The Head and Heart of a Hip-Hop Clan

“To hear these brothers chewing on stuff is so much fun,” says the Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA, sitting in a Manhattan hotel suite where seven members of the hip-hop supergroup are gathered for a series of press interviews to promote its first album in three years.

The rappers are trading light banter about blockbuster movies, new clothes and neighborhood exploits.

“It was good for us to come back together under one roof,” observes RZA. “Some of us didn’t see each other in three or four months. We all have our own crews, so even when we see each other, we may each have 15 or 20 people with us, so we never got to vibe among ourselves.”

“I feel like a fan sometimes when we’re all together,” says Method Man, stretched out on a pastel couch. “I’m ready to whip out a pen like, ‘Can I get an autograph?’ ”

Ever since Wu-Tang hit the rap world in 1993 with the seminal “Enter the Wu-Tang: 36 Chambers,” the nine-member collective has been widely hailed as one of the most creative forces in the genre. It is most certainly the center of East Coast hard-core rap.

The group’s music coupled frenetic, slang-heavy lyricism and a mythology based on martial arts movies, urban conditions and Nation of Islam polemics. Much like N.W.A before it on the West Coast, the team spawned successful solo careers for several of its members, notably Method Man, Ghostface Killah and RZA. Raekwon the Chef, Ol’ Dirty Bastard, U-God, GZA/Genius, Inspectah Dek and Masta Killa round out the lineup.

Though Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s run-ins with the law are well-documented (he has been a fugitive since fleeing from a court-ordered drug treatment program last month) and Ghostface Killah had to push back the release of his second album because of jail time for a parole violation, the Clan maintains a low profile outside music-making.

Wu-Tang returned three years ago with a follow-up collection--the two-disc “Wu-Tang Forever”--that won more acclaim and sold more than 5 million copies.

After time away for solo projects, they’ve re-teamed for a third album, “The W,” which will be released Tuesday. (See review on Page 68.)

With gritty, unpolished numbers such as “Chamber Music” and “Careful,” the new album stands in stark contrast to hip-hop’s current, smoothed-out orthodoxy. On the new single, “Gravel Pit,” the group even eschews hip-hop’s reigning status symbol, declaring, “Can’t stand Bentleys, they cost too much.”

“It’s like everybody went away,” observes Raekwon. “But when we came back to the crib, we’re still the same brothers, waking up, having breakfast, snapping jokes, getting high, late-night talks. Just the regular stuff we used to do.”

“Wu-Tang is one big family,” says Steve Rifkind, president of the Clan’s label, Loud Records. “Them together is pure energy. It’s family, it’s love.”

At the heart of that family is RZA. Besides producing the bulk of the Clan’s music, he has worked with such artists as Cypress Hill and the late Notorious B.I.G., fronted his critically acclaimed side group, Gravediggaz, scored the movie “Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai,” and crafted its heralded soundtrack.

“RZA makes ghetto symphonies,” observes Wyclef Jean, who has made acclaimed albums both as a member of the Fugees and as a solo artist. “His music has classical elements, but at the same time it’s hard-core and street. No one can go from Beethoven to the ‘hood like he can. He’s amazing.”

Though RZA is ranked in hip-hop circles alongside Dr. Dre and DJ Premier as a master producer, some worry that his nonstop schedule will lead to burnout.

But RZA, 29, doesn’t see any danger of that.

“I’m addicted to music,” he says. “I have to make beats every day. Wherever I go, I got a keyboard waiting for me. Some people collect cars, I collect equipment.”

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Despite the success of hip-hop artists during the last two decades, many in the pop world still refuse to acknowledge the artistry in the best rap. It’s almost as if all the studio sounds are an accident. But RZA’s musical approach is built on a lifelong study of some of pop music’s key figures.

A few weeks after the hotel gathering, RZA is tearing into a takeout tin of spicy vegetables and rice during some downtime in a photo studio inside Manhattan’s Chelsea Piers, where he was the subject of a publicity photo session.

Dressed in black, oversized army fatigues, a matching vest, black shades and a matching military hat, RZA seems more an urban warrior than the founding father and producer of rap’s premier supergroup.

“They call me the nucleus of the group because I have a common denominator with each one of them,” he says. “Before they knew each other, they definitely knew me.”

From an early age, RZA was enraptured by the power of spoken communication--what he calls “the living word”--and by music’s ability to affect people’s emotions.

In his early teens, RZA was introduced to hip-hop by future Clan member and older cousin GZA, who would take him to block parties in Brooklyn. RZA was fascinated by legendary producer Marley Marl, who worked with acts such as Big Daddy Kane, Biz Markie and Kool G Rap, and he would later base the Wu-Tang Clan on the same paradigm as Marl’s Juice Crew: one great producer with a lock on some of the day’s most talented and charismatic MCs.

