Halftime: What are some things you’ve watched recently where you’re like damn that could be something nice to try and incorporate into a verse or a song?

GZA: Everything. Everyday it’s something it all depends. Sometimes it’s a phrase or action of someone. Sometimes it’s a story. When I wrote Killah Hills 10304 I was watching something about Pablo Escobar. I have a few tapes. I have some DVDs called ‘Lords of the Mafia’ where it goes into Columbia and Mexico where they was really getting it but you would never know I was talking about him because I didn’t mention any names. I just created a story. What made me write that song was I wanted to show these cats that talk all this gangsta stuff that this is the real level of getting it. So I put lines in there like ‘He planted bombs in bottles of champagne…’

Halftime: That’s my shit ‘When they popped the cork niggas lost half they brain.’

GZA: That was part of my imagination because he never did that in his story. Like I said I usually incorporate my imagination and then part of other stuff. Then I took stuff that he was doing when I said ‘The sharpshooters hit the prosecutors and judges were sent photographs of they wives taking baths.’ That’s what he was doing. He was sending judges photographs of their wives taking baths with a briefcase filled with $1.5. That’s the level of hustling. If you want to talk about hustling put it on a real high unique level of getting it, not just on the street. There are not too many street songs that are about hustling and getting down that can match the level of the Killah Hills song. Then I said, ‘His man who bought land from Tony Starks / while we were contracting brick laying jobs in city parks.’ It’s on a construction level but I’m still using bricks as a metaphor because most cats refer to bricks as kilos. ‘He’s a loan shark interest rates a grand to a finger.’ So for whatever grand over they took a finger but it was a run on sentence cuz I said he had a ‘finger in the garment district and got it sewn like singer’s.’ Singer is a well known sewing machine so it’s all in a metaphorical way. I said ‘this ex worker tried to smuggle a half a key / in his left leg even underwent surgery / they say his pirate limp gave him away as the feds rushed him / coming through U.S. customs.’ Then I went on because he got caught. I said ‘look who’s on the witness stand singing, a well known soprano, a smash hit from Sammy Gravano.’ I used the word soprano like four or five years before that show came on HBO. [The smuggler] was something I saw on another program about this kid who tried to cut his leg open to smuggle stuff in that way. He cut his leg open, put in half a brick and stitched it back up but his pirate limp gave him away. So its things like that. There are many ways to tell a great story. It doesn’t have to have a lot of killing, just certain twists and plots that raise the hair on your skin. You know how you watch a movie and it just has something so chilling but a lot of artists get the wrong idea. One time we had horrorcore. They said the Gravediggaz started that. A lot of cats be trying to scare you in that way and other emcees try and talk all that murder stuff but it’s just about creating an interesting story. That’s like when you said if you going to school why don’t people talk about school, it’s because they don’t know how to talk about school and make it interesting. We always did that when we were young. That’s why Dirty had the rhyme:

‘Approach my school 9:30 I’m late / but the time doesn’t have me to lose with the date / Get to your class walk up to your chair / flop in your seat and officially stare / at the teacher, the board but students are blocking you / lean back on the girl that was clocking you.’

That rhyme was written in ’84, he used it in ’95 because his flow was so incredible and with his style he was able to do that. Even routines like ‘When the emcees came’ we wrote that in the eighties. Not the rhyme the hook. We took a bit of the stuff from the past and incorporated it into the future. Sometimes we recycled stuff and used it for the right time. It’s all depends on how you write it. Writing is not a problem for me. I know I can tell an interesting story without going into detail. If you listen to ‘Exploitation of Mistakes’ I heard the beat and knew where I was going. I knew it was a story off top. Usually, when I hear a beat I know where to take it. When I heard that I knew it was a story, some type of murder mystery or something. I didn’t know exactly what I was gonna talk about then the first thing that came into my head was ‘two individuals found in a lake / inside a vehicle one had his foot on the break’. Then you weave the tale ‘The windows were fully up and the doors were locked / the news made the headlines and the town was shocked. / The driver was clutching a can of Hi-C / and his jacket was tied to a nearby tree.’ So I draw you in. I don’t have to tell you everything but you sitting like his jacket’s tied to a tree? You buggin now. I don’t have to give you details because we’re trying to solve a mystery. I just give you clues. That’s how it is with rhyming I just give you clues. If I was a flossy cat I’d blow half these cats out talking all this material shit. They don’t understand that. There are ways to kick a rhyme. I can be inside a Bentley but you may think I’m in a fly ass apartment by the way I’m describing the interior. A Bentley is plushed out so it’s how you deliver the words. There not supposed to know where you’re at till you roll the window down at the drive-thru at the end of the rhyme. You’re talking about carpet but not in a material way. You might speak about the blunt ash that fell on the carpet so the listener is like aiight there’s carpet around. You might talk about the sofa like I threw my book on the sofa. So now you know he sitting on a plush seat and he has carpet. Then you might mention the curtains. Some Maybachs have curtains so you can have a person think you’re in an apartment but all the while you’re in a vehicle. That’s how writing should be. You don’t have to be straight out and tell them I’m in my Audi or I’m in my Benz 600. It’s all in the writing but most writers aren’t going to take the time to do that you know what I’m saying.

