6. Chinese Raps
The kung fu influence on Wu Tang was not just lyrical but musical, as the RZA pointed out: “We always used these horn hits and percussion” that borrowