Kind: captions
Language: en
the following is a conversation with
rizza
the rapper record producer filmmaker
actor writer philosopher kung fu scholar
and the mastermind of the legendary
hip-hop group wu-tang clan
this is the lex friedman podcast to
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in the description and now here's my
conversation with rizza
in the tao of wu you're right when my
mother left the physical world i lost
one of my main links to the universe
they say that you have an umbilical cord
and an etheric cord which is the
invisible cord that attaches you to your
soul your mother's soul and all other
souls when one passes away you really
lose something
it's physical and mental it's real
part of you dies
what have you learned about life from
your mother
i now learn life itself for my mother
you know
being
one of 11 children
and seeing the sacrifice that she gave
to us
therefore given to life
uh it's really the greatest lesson of
life
the thing that uh
shook me as i
wrote those words
was
coming up young
with arrogance
confidence
knowledge of myself
they called me the scientists
we was taught
do the supreme being in order to be the
supreme being you got to be supreme
amongst other beings
um
i understand that more now than i did
then because then it was so literal
you know the word god
derived
basically from the greek language as
they say and it
meant wisdom strength and beauty
here we could have that
but the power to control life and death
is something that
you would assume is a god trait
so now here you are saying that you're a
god
right
and you're reading the bible how jesus
brought back lazarus
and you know now it's your turn to do
something
and when my mother was laying there in
the hospital bed
and air was no longer coming out of her
lungs and going into her lungs
where's my power to bring her back to
life
so you can't
truly be god you're powerless
yeah or god is not the definition that
we need to use to describe it
because it's a translation of wisdom
strength and beauty so you could be that
but uh so i'm asking your question what
did my mother teach me about life i
learned that day on physical passing
okay
and i mean there's a physical me
do you think about her
you miss her
of course
i
keep my mother my prayer every day
and the thing i pray the most
uh beyond giving thanks is
i pray that her name is honored and
remembered by my family
i don't know if the world's gonna
remember right
even though if you watch my movie love
beats rhymes i named the school in that
movie
after my mother just
leave it somewhere else
in physical space yeah exactly but yeah
painful the pain of my mother's
passion is indescribable only until it
happens to a person
they know and then they won't describe
it either only the people that lost
their mother they could look at each
other and they got this nod you know
what i mean
um but one other thing happened to me
was the joy of life hit me differently
and i think it was the realization
of my own
mortality versus my immortality
it's a big big thing and i don't know if
we'll get to expound on that but there
was a joy that overcame me because i was
kind of free of a certain illusion
about the immortality
of my physical being
versus the mortality of my physical
being
and i was like okay wow i understand so
that was the first or the hardest
realization you've experienced that
you're mortal
yeah that yeah and i'll say mortal
and the what you're looking at here
physically
i won't say my soul is mortal
right i'll say it's immortal because at
the end of the day
it's just like i could sit here
and i could just hum please please
please
by james brown but james brown
is not going to
come in here and do that
so in some sense james brown is still
here in another sense
so the soul is here
well it lives through you by you singing
it enlists through you by you listening
to it celebrating it
and the hope is that uh the human
species continues to celebrate the the
great minds and the great creations of
the past
i would add this to that equation
when i say it's immortal
i don't think not just only because
somebody sings it right
it's like why where's the fire at right
now
it's in the air
you just gotta spark this
yeah
so it's always there
are you afraid of death
nah i'm not afraid of death
i'm not trying to see it you know
i'm not rushing that nowhere near me
right because all i know is life
right my life is living
um you know i read a lot of ancient
texts people probably know about me and
i love one of the great teachers named
bodhidama
uh
and there was a
thing written in you know one of the
uh
books of his or one of the teachings of
his and the question somebody asks him
similar question you know you're scared
of death or what are you going to be
after you die
and his answer was i don't know
he had answers to everything
but he's like i don't know this oh he
doesn't know that so yeah because i
haven't died yet yeah
well the uncertainty to some people is
terrifying not knowing what's on the
other side of the door
yeah
i mean especially when you're young you
know as a kid
fear
permeated my life
you know i mean you know i was actually
watching horror movies and
i believed in all type of uh
supernatural things that could uh can
happen i thought i saw things as well
and uh
you know whether it was being projected
for my own mind or whether it was there
visible to me i don't know right
um
but
life is beautiful
and if we have it
and we should use it all the way to the
last job
realizing the mortality
the the gift your mother gave to you is
realizing the immortal
and in so doing help you realize that
life is beautiful yeah
on this topic uh quincy jones i read
said to odbnu when it rains get wet
what do these words mean to you
well i think what quincy was saying at
that time was you know
i think i was more conservative
like as a person
and like you know i
had money
women wanted me
anything i kind of wanted
uh
i probably could have had you know what
i mean
and he was just saying when it rains to
get wet enjoy this man it's raining on
you
you know i mean let me pick up don't put
up the umbrella don't go back in the
house