Halftime: You mentioned ODB and I noticed on the joint with Muggs you have ‘All In Together Now,’ the dedication to Ol’ Dirty. That’s the first dedication that I’ve heard from the Wu camp. What did it mean for you to write that and what does his loss mean to the clan overall.

GZA: Well, his loss was a devastating blow. It was a shock to myself as well as the clan I’m sure. He was a good brother and we have a lot of history and memories of rhyming. The first time I went into the studio was in 1984 and it was me and Dirty recording a song together. We actually did a clan dedication song and it was supposed to come out on his album on Roc-A-Fella. I don’t even know if they used it but that was one song after I did this song. Actually, ‘All in Together,’ was written for Dirty way before he passed. I wrote that rhyme for him. Maybe about a year or two before he passed. The only thing I did after he passed was change everywhere it said I to he because now it’s me talking about him. Originally, it was like ‘I got my hands in everything including some pussy / from the Brazilian wax to the uncombed bushy / I was in King State psychiatric / they tried to put a code on my brain till I cracked it.’ Then I just changed the words like me and my to him or his. That was written for him. I couldn’t let it go to waste. I felt it would be good to dedicate it to him. The reason I wrote it is because of the state he was in at the time being locked up and in the psycho ward and all that. Dirt was somewhere else by the time he passed. I heard some of the songs he was doing and I’m pretty sure he might have had some people writing. As far as lyrically it wasn’t what it should have been. So I was writing. I tried to get with him. One time I called him because I heard some of the stuff he was doing and I said whoever is writing that is bullshit because that’s not you. I called and said yo I got some new songs for you and he was like ‘you got me some party shit?’ I was like fuck that party shit. See that’s probably where they was trying to get him to go that direction. Some of the songs I heard he was talking about champagne and clubbin. I mean he did love to party but I said Dirt that’s not you and I know you better than anybody as far as emceeing. People want to hear you and your experiences. You the type of nigga who said I came out my mother’s pussy, I’m on welfare! That’s what they want to hear not no back of the Vip champagne bubblin. I was like don’t try to be like these times and blend in with this shit. You have a story to tell and it was easy for me to incorporate because I visited him a few times and I know him. So that song was perfect for him. I wrote a few others for him that I haven’t used yet. They weren’t dedication songs. What makes this song different is I’m speaking about him. It’s like I jumped inside his body. A lot of dedication songs are like ‘I remember when we first did this’ Not to knock that but their so simple. I don’t talk about it in that sense. I just go to the scene or for the moment. Even in the third verse I said ‘That’s why the judge took a look at he and threw the book at the / the sentencing would have made the average crook happy.’ That’s him talking.

‘They put me in a box I was wrapped like a gift / in a straight jacket watched by two workers a shift / they gave no phone calls I saw no sunlight / I was like Billy the Kid in my last gunfight. / My days became weeks, my weeks became months / I carved a calendar on the cell wall with my fronts / my food was pushed in on a tray as it was shoved / through the cell by hands covered with latex gloves / the cooks in the kitchen had laced my drinks / them wild as physicians they was off the brink / I got visits from shrinks who came with the ink blots / moving with they own plot but the Dirt I think not.

That’s him. It wasn’t any problem for me to write anything for him. It was like we were writing together. I knew it was needed at the time. He was speeding and running around and he wanted to get an album out. He was over at the Roc and they didn’t know. They wouldn’t know him like I did. Maybe they were looking for party shit. A lot of times instead of letting him be himself they probably were looking for shit to bang in the clubs. All that shit you do when you chasing stuff. Fuck chasing shit. If I put out a song and it happens to be a club banger then it’s a club banger because of the beat. A lot of artists think that if you get a club beat that you automatically have to be in the club on it when you’re rhyming. If you listen to songs I grew up on in the 70s, we had songs with messages that were dance tracks. You’d be dancing but the song is a message.

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Posted by Jbutters on Saturday, April 15th, 2006 and is filed under HIP HOP ICON SERIES.