sample and inspiration music? Well, well, I sampled maybe only thirty percent now, so like like I kind of like sample on weekends because I DJ, so I started playing the music DJ and oh wow. But fortunately I was able about ten years ago to transfer most of my library to digital. So you know, I think I got about I mean, I got friends of my personal transfer transferred library. I probably got about forty thousand songs. And then Shovo, my buddy seen Shago of course bass player system of a down exactly. He gave me for my birthday because when I started hanging up with Shavo, I was unfamiliar with heavy metal, when rock, I wasn't good at it. I knew a few, you know. He gave me a iPad for Christmas one year of thirty thousand songs that covered that genre, and I just download all that into my computer. So I'm sitting on, you know, hundreds of thousands of songs. It's already on my hard drives, and that's my digging technique. I just go through all the songs, you know what I mean. I still got about you know, I still got some a lot of boxes of vinyls. That's back East. And when I go back East, I normally dig through vinyl because I had the breastings of getting economics and getting able to travel around the wall. So I bore boxes of records almost every stop, you know what I mean. I got a box from Italy that's all seventies Italian rock soul. Yeah, because they cover all this ship with their bands. So the intro is different, the vibe is different, you know what I mean. So and every once in a while I'll dig through that stuff and find a loop, you know what I mean. But you know, hopefully it ain't got to clear them right, but I do clear. I clear my samples. Let a couple of questions and on you. Yeah, it was a drum machine. First drum machine was an eight O eight and it was not mine. It was I was going to NYU, living in the dorm. There was a kid named Eric who was in a band or like a new wave band called the Speedies who played at places like Danceteria or the you know Roxy, the maybe not the Roxy, the Rits like those kind of clubs, yeah, maybe mud Club if you remember that Downtown, but they played more like alternative music clubs and uh. And even though he was in a rock band, he had an eight oweight drum machine. Um and this was there had eight awaits had not really been used in hip hop yet, and there wasn't really so much hip hop. The culture existed, but there weren't so many records. There were were twelve inches, and the twelve inches that there were more often than I think, I'm trying to think there were any exceptions. It was almost always a band played track, because even though like if you went to a hip hop party, what you'd what you'd hear in at a hip hop party would be breakbeats and scratching and maybe a DJ using a drum machine. I mean maybe Grand Wizard Theodore was the first one I saw use a drum machine as part of his DJ set. The records were still being made like disco club records, but with guys rapping on them, you know, like all the sugar Hill. The sugar Hill records were not programmed, you know, they were played by a band, a house band. Even the Enjoy records were played by a house band. So I bought these records wanting it to sound like what I heard at the club, and never did. It always sounded like a band playing and a guy rapping. Where the thing that first excited me about the music was the djaying more even than the MC's you know, it's like I love the Treacherous Three and they were exciting as MC. Yeah, but when I got to see you know, Jazzy Jay cutting up breaks beat beat, you know, break records and Octopus records, if you remember yep, I got ye Octopus incredible. So that felt more like what hip hop was to me. And again I'd buy these records every week and none of them sounded like that. So when I so I decided to start making them not I never thought of it in any commercial way. I never knew that anybody would like it. I just tried to make a record that sounded like the club that I went too, almost like a documentarian, you know, like I just want to I want to hear this sound. I don't get to hear this sound and m and then it kind of spread from there. So now one of my trade I mean, of course all the bcs and then you produced all that and that's all that's it was the first album. Of course, that first time talking about the first album. First of all, I was so when y'all had the Horns, like that was the breakbeat was called the Horns, But what's the real name of it? Though I don't know. I was like me, me and old because see, we was also going to the going to those recket stores, buying all the octopus breaks, put them on our four tracks, making our demos right, no sampler, so you gotta cut it. We gotta cut it on the four track. Then the wrapper raps on top of the that right, and we was trying to get uh. But when y'all came with that, man, it was like it did it first? It was one song no no, because you know you were all dreaming were Once I heard a sugar Hill game on the radio. That's why I was heaving. I would say. When I heard them on the radio, I knew that's where I was. I had to be one day. One day, that's what I'm gonna be. I knew it was possible run anyway, you know. So you produced all those ill joints and you took the great Beasts based it with the drummers, say but on together forever. That's your programming together forever. One DMC top for another. It was either me or jam Master Jay, and I can't remember because we would work together in the studio on all the records, and sometimes he would program the beat sometimes I would program to beat. It was