yeah get wet experience the moment yeah
and enjoy it and
i didn't take total heed to him at that
time
a couple of years later i took some heat
by that time i didn't take heat and
and when i took heat
i think that i
may have misinterpreted
by looking at his example of getting wet
versus my example of getting wet
and i can tell you right now i'm getting
wet right now in my way
in part thanks to your mother but
overall you just learned how to
appreciate the rain just like the
the experience of every moment yeah and
i'll share this with you because we this
is seem to be a very open conversation
and i haven't had this conversation so
definitely impart to my mother than
impart to my wife
i meet my wife
it's my second wife
but i met her after my mother passed and
she was just a friend
you know some girl i met at the thought
she was beautiful
and actually built a friendship with her
uh but
a few years later when the relationship
became like you know this is this is
gonna be my woman it was actually doing
it when i was doing the middle of my
of my divorce and i was like you know do
i run wild and hey you know i mean my
wife would have already found we were
separated and do i run wild and i didn't
run wild a little bit but not too wild
right
and uh
you know i'm still a man right yeah i'm
a hip-hop guy
i read you know how to party yeah
exactly
but the funny thing is that
my wife now her name is talani
my uncle
said she
reminds me
of your mother
he knew my mother when before i knew my
mother
and he saw that and
and we ended up uh dating
um got engaged
and then her mother passes
and so now there's a total understanding
of
everything and we actually helped build
each other back up so when
so of course i have to thank my mother
for the awareness
um then i thank my wife for
bringing that awareness to actual
actualization
like to actually feel
it i don't think i'll be talking to you
right now and talking as much as i do
these days
if it wasn't for the security and
peace and harmony that i was able to
gain at home
you know so
and like you said you now share that
look of having to both lost here yeah
your
mom have you learned from quincy about
music about business about life
quincy jones is a great mind a great
artist uh
you know a treasure in all reality
he's seen it from when it was
he couldn't walk on this he couldn't eat
in the same places he played his music
at
to owning places bigger than those so
what a beautiful life you know
um
he's the type of guy you spend one hour
with him
you get you got a lifetime of
information
and i was blessed to spend multiple
hours with him in days with him and
you know just a certain period of time
where we came across each other and he
was always
there to share the knowledge like that's
another thing about him that i think was
special and
hopefully
i picked that up is that
he's he he's always willing to share
share with his experience his knowledge
i mean
i think he'll even share
his home
to the right person if he feels that
that's what they need to get back on
their feet he's a very beautiful man
just the kindness the goodness of the
man is like the thing that really rubbed
off on you
yeah i mean
minimum i i mean quincy jones also in
his 50s
as a producer
produced one of the greatest albums of
all time and one of the greatest selling
albums of all time that's just great
critically
economically great
and
i mean he may i think he's he did it at
the age i am right now so i might have a
great year coming up
timing well yeah
so now you got a taste of what greatness
is you get to see what greatness is so
you know what uh exactly how yourself
yeah
you have a few people you've worked with
who are fascinating like yourself
quentin tarantino you worked with him
uh when somebody asked you to describe
him with one word you said encyclopedia
what have you learned from the guy about
filmmaking about life again
a very generous man with his knowledge
and for me
he shared it i think in a way that was
unique in the sense of
you know at a point in time you know we
just was super duper tight like you know
like going to his crib and watching
movies and
and just having long conversations about
art and about life
you know i mean
um so i learned a lot i consider him you
know especially when it comes to
anything cinematic in my life
i consider him the godfather of that for
me
i think um
you know i i humbly asked him
to mentor me which is a very humbling
thing to do coming from my neighborhood
coming from who i am
coming from i was already a
multi-platinum
artist
you know with
i mean it was a year it was past the
year 2000 already so like 2001 2002 that
i asked
him to mentor me so
i was the lizard
yeah you know i mean but i humbled
myself because
i saw him
a craft
of brain power
that to me resonated with me but i was
just uh paddling on that i was a nervous
at it
um because i was trying to make movies
in my music
you know trying to make videos and here
was a man who was a master of it and an
encyclopedia of it as well
and uh like film history film history
from whether it's the actor the director
the cinematographer yeah maybe even the
costume designer he may know 50 60 he
may know the 50 greatest costume
designers in his memory
yeah i mean
it's god's brain both of you have pretty
good memory
i'd love to be a fly in the wall that
conversation yeah and kung fu movies
mostly you guys we actually started
i think we
we started our relationship
trying to outdo each other
knowledge-wise or what yeah movie
knowledge-wise
fu movie knowledge wise
and i think that cat if it wasn't
another category i wouldn't had a chance
but at least in that category yeah i was
pretty holding my weight who won
you know what
i'll be honest and say that i may
have said a few he didn't see yeah but
quentin is older than me yeah
so he could go back
further yeah he could go back to 72
but i didn't see one yet you know what i
mean yeah yeah well we uh he said master
the flying guillotine that i got a
chance to uh that you commentate over
today and i got a chance to see the
screening of he said that's one of his
favorites
uh for you
uh the 36th chamber of shaolin now the
master killer is your favorite best best
