RZA
Parenting is something that I got early, because when you grow up without a father being there, and you see a single mother struggle to feed the kids, you do not want to put your own blood through that.Collection: Parenting
Because I have so many brothers and sisters, I think I'm able to have a certain patience.Collection: Patience
You come to my studio, it says 'No photography on premises.' I picked that up from Kanye. We don't need all that. In the old days in the Wu, we didn't allow anybody in the studio, not even women. We didn't start allowing women until five years after our debut. ODB used to get mad.
When you do something in music and see it happen again in the next generation, you know you're on the right wave length.
Of course black lives matter. All lives matter. I stopped eating meat because their lives matter to me. I don't think it's necessary for us to grow a cow to kill it.
If you let a man that you love or anybody - man, woman or child that you love - sit there and destroy themselves in front of you, you're neglecting them.
To me, Wu-Tang is beyond Wu-Tang Clan... It's just like, hip-hop is beyond Grandmaster Flash, but Grandmaster Flash was one of the first guys to hit those turntables like that. The same thing with Wu-Tang. You'll see the difference in hip-hop from the moment we came in to before we came in. We changed it. We changed the whole structure.
The whole first 100 Wu-Tang songs was made on an ASR-10.
So I was about 19 when I got my first SP-1200, and on that SP-1200, I made 'Bring The Pain' and a few other classic Wu joints.
We think it's a blessing that we were able to bring our music to the world. That our music has not only inspired our communities but other communities. That's one of the greatest things an artist in any field could know: that you've touched the mind of another artist.
We told you Wu-Tang was forever, and some people forgot that. It's not some fad.
I love the Bee Gees, and I love Barry Gibb and Andy Gibb. I listen to them almost every day.
'Grease?' I watch that film over and over.
In the past, when Jay-Z did 'Best of Both Worlds' with R. Kelly, I thought it was a great album, but the campaign went south because of personalities.
I stopped with the red meat, let go of turkey and chicken, and then I held onto fish. When we finished 'Wu-Tang Forever,' I felt like I evolved and completely dived into veganism.
I have to make beats every day. Wherever I go, I got a keyboard waiting for me.
I'm addicted to music.
I love Paul Simon... his lyrics.
Every time I make a new album, I get better and better.
I think exclusivity is important in life. When you look at a hot pair of Jordans, not everybody got them - it's a limited run. You look at guitars. When Gibson made the robot guitar, it was a limited run.
I'm a big fan of technology; I've been a geek since 1986... and I was spending all my paper money on gadgets.
You don't 'practice' martial arts; it's more like a way of life.
I always had this imagination about making colorful movies. I use to walk to school and daydream about it.
Growing up in New York, there are a lot of tenement buildings and a lot of projects. You don't leave your projects too much. The laundry's there. The grocery store is there. Everything takes place right there. When I got knowledge of myself and thought about moving around the city, hip-hop was something that helped me.
I have love for the entertainment side of the world.
The 'Godfather I' and 'II,' those were real straight movies in my life. At the same time, so is 'Five Deadly Venoms,' if we go into kung-fu movies.
I love W.C. Fields. I can watch all the Laurel & Hardys.
When I made hip-hop, I made hip-hop. I didn't make R&B or make it for the radio.
My wife and I go to movies every Wednesday.
I became a vegetarian in 1995. I had some fried chicken, and my teeth hit the bone. My mind said, 'Dead bird, dead bird.' It didn't feel right, so I stopped. I kept eating fish until one day, in 1997, the chef brought my ginger-fried snapper with the head still on it.
Directing is such a high. It's the hardest job ever, but I really love doing it.
When I was eight or nine years old, my older cousin took me to the St. George Theatre on Staten Island to see a Bruce Lee movie and a Jim Kelly movie. Those were my first martial-arts films, and I fell in love with the genre back then.
Everybody wants to be a good fighter.
I've helped save so many families with my music and inspire so many people.
One of my illest villains was the Butcher from 'Gangs of New York,' Daniel Day-Lewis.
That movie 'Hellraiser 2' - to me, that was the most evilest display of evil I've ever seen. I watched that movie ten times because I couldn't believe that each character became more evil than the other.
As a kid, I was naive. One thing I did have a dream of, though: I had a dream I would make a kung-fu movie.
As I grew older and got into the late teens and early 20s, I wanted to be a voice of the people. You know, getting locked up all the time and going through so much oppression and seeing it all around myself, I wanted to be a voice for it.
It brings me joy to hear that people are laughing at my scene in 'Due Date.'
I have a special style of frying tofu that even the most carnivorous meat-and-potatoes eaters enjoy.
The spaghetti Western genre is definitely one of favorites.
When you prepare for something, it's like jumping into cold water, but you're prepared. You jump in. And you start swimming, or if you don't swim, you drown.
Method Man is a rough, rugged street dude, but all the girls love him.
When you defeat somebody, you're not really defeating them: they're defeating themselves.
I'm me, and the me that's me is me and is going to continue to be me, and it's always reaching and growing.
I'm grateful for what I've accomplished. I'm grateful for anyone who thinks I accomplished something and says, 'Well he did this; he did that.'
I got a bad habit of creating.
Art - the beautiful thing about art, from my standpoint, is that it has no discrimination.
I've always believed food, like music, has the power to change our day and even shape our world.
The director can be a dictator, but it's not wise to be. You have to choose the days to be a dictator and the days to deal with diplomacy and democracy. Every great leader should know that, even a dictator. Tyrants get overthrown.