not exclusive. But the coolest thing about that track was that that was all eight oh eight and getting the eight O wait first of all, always not It wasn't an easy machine in the program either. Awkward it wasn't easy, very awkward way of thinking getting one. There wasn't even a lot of them out there. I mean there was more seven H sevens than eight O eights, right yeah, nine O nine is more of those with eight O ways, was like, no, you don't have one, You're not getting one, and so I never I never on the eight O eight until after I was famous. It was it was considered a failed drum machine, you know. It was it was a flop of a drum machine when it came out right, because it didn't really sound like drum. The whole idea of the drum machine was supposed to sound as much like drums. So there was already like Lynn drums and the d X and DMX. We had. We had a d I think we had a d X also, and on a lot of like the Openheimer right yeah, and on a lot of the run DMC records, we would sync up the d X and the eight to eight together and just pick certain sounds from each and get them to play in sync. And then it made it sound like a new machine you hadn't heard before, because it wasn't just either one of those drum machines fol both. Yeah, I recognized that. And I think suck MCS is that the d X because I feel like Suck MCS was like an attempt like a DJ, a program of action yea, and Russell was Russell had that beat for action, and then he got Larry to program Sucker MCS based on action. Okay. I would always thought that as a moment, I'm a young deep so I'm I'm I'm that young DJ scratching it all day, trying, you know, few years or three years behind you guys, just dreaming, you know what I mean. Um, But the d X. I love how that one sounded. I think the shakers on that one did you agree? Absolutely? And it had that uh the swing function where you can get into which was really like the whole what ended up becoming New Jack swing. That machine was the was the first drum machine that could create the beat that skipped in that way, that particular way. Okay, let me get to it. Let me get a couple more in on you. So no, no, because come on, they do. We could do this forever. So you so you did when you did, I'm glad postpone, glad we got a chance to work together finally on a on a better tomorrow. I was like, man, I said, how can I be on the planet and not get his hands to work with Rick group? And that's not that's that's not that's not supposed to be because I really, I really appreciate what you did for hip hop, what you do for hip hop, what you do for music. And I watched you, right, I watched you as an example, right, and you did something that you know what you did. But I just want to say, my whome mouth, even after you help build Death Chin right, and can can be you know, well, I know you got people around you or whatever that helped out, but can be the spinhead who combine hippop and rock together. Bro Okay? Even with this good tar hit on rock the Bells to the Arrow Smep song said all this stuff that eventually became a movement to help spread this culture. Even after you separated from hip hop, you went to and made Death of Monitor right and then continue to push the culture. Like I just remember some of the records that was coming out on it. I was like, it's it's, it's, it's, it's, it's it's still has a hip hop vibe in it, even though the average critic didn't know what to write. No, they could write whatever, but no, it's it's still had those foundations. And that's because you are producing it. Yeah, right, and and and then you took it from there. And then we talked about Shavo. But you produced that first album for it. I produced all the System of the Down albums. O, come on bro, all right here? Like did you go to NYU to study music? Like? Who would you study here? No? I started as a philosophy major and then switched to film and television because all of my friends were in film and television. Just seemed like the classes were more fun, So I just switched watch. I'd rather watch movies than discuss philosophy at that point in time. Right, that's crazy because because you think about all the records you produced that you know, that's Grammy winning, ground ground breaking, Like if somebody go and of course you know, you know you people bring you up to the you know, say the Dixie Chicks or whatever whatever, Right, but if somebody was just say it's it's it's somebody like take fifty years, a hundred years, twenty years from now, somebody start off with one of your Dixy Chicks songs, right, how deep, big out a day or how would their constouness go, Wait a minute, this is the same guy who made rock the bells. They you know what I mean? They and hip hop? You know so certain the pop like myself, like you know, jay Z came to you for ninety nine problems. We understand that, but I think a lot of motherfuckers don't understand this subjectory in this role. You you you've traveled and you've paid. Because when I look at me, if did the album with Paul banks Um last year, A couple of years of other think too, we did in twenty sixteen, k My twenty seventeen. Yeah, but Court Banks and Stills. But it's still it's just on the road you carved already. You see me and the black remember me and the Black Teasers doing songs together? Right, We didn't release it, but I remember they took it. They they they took it. They say, people taking the rick and see what he thinks because they if you don't like it, it ain't working, you know what I mean. But the point being made is that you actually pioneered um this