ever would you say that's the greatest
kung fu
i mean movie ever
it def it's hard to say the greatest
ever right because somebody may make
another one and
it depends on your own phase of life but
i'll i will put that first
if i want to introduce somebody to kung
fu movies that's that's a beautiful
entry
you talk about knowledge you talk about
wisdom
what what kind of wisdom do you draw
from kung fu movies the you know what
the martial art itself and the movies
it's endless wisdom to be drawn and i
draw it
you know
i draw it in a way you know that i could
decipher it in my own life
so
for instance
in the movie master killer
uh he basically
when he does kung fu he does a really a
style called the hangar technique
and the director of the movie
is actually a hangar expert
who has a lineage
that traces all the way back to shaolin
temple this director always wanted to
keep his
movies pure and the brain hung guard to
the world it's like he wanted to show
the world this lineage in fact
you just said master of the flying
guillotine is quentin's favorite movie
and we mentioned in 36 champions it's my
favorite movie but
the action director of master of flying
guillotine is the director of 36
chambers of charlotte yeah and some of
the things that's happening
in
mass of the fl of the flying guillotine
is really the infant stage of what this
action director is going to learn and
then use later on in his movies
so that's the beauty of it it's almost
like
you know
quentin is seeing him
in his generation so quentin might have
been the same age i was watching that
movie and then when he becomes a
director i'm at clinton's age and now
i'm seeing his work so some symbionic
relationship there and i'll end this
question by saying
hungar deals with the five animal
technique
the tiger the crane
right the leopard
the snake
uh and the dragon those are the five
that's the five patterns some people go
sevens some go 12 but let's just stick
to the fire pattern fist
how do
a man
emulate a tiger
and you see a tiger's fears
he curls before he spawns on you
how does a man emulate
a snake
it doesn't have to be only in the kung
fu move
it's in the ideology
of the snake
it's in the the the agility of the crane
at any moment
sometimes punching a person
is not going to work
as they were saying leopard fists or
tiger paw so sometimes you may have to
poke them in the eye
with the crane's beak
so having your mind able to adapt the
instinct
of the animal when you are being
attacked
or when you are being the aggressor
that's something that you don't need a
form for that's the mentality so kung fu
like i said it informs me endlessly
because at first i was trying to learn
all the uh home like i can't really hit
you with that and really hurt you unless
i've been banging my hand a thousand
times on some bricks and made it so
callous or muscles are so strong but the
idea
that if me and you was to get into a
fight and i'm gonna tighten up on you
and take that instinct and prance when
i'm a prance
or
slop
fly away like the stalk
you know i mean like yo
it's this that's the mentality it's much
more than the technical moves it's
it's much deeper yeah
yeah it's interesting i mean when i see
the kung fu movies because i'm uh i love
martial arts all martial arts and
competitive ones too like the actual
competitions and so on it just seems
like kung fu movies
go much deeper than just like the
techniques yeah
they struck i mean if you see it right
even i watched a great mma fight
recently and uh
just interesting
because he was on top of the god
you know
and the way he got from under him
you know
it had to be
you know his spirit got from under
some like mixture of crane and uh
whatever snake
ill either slippery ill technique yeah
no i love that when people are become
artists in the cage or they that's much
bigger than just like winning much
bigger than particular techniques it's
just art especially at the highest level
competition when millions of people are
watching
which is pressure within itself yes yes
that's
art under pressure is even more
beautiful art
you know you look at some of these
fights and you wonder like why somebody
wins and lose
and sometimes the less talented guy
could win
because he could deal with the pressure
or the other guy he could have beat him
there was someone else but not in this
arena
so you're a scholar of history including
hip-hop history
you've uh i've listened to so many of
your interviews uh you've spoken
brilliantly about
some of the big figures in
in hip-hop history tupac biggie nas many
others
maybe uh let's look at tupac and biggie
what made them special in the history of
music
that's a good question
so i don't know if i'm the authority to
answer it
but i'll just speak my piece on it and
maybe i could just add on because i'm
sure it's a lot of people that spent a
lot of time with them
that could speak on it but just as a
fellow artist
um
i think
not only was big or dope lyricists
i think he had a voice
that was really immaculate
in a sense that
some rappers
get on top of music and you gotta get
used to them or you gotta fight you know
you gotta vibe with them
but he
make a record sounds like a record
immediately
if you go back and listen to his music
you could take his voice and put it on
anything and for some reason
it sounds like a record you know i mean
you mean just like the raw voice of the
man yeah
so you could just listen to it raw and
it sounds like a record yeah but if you
put a beat take his voice to put it on
any beat
it's he just has
a voice
it's immaculate you know
so his lyrical skills and all that was
great
um and you got to think once again
he's doing all this he's not even 25
years old yeah yeah
then you go to park once again
immaculate voice but
what park had i think
was a way of touching us
on all of our emotions
and especially on like pog had the power
to infuse
your emotional thought like brenda has a
baby dear mama
but then he had the power to arouse
your the rebel in you
you know yeah and those two things
uh
actually
he's he was probably more dangerous
uh
than big no no choice b.i.g
like notorious b.i.g we could party with
him
to this day we were still