In his early teens, RZA formed a rap group with GZA and another cousin, Ol’ Dirty Bastard. The three would perform at block parties and house celebrations in Brooklyn.

It was while living in various housing projects in Staten Island that RZA met most of the Clan, including Raekwon, Ghostface, Inspectah Dek and Method Man.

The Wu-Tang Clan emerged from reality-based, humble, low-budget beginnings. “Wu-Tang ain’t just a bunch of average rappers,” says RZA, who signs his checks as Robert Diggs. “We were doing this for free before there was any money involved.”

A few of the members earned their first dollars selling newspapers on the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, linking Brooklyn and Staten Island, in their teens. “We did that for like three years,” recalls RZA. “I probably started there when I was 12. We used to be up there rhyming, bugging, kicking rhymes, freezing, eating coffee and fruit pies.”

At 10 cents for every paper sold, a good day with hustle would net about $12 profit. “By the end of the week, you might make $60,” RZA says. “Then we found a way to scam it too.”

One was to sell only the comics and coupon sections of the Sunday paper to passing motorists. “If somebody drive by and buy a comic off of you, he got jerked and you caught a dollar,” he says. They would then sell the meat of the paper to local grocers, who would return them to the printer for credit.

This was how RZA raised money for his first pieces of equipment.

“I was about 12 when I got my first pair of straight-arm turntables,” he recalls, noting that he started out as a DJ. He runs off an array of brand names and model numbers accumulated before he reached the components of his first “studio”: a beat machine, an electronic keyboard, a four-track sampler and a pair of turntables.

“I made much hits on that stuff right there,” says RZA, whose first incarnation in the music industry was as Prince Rakeem. He released an EP under that name in 1991 on Tommy Boy Records, and after parting ways with the label, RZA gathered the Wu-Tang members, who each put up money to record and release his own music.

The group’s self-released inaugural single, “Protect Ya Neck,” generated a buzz on the streets and in the music industry. But they did not want to sign with a label as a unit unless it allowed them to pursue solo record deals.

“We had so much music we were making that we knew one label couldn’t handle it all,” says RZA.

“They had so much energy and a vision from A to Z,” says Loud’s Rifkind. “They actually took less money than other people were offering them to be with me because I understood where RZA wanted to go. It was the perfect fit.”

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RZA owns a vast collection of music equipment, including keyboards he has stashed at every place he calls home--from the southern New Jersey house he shares with his new wife to his mom’s house in New Jersey to his various studios.

RZA is self-taught on the drums, guitar and piano. He’s only recently begun to read books on music, and is graduating from one-finger lines to mature chord progressions.

“Right now I’m probably a D student,” he says with a laugh.

RZA counts Isaac Hayes (a guest on the new album), James Brown, Otis Redding, Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes and Donny Hathaway among his soul influences. He also gives a nod to a litany of ‘70s and ‘80s artists, including ABBA, Tears for Fears and the Police.

“I love Paul Simon . . . his lyrics,” he says. “I got all of Duran Duran. I sampled some of their stuff already. You wouldn’t know, though--I buried it.”

RZA uses his Wu-Tang artists as instruments themselves. “Of course U-God is the bass,” he says of the deep-voiced MC. “Ghostface is the strings; he gets more mellow, more emotional on you. But at the same time, strings can attack. That’s the range he has.”

“There’s a scratch, a rawness to RZA’s sound,” says Carlito Rodriguez, editor in chief of hip-hop’s leading magazine, the Source. “It sounds like being in a dark basement with a lot of tree smoke. Still, it’s very musical. It’s a testament to his ability that he can be so pure and hard-core, yet at the same time be mainstream.”

An RZA tune can vary from the soothing and melodic to the assaulting and atonal--fragmented shards of music layered with nuances that range from rock guitars to sword clashes to movie dialogue.

“Every time I make a new album, I get better and better,” he says. “I make the sounds more audible. The weird sounds in the background--before, they used to be foggy, but now they’re much clearer. . . .

“I may do all programmed beats for about a month straight. Then I might do purely sampled tracks for a while. Then you’ll catch me in the studio with nothing but live instruments.”

If RZA is still learning his own musicology, it’s an opportunity he shares with his listeners.

“We’re giving the children a chance to get the basic principles of hip-hop because our sound is so raw,” he says. “It’s important that we do what we do because we’re large, and it has more impact than when someone on a smaller scale does it. It’s stripped, and you can imagine what to put on top of it. I like watching black-and-white or silent movies sometimes. I get to put my own imagination on it. This is the same thing, but with music.”

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Kris Ex is a freelance writer based in New York.