melding, you know what I mean. So I's gonna thank you for that, because as a composer, you know, I have to do that anyway. And I always felt like at one point and I don't At one point, I was strictly hip hop bro I got nauseous from R and B right, and I didn't understand where rock was, what rock was because I didn't equate great beasts with rock. But meanwhile, I'm cutting up hockey tonk woman, I'm cutting up saloon rocking in the pocket. Yeah, okay, I'm cutting up back in black ac DC. I'm cutting all that. Another one bites the dust. Now, I think another one bites the dust. He was inspired by the other. I think that was a verse. I think that might have been me verse inspiration on that one thing. Yeah, But regardless, I'm cutting up these these joints. I know what's when I'm cutting up that that we lost them this year, we lost them Rush Tom Sawyer. Nobody never really came over that track yet, There's never really been been a total hip hop song. Off of that, I did four of them, never released them because I thought that break Tom Sawyer your mama name. Yeah. I mean so meanwhile, I'm not knowing that rock is always part of it, you know what I mean? Um, A lot of our drums and break beats as coming from rock. We're not realizing it, um. But the man who I think did realize it, it's you, and I thank you, constantly added it to the music. Yo. I'll say that I rarely looked it at it by genre. It was more the feeling that it gave me, you know, Like I'll say, as a as a genre, I never really listened to R and B. I never really liked R and B. But I love James Brown and I love Barry White, you know so like. But as a as a style, it didn't speak to me. But the cases spoke to me. Samee and hip hop. I don't like all hip hop. I liked certain flavor. As a matter of fact, after leaving Deaf Jam and stopping doing hip hop for a while, I felt, I don't know if I don't know if we ever talked about this before, but like when when I started making hip hop, it was a very creative time in hip hop. Everyone who was doing it was finding their own way of doing it. And if you listen to the like the master mix shows on BLS or HBO or or Kiss at that time, during the Deaf Jam time, early the mix shows set, which was the only place you heard hip hop by the way, it wasn't on the regular station. It would only be on the mix show two Baby. So if you listen to the mix show, the records didn't sound alike. They all sounded different. They were interesting, eclectic takes on what hip hop could be. And once the Deaf Jam records got very popular, I started listening to the mix show and they just started sounding like all our records, whether we made them or not, it just felt like it. And it felt like, well, this community, this community of people making interesting things, isn't doing that anymore. Now. They're just trying to follow the one that people liked. And that's it's boring. You know. It's like it's almost like a conversation, you know, like you you put out something and then somebody puts out something you know, maybe not inspired by, but like they got a glimpse into what was possible. Because it's something you made and then they made something completely different and just as interesting, and then that would excite you. Was like, oh wow, I never thought of it like that. That means that means we could go way over here now, right, So it's it's a it's like a So I died that part of it, died out, died out. So I kind of lost interest at that point, and that's when I started making more rock records. And then the two um, the two artists who got me excited about hip hop again, We're Nwa and Moutang. Those were the next lot that was where like, oh, somebody cares again, do you know what I mean? Like somebody's not just doing the same thing. Someone's their new voices and it's exciting. Thank you for that, bro, truth, thank you for being one of those people. Because I will say what I would say as a producer when I thought I was doing or I didn't, and I love my hip hop piers. I didn't want nobody to say that my record was nothing else for hip hop, you know what I mean? I think hip hop aft though while we started wanting to be something else, you know what I mean? Like you remember people like everybody who put a reggae record on their on the album, or r B record on the album, or you know, because once l May the love song, everybody got niggah. So you know, it started, like I said, people started cookie cutting. I was like, no category for me but hip hop. And I'm gonna give a fuck when nobody's doing. I don't care what they're doing. Like, you know, that's that's a that's a bold thing. And you and you know what I think. You look. I think, as I said to myself, you actually lose that. Somewhere down the line. I lost that, you know, I lost that, like I said, when they started sharing one hundred thousand and beat, you know what I mean. And it started being like, you know, I guess when the I guess I think when the radio graph control again, because the radio had lost control for a little while too. When they grabbed control again, it was like, you gotta make it for the radio. You gotta be on this station. You know, I didn't even know, Like I learned later on a high ninety seven turned to hip hop station that when they turned to hip hop station, it was based on the success of Wool. I learned that later. Wow, Yeah, there was a dance station, but the woof songs was getting so much requested that it helped change their format. Yeah, you know what I mean. And and then at a but by time we got to nineteen ninety seven, they