but park was probably going to a point
you know he was more
going into the malcolm x of things and
yeah and and
and society fears that
yeah so he was really good at
communicating love and and
and at starting revolutions yeah
and that's dangerous very dangerous
and they communicated love
but he wasn't starting revolutions
well it's it's interesting to think
about what the world would be like if
they were still with us but
it's the way of the world hendricks
a lot of those guys just go to tucson
yes it's a peculiar thing you know so
now you asked me earlier
am i scared of death um
and i answered you know not scared of
death i mean i'm not trying to see it
though you know i mean yeah it's like
that was the block of death
it's like i'm not really going right
there right now i'm making a left for a
right turn you know i mean unless it was
mandatory for
some greaterness greater good it's like
okay i gotta drive through that
you know
yeah but it can still happen that's the
meditation on death part where you could
die at the end of today yeah you could
die or death well dying and death i
think it's two different things
personally
um the process you mean of death or just
yeah i mean you could die i guess you
could die every day
you could die and not be yourself
you know what i mean
which is crazy
but to get to a point of no return
you know that's a whole other chamber
i mean there's some sense in which um
reza the
producer
becomes somebody else completely when
you're making a film becomes somebody
else completely when you're um
i don't know playing chess becomes
completely something different when you
uh do kung fu
or watch kung fu or when you're a family
man all of those are little deaths when
you transition from one place to another
so it's not like you're one being you're
you're many things
yeah
i was described now i would describe
that it's all life though
yeah it's fun
outside of you and uh anybody on wu-tang
who is the greatest
rapper from a lyrics like a wordsmith
perspective in hip-hop history
or some of the greatest maybe some
candidates let's name a few
i mean you're going to have to start
with rock him
you know you're going to have to pick
kuji rap in there you know i mean so
going back you're gonna you're gonna
have to pick up with those brothers
first you might have to even if you want
to get
technical you might have to start with
grand master cass
you know i mean who you might not you
may not have heard of no you know what i
mean but you may have sung his lyrics
every time you sing sugar hill rappers
delight because that's his that was
there they copied his they copied this
and they made it theirs
but point being made but
i i'll name a couple more i gotta put
knives in that category
you know we got a chess board in front
of us and one of the greatest chess
players
uh the youngest grandmaster you know and
you know before i think uh
carlson
was uh
um bobby bobby fisher
all right so this is bobby fish as
american one of the greatest american
chess players of course susan pogar may
have tied his record as the youngest
grand master and she's the youngest
female grandmaster i think to date
but he was a master at what 14
yeah something like that right
so now
to me
i met nas when he was 15.
he was already a master lyricist it
takes about 10 years to become a master
lyricist so by the time the world heard
of wu-tang
most of us had 10 years of rapping in us
already
so that's why you you met us at mastery
level the jizzer was already a master
when nas was a master but joseph was 21.
the house was 15.
nas is like the mozart of rap
yeah just bobby fisher bobby fischer
just born some something in him or maybe
those early years just because he's uh
he's not just good at
the lyrics he's also he goes deep with
it yeah just like you so he's like
there's there's depth it's not just uh
like mastery of the the word smithing
it's just
the message you actually get
sent across
yeah
into a small
phrase
right that's the whole thing of energy
how do we condense all that energy into
death
so that it could fuel
that
and he's definitely one of those artists
emcees that does that
and he was doing it at 15 you know like
i said i'm thinking i'm five years or
four or five years older than us
so i was always feeling you know my
confidence of what i was doing but i was
like this kid is only 15.
i gotta step up my game yeah we got when
he turned 19 then we got automatic
yeah
from you
or what are the best and most memorable
lyrics you've ever written
well that's a hard question for me the
stuff stand out like stuff you're really
proud of that was like
important in your career
yeah i i i mean
i think i did a song called sun sun
shower i don't know if it we put it on
the wu tank forever double cd but only
on the international version
but if anybody could go get those lyrics
and write those lyrics down you could
just put that in your pocket and i'm
sure that it'll answer at least about 25
percent of your life's problems
uh well there's a good one uh sunshine
you're where you talk about religion and
god that's that's good
i think it's on a diagram
i'm not a record guy yeah i'm a song it
might have been a diagram why do you
have a lyric for me yeah the answer to
all questions you're talking about god
yeah
the spark of all suggestions of
righteousness the pathway to the road of
perfection who gives you all and never
asks more of you the faithful companion
that fights every war with you before
the mortal view of the prehistorical
historical he's the all in all you
searching for the oracle
this is such a this is so good a mission
impossible is purely philosophical but
you can call on your death bed when
you're laying in the hospital you will
call them on your deathbed i had a big i
have a scientist friend
well my wife's best friend rebecca
uh
she married a sign they both signed it
they're both for scientists and she
married uh dr neil
i don't know i'm gonna say their last
names
but neil and rebecca you know you know
there's my wife's best friend so they
come over and me and neil we go through
the longest debates of science and
religion we just go we'll break we could
go break day with it
and
you know before he had a child
he was more adamant
and
you know there's you know i don't
believe in god you know what i mean
after a child he still kept his thing
but i just hit him with the question if
you was about to die because now you got
a child thinking about
when you're thinking about yourself i
ask him if he's about to die
do you you don't think you're going to
make that call he's like
i'll make that call
and and it kind of inspired my lyric
because it was like yeah who you gonna
yeah and i just want to say as far as so
you mentioned alert that is one of my
favorite lyrics but that's part two
to
sun shower was the uh prequel to
sunshine
yeah so if you ever get a chance to
check out sun shower
uh it starts off with
trouble follows a wicked mind 2020
vision of the prism of life but still
blind because you lack the inner
so every sinner could end up in the
everlasting winter
of hellfire
but thorns and splinters prick your eye
out you cry out your words fly out but
you remain unheard
suffering
internal
and external along with the wicked
fraternal of generals and colonels land
of thermal nuclear heats that burns you
firmly and permanently
upon the journey through the journal of
the book of life
for those who took a life without
justice will become just ice
it's been taught your worst enemy
couldn't harm you as much as your own
wicked thoughts
but people ought to be naught and listen
wrought
so they find themselves persecuted
inside their own universal court
so that it's a long one that's like a
three-pager wow that is about life
that's like character integrity how to
be
yeah how to be in this world and that
ultimately connects to god
yeah
who's god to you
i'm glad you just asked that question
because
i actually
i'm going to have to make a
distinguishable separation here
all right
um
and it's funny because i heard recently
uh
i heard a rabbi was
debating with uh this historian dr ben i
can't believe stock the band name but it
was debating
and in the debate
they
started going back through the etymology
they went way back beyond antiquity
because they was debating so there was
you know some things they was going deep
and they really went far far back to
kind of the first word of
of god
and it was
when they pronounced it on this
particular debate it was allah
and they said for now they got elohim
um
i've already
agreed in my heart in my life
that
the father this universe proper name is
allah
um and of course in the law i get all
you know
um and i don't think that
god
is the same as that i think a law gives
birth to god
in fact if you take the word allah
a-l-l-a-h
and you take it through numerology or
numbers the number a being letter a
being 1 l being 12 and you add it all up
to its
lowest uh to the you know the last
denominator you're going to get the
number seven
and the number seven is going to bring
you right back to that letter g
so a law aborns god but god don't bone
allah
how does how does that god how does
allah connect to the oracle
the that you're you're going to be
calling for when you're laying in the
hospital
well what i was saying in that
particular verse was that we're looking
for the oracle we're looking for
somebody else or something to help us
that nobody can really help you
at the end of the day
you know
and we're speaking on on so now that we
i don't want to say we're speaking on
religion but we're speaking on a way of
life and a way of thinking
uh
and i've read many books of course
and i could say there's no book
that
my
the book that is the most strongest book
i've ever read is actually the holy
quran
it's stronger to me than my than the
bible which i read
is stronger than quantum physics which
i've read
is stronger than the bhagavad-gita's
it's just and and i read once uh a
british scholar said it's the most
stupidest book ever written
and
it doesn't make sense
and i so i said oh i see why he says
that though i can understand exactly why
he said that as well
why is that
because the the structure of the words
are just
it's peculiar
you know i mean but it's almost like how
some people's songs you don't really
know exactly what they say until years
later yeah
uh yeah you have uh actually joe rogan i
think you talked about how uh
a joke of dave chappelle's hit you like
a long time after this so this is kind
of like the quran it it uh i tend to
believe that we
human beings cannot possibly understand
anything as big as
these ideas so uh
just
i don't know do you think that
like are you humble in the face of just
the the immensity of it
to be honest yes
i'm humble in the face of the
you can say the word of god pronounced
words funny
the omni the omnipotence
the omniscience the
magnitude
i'm humbled within the face of in the
face of allah
the problem that we i may have had was
that i wasn't humbled in the face of god
because
it's just a definable thing
and that's why i think a lot of us and
i'm saying that you know i know when we
say god we're trying to say a lot like
people was saying that but you're
actually not saying the same thing
because you're actually putting
something beside
and
and that's the reason why you have all
this many guards
you can find a whole bunch of them
i mean but you're not going to find many
there's nobody beside allah
i mean law is one so
i know it's the whole thing but that's
my heart is there i'm humbled by it
i'm at peace with it
uh and it doesn't take nothing or
demerit anything from myself
that's the beauty of it it doesn't take
nothing from me from being who so if i
say
if if somebody walk up your peace god i
could take that because they're telling
me that yo i'm a man of wisdom i'm a man
of strength i'm a man of beauty
or some attribute of that you know what
i mean so it will turn into god's a rap
there's wisdom there there's strength
there there's beauty then we'll take
that
yeah so
so wu-tang is one of the greatest
musical artistic philosophical groups
ever
let's look hundreds of years from now
when humans are robots or aliens or
whatever that's left here they look back
what do you hope they remember about
wu-tang what do you hope the legacy is
well
well even if it's thousands years i hope
we don't get rid of the humans