stopped playing well we got to like a war with them. But it's like wow, And then we started trying to make something or I as a producer, uh rabe around nineteen ninety nine, I would say ninety seven, I still don't kid, But nineteen ninety nine I started thinking I want to make something so they could play it on the radio. And it never worked for me because that's not why. That's not why you made it in the first place. That's not why people like your music in the first place. It came from you led the radio. They didn't leave you. And but like I said, it's a point. I guess. I guess it's a part in the artist. I know it's a part in my life. That you began you have a doubt. Why you start thinking it's I think the world is called conformity. Yeah, you begin to conform to what you think is normal, and at the end of the day, do a lot of yourself or you acself a lot. And I think that happened to me, and I think I realized that, you know that I stually became creatively weak. If you're noticed that after the year two thousand and I had a personal thing in my life. You know, I lost my mother in the year two thousand, I stopped. I left. In two thousand and one, I left New York and came to Cally. Basically, I just became friends with Tarantin. Though I kind of understood. I just kind of understood music theory myself by studying books, and I was like, I want to be a composed I had to. I had composed postal, took some critical critical got critical success out of it. Now I was like, I want to do this, and I want to And I ended up just composing. From the year two thousand but to two thousand and five, all I did was composed movies. And then in two thousand and uh five, I guess I showed up in a movie and then they said they gave me they saw pick me in movies, right and uh and then I wanted to be a director, and I kind of studied that for like six years, and then I became a director. And that's now as a director, I would say all my creative energy became stimulated. It was my music, my aunt, my visual everything about creativity, my writing, it all would stimulate it. It's actually, to me, the highest form of creative expression. A director who was considered our tour, someone who who asked me writes it all that. So I became that right, and I'm glad that I did. I'm satisfied in the life that it brought me. Um. But it's but after a few years, it took me to about two thous took like I said, maybe five or six years ago. It's not that moment ago that I became creatively free again. Like I don't make music for no reason or nobody, but for what Rizzo is doing for Rita. But if I want to be controlled, I'll go and do a movie. You know what I mean. Because in a movie, the character, if he's dying, he's dying. Okay, that's what it says in the script. Okay. But musically there's no way to control me anymore. And I feel grateful that, and I think I'm gonna have a sell musically again. I don't know what that means far as for a commercial level, that it doesn't have to mean nothing. I'm satisfied with the idea that it's not an economical need for me to do it, and that economically I have found the way to to to express art and get economics for it, which is my filmmaking commits. Right. It's a great place. It's a great place to be. It's a great place to be where you can support yourself making art and then still be able to examine all of the different creative areas that are exciting to you, regardless of whether they're you know, whether they're for commercial purposes or not. Right, I agree, brother, exactly. How's your relationship with the other woo the rest of the woo? Always that peace, always that peace. Man. Yeah, well we are, we are, we are brotherhood. My best example, right is that I got a lawsuit you God issuing me, right, and it's this lawsuit been going off for about three years now, maybe the fourth year. And we was in Australia last year. They did a U tank tour in Australia, Sydney our house and he gets there and his credit card isn't working, and so I took my credit card to them in a suite take care of everything for him, and then he was just like only WO could do that, this niggasuing you. You're feeding them and lending them money. I said, in this business, I love his motherfucker. I love my brothers man, and we have that, you know, we we have that love for each other. And I think and I'm proud, I think our passed to be proud to see that this was a community. Wuchang wasn't just a you know, a bunch of guys like you know some of some a lot of these bands maybe two guys didn't know each other or whatever, you know, they put together. No, this is a group of men who at minimum twenty five thirty year relationships some mere Ray Kuan go back to the third grade. Bro. Amazing. Yeah, So that's a blessing and it's uh in that part of it permeates and seems to you know, trump anything else. Yeah, beautiful man, Thank you for talking, brother, Thank you for having me. Man. It's a blessing seeing you. Blessing to you, n bum bum, Thanks brother Taste. Thanks to Rizzard for catching up with Rick. You can hear all of our favorite Rizard produced songs by heading to Broken record podcast dot com and be sure to check out our YouTube channel. We can find some great bonus material from this innerview. You can subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube slash Broken Record Podcast. Broken Record is produced with help from Jason Gambronil Lobell, Leah Rose, and Martin Gonzalez for Pushkin Industries. Our theme music is by Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond. Thanks for listening.