but you know look whatever happens is
gonna happen but
i think that uh my philosophy on it is
that
we're gonna
continue to advance
and continue to advance things around us
but i don't see us becoming extinct well
i mean the reason i bring up sort of
wu-tang in that context and
this is a special moment in human
history it's like a hundred years and
we've created all of this music just if
you think of all the richness of music
that's been created over 100 years
it's like it's not obvious to me that
that's not going to stop right like
there's a flourishing here
so it's it's funny because that i could
see where the
the book of human history is written
there's a chapter on this period of time
right and one of the things we did well
is like all the technological innovation
with like
with rockets and with the internet but
then there's also the musical innovation
and film innovation right just so much
art that's being created and wu-tang is
a huge part of that
so i just wonder what like if there's a
few sentences written about
[Laughter]
it just uh
makes me wonder how they remember i
would hope that people
no matter you know how many years are
inspired by us
but i will say if i could just use
wu-tang
as itself
so
we we first started off the witty
unpredictable
talent
and natural game right natural gaming
and natural word play
and then we went to
the wisdom
of the universe
the truth
of allah
for a nation of god
wisdom universal truth or law nation god
it's just like
so this is go back to a nation of god
let's just take the last two letters
a nation of wisdom strength and beauty
right you know and i'm gonna go a little
political here but not going political
as we'll say we're the greatest country
in the world
what makes us the greatest
that's to be a question we act is it our
wisdom
is it our strength
is it our beauty now just say off the
easiest answer you know it's our
strength
we got the nukes
nobody can really you know between
america and russia they said we're just
you know they that's the argument who
could beat them
but where's the wisdom
then they gonna argue well we got the
technology
right but then where's the beauty when
there's so much suffering in the people
so it's not complete the hope is that
the wisdom is in the founding documents
and the imperfect
but wise founding documents of that
celebrated freedom that celebrated
all the ideas sort of having a lot of
nukes having a lot of airplanes and
tanks that's not
that's not uh
that's not important and the hope is
whatever we're doing here with this
quote greatest country on earth that we
preserve the ideas and help them
flourish yeah you said well that's what
i mean so if we could get so if you go
back to the wu-tang i'm saying
that's what we're striving for
we're striving for that you know what
man we started unpredictable and just
like yeah just
yeah but like got deep pretty
quick
i gotta talk to you bob bruce lee
who's bruce lee to you who is he to the
world what ideas of his
were interesting to you
like what
you know you talk about like hendrix and
music bruce lee is that a martial arts
he just seems to have changed the game
yeah
you know i i went as
i guess i don't know what the word bold
is the right word to say but i went as
bold as to say
that he was a minor prophet and i got
that concept from the holy quran where
it says that we send prophets to every
nation every
village we don't let nobody not hear the
word in some form
because it won't be fair
and so if allah is merciful
even a man who's deaf has to somehow get
a sign i don't know if moses saw a
burning bush it was nobody else to talk
to so he had to talk to the bush i don't
know it could have been the bush
yeah but point being made
it says that there are minor prophets
and i see bruce lee as one of them
uh because what he brought to the world
through it through martial art
uh was a whole shift in the dynamic of
thinking
you know and that happens when
certain certain entities are born but he
didn't do it only in uh
in the physical sense he was also
philosophy in the same process
uh
and he was also
striving to be the best of himself so
you got three things going on
i
studied bruce lee multiple times
at first of course
um
when i saw my first kung fu movie it was
the fake it was it wasn't really bruce
lee it was a few green hornet clips
cut together
and then i saw a black samurai then my
following kung fu movies was like
fearless fighters
uh the ghostly face uh
you know to fit the double k but
basically and phillips fighters the lady
put the little kid on her back and flew
across the ocean
across the lake
right
so bruce wasn't doing that
and then i went on to five deadly venoms
and
spearmen and 36 chambers and these
movies are
beautiful and yet they're all heightened
bruce they're heightened beyond
doable you're not gonna yeah it's like
surreal they play with us the world
that's not of this world yeah
bruce played with this world so
when i was somebody when someone i first
saw bruce
i obviously didn't think he was as good
as these guys he can't fly
he's not flying in the movies right
um
but then
when i saw the first one i saw was the
big boss which they re-titled fist to
fury
but then when i saw
chinese connection
which is
uh
the real festival right
i saw something different there
and i
got enamored and then of course into the
dragon right just
really complete that's why my first
album was
into the wu tang 36 chambers of shaolin
so it's into the dragon at 36 put
together because those are the two
epitomes
so what happened is you know that's
young me then teenage me studies him
again
and i realized wow look at look at his
physicality
look out for how he's really he's moving
for real
and then i studied him again wow look at
what he's saying
then i studied him again wow look at
what he stands for
which do you like in the realm of
martial arts the the real or the surreal
or the dance between the two
yeah i'd like to dance between the two
because
a moo i mean
a movie to me is to entertain you
so i'm cool with
obi-wan kenobi
disappearing
out of the cloak
when vader strikes him down
and then i'm like yo what happened he's
like run luke 1.
i'm cool with that right because that's
the imagination
and the imagination gets stimulated to
the point to whereas things that we saw
imagined by an artist we strive to
create in our real world thus star trek
to me is just a precursor to our cell
phones yeah
so for me uh i like to mix the two
yeah it's funny how the like science
fiction like pushing into the impossible
actually makes it realize eventually
yeah yeah we humans like we once we see
idea on screen no matter how wild it is
we we're trying to make it yeah we're
trying to make it it's when we a young
kid it gets inspired and watch that be
like i'm going to build that
exactly so i don't know who's going to
come with the back to the future time
machine but uh do you have any
classmates that you think that's
the time machine
uh i thought you were going to back to
the future like the what is it the the
the hoverboard or like yeah yeah at
least yeah yeah somebody they got you
know they've seen the one on the water
no no you know what's close in the water
they're so hover it's great it's dope
nice it's dope it
actually it actually if you were back to
a future fan you feel like you made it
to
you made it there yeah all right well
now we just got to work on the on the
time travel and it was cool to hear you
uh talk about the
the master of the flying gay team today
that that inspired
the uh the lyric
for the you know wu-tang clan ain't
nothing to f with yeah
how does that go again
or the coast world order not that
i said i'd be tossing and forcing
my style is awesome i'm causing more
family foods than richard dawson and the
survey said you're dead the fatal flying
guillotine chops off your head yeah yeah
and it was interesting to see the
guillotine in in the movie today
how
i don't know
that that's surreal right but it's not
it's like it's an engine it's
engineering it's both surreal and it's
just and then it it uh
it adds this chaos into this real world
that and then challenges everybody think
what you're gonna do with that yeah how
you're gonna beat it yeah how you gonna
beat it both when you have like the good
and the evil and the mix of the bad guys
and the good guys and you're not sure
who the bad guys are it's the old
question of good versus evil right yeah
like you said then the question of
who was good who was evil but
they all had a similar problem when the
guillotine came
but in terms of the real you mentioned
the godfather good and evil
that's your favorite movie yeah
what makes it great do you think the
characters the study of family
of justice of power what connects with
you oh oh i mean every one of those
themes
connects in the real
um and it connects in a cinematic way as
well
the difference i think with me and the
godfather was i seen it during the
period of time when my father was absent
and
therefore
family structure and family values was
actually adopted
in my family
because of that you know me and my
brother devine
we actually
you know
took so much heed to that movie and our
family life
and
uh
we kind of
you know we kind of mimic that family in
this structure of somebody has to be the
leader of the family
even if it was the younger michael was
younger than
sonny and fragile
you know i mean but he was worthy
and my brother devon is older than me my
brother king is older than me and it's
funny sometimes divine calls king
fragile and i know king wants the king
goes
but you're michael yeah
and not not by choice like
just by definition of that's what i am
you know i
and uh it's just a blessing for me
to have my older sister my older
brothers
uh and my younger brothers look to me
as uh
just as a as a good light in the family
and like i said though that movie helped
us my sisters too we
you know the cool thing about my family
i don't know if i share this a lot
it's a big we all watch these movies
together
and so the a diagram pole fighter master
killer
father venus my family knows these
movies it's not just
i know them
right and then you extend it further my
friends know them right too
so there's a language
that we all can have
that actually film has informed our
communication
so the godfather
you know which also is still
a fictitional story of something
but
since it was based in reality based on
something real and it was human it
wasn't so heightened
i think the purity of it
resonates and the purity of it is
something that resonates with me
you know
you got to be you got to plan ahead
you know he didn't want to deal with the
drugs
but
that time of business was upon him it's
like it's almost like
this is a tough one like sometimes when
the muslim brothers come from the middle
east to america and they open up delhi's
right
they would sell him
and we would go in there and complain to
them and make them like they they just
get mad at us when we can't
but you know and that's as a kid but as
a man i'm like yo he's here to sell
now he still don't have to sell to him
like like fido cody didn't want to sell
the
drugs okay he didn't have to do it he
didn't do it
and it cost him some bullets to
eventually somebody in the family
ended up doing it yeah
what about this idea that's family
before everything else so like you're
you know there's there's different laws
you live up
according to in this world and family is
first yeah
that's that's that's mathematically
i correct
like that
i mean there's uh there's a certain
sense of um
you look at powerful people you look at
putin
there's a certain sense in which the
people who are in the inner circle
that's who you take care of that's
family yeah anyone else that crosses you
that you know there's a different set of
ethics under which you operate for those
people
well
jesus said the same thing
you know when he said love thy neighbor
and our brother he was talking about
that community yeah
when that other lady who the samaritan
say hey jesus i'm not feeling my brother
not feeling so well and because he said
give not that which is holy unto the
dogs if you're gonna tell a woman
i'm give not that which is holy
unto the dogs and she's a woman you just
called her a dog
if i translate that in hip-hop
yeah female you call the dog
i know how that goes but she tried but
she said to him
but even the dog is allowed to eat the
crumbs that falls from the master's
table
and he went helped yeah he helped now
let's go back to what you said about
putin or vito colon or myself and my
family
of course the family is first
but once the family is good
it has to then spread to the community
then to the
state
country world
the problem we have sometimes is that
and this is the reason why a lot of
powerful families was overthrown like
why did they be had their own
king with the guillotine right because
that once the family was strong
they didn't let the
the wealth
the opportunity
expand out
you know
look at wu-tang
yes our family was made strong first but
then
all the women was able to form their own
corporations and they had their own
sub-families
it has to grow out and they took over
the world
you've uh talked about being vegan and i
don't think i heard you
explain this because it connects somehow
about how you think about life
so you talk about when your family is
good you grow that like circle of
empathy you grow the community
is that how you think about
being vegan
that
just the capacity of living beings on
earth to suffer
that you just don't want to
add suffering to them
yeah i mean
you said it clear
it's like nothing
in all reality
i came to a realization that nothing
really has to die
for me to live yeah
no animal the plants
themselves right so let's just say
you know
you want a steak which is probably the
most you know
you know i don't know the most expensive
piece of meat but let's just say the
steak is you know top of the line nice
steak yeah and you eating the steak for
the protein to help build your muscle
and i don't know if you got it from a
cow or a bowl but whether it's a cow or
the ball they grow to about 1500 pounds
and if it's a ball it's all muscly
muscle
and it's only eating grass
yeah
yeah there's there's yeah
it's possible to uh both as an athlete
and just as a human being to perform
well without meeting me that's something
especially in the way we're treating
animals
to deliver that meat to the plate i
think about that a lot so i i do i'm a
robotics person ai person
and i think a lot about i don't know if
you think about this kind of stuff but
building ai systems as they become more
and more human-like
you start to ask the question of are we
okay
if we give
the capacity for ai systems to suffer
first to feel but then to suffer
um to hate and to love to feel emotion
how do we deal with that
it starts asking the same questions you
ask of animals
are we are we okay adding that suffering
to the world right
and i don't think we should add the
suffering because it's not necessary
like look if it's necessary right
because we're
you know survival or the first law of
nature and self-preservation
if you are in the desert and there's
nothing else to eat but that lizard
yeah yeah okay you gotta do what you
gotta do melissa's gotta go yeah you
gotta go you gotta do what you gotta do
because at the end of the day man is
when they say man has dominion over
these things
his dominion is almost like a caretaker
how the way we do our dominion we
dominate it eat it cook it yeah like who
who who's the first guy that looked at
the lobster
he was like i'm going to eat this thing
like it's it's
hard to eat it yeah you got to go
through a process to get that a crab i
remember we see crabs when we was kids
and i didn't know why i was always
getting itchy throats and all that you
know you care you don't know just eat
but at the end of the day a crab didn't
provide no more than
a finger worth of meat maybe
and it's hell getting that thing getting
it out
it's like it's not worth it in all
reality you could have gave me a
you could have gave me
a banana
and did better for my body
and my appetite
and my being fulfilled that's full
like look look at the blessings
of of of life right
if you take a seed
or you get an apple and you eat it
and that apple is multiple seeds in it
if you plant that seed it'll give you a
whole tree
with a whole bunch of apples with all
multiple seeds
but if you kill a fish
it can't reproduce done
yeah if you kill a cat it's done it's
not it's not they're coming back but
when you deal with the plants
even after you eat the apple
and then you defecate
your defecation is what feeds the ground
that cause the apple to grow more yeah
it's a circle of life and especially
there's a there's a guy named david
foster wallace he wrote a short
story called consider the lobster if you
actually think philosophically about
what
from a perspective of a lobster
that's like symbolic or something
because you're basically put
in in the water like cold water and then
it heats up slowly
until until it's no more torture yeah it
must have been like
they started eating lobsters in the
inquisition
yeah
they just enjoy so they they will
probably enjoy torturing animals and
they realize they're also delicious
after the torture is finished that's
probably how they discovered it
let me ask you a question i know you
asked me the questions but i want to
talk a little bit about the ai and you
said something about trying to uh put
the emotion in it yeah right
um
so do we so are you
thinking there's an algorithm for
emotion
yes
but i think emotion isn't something that
there's a
algorithm for for a particular system we
create emotions together so
emotion is something like this
conversation it's like magic we create
together so
um i have i've worked with quite a few
robots i've a very simple version of
that i've had you know roomba vacuum
cleaners
they're i've had them make different
sounds and one of them is like screaming
and pain like lightly and just having
them do that when you kick them or when
they run into stuff immediately
i start to feel something right so the
emotion okay so the emotion you're
saying is
impulse back on the human yeah but i'm
asking do you think there's an algorithm
for the emotion to being post from
machine to machine
yeah that that's a really good way to
ask it
um
it's it's difficult because i think
ultimately i only know how to exist in
the human world so it's like it's the
question of if a tree falls in the
forest nobody's there to see it does it
still fall
i i still think that ultimately machines
will have to
show emotion to other humans and that's
when it becomes real i've been thinking
about this a lot too
and uh
i just okay
i'm not gonna come hit you with this
because i've been thinking about this
thing this is just your field yeah
well do you think the emotion is wave
like light is wave and or think it's
particle
so emotion is just a small it's like a
shadow of something bigger and i think
that bigger thing is consciousness so
emotion is just a wave or a particle
i haven't i haven't thought about that
i have thought about it whether it's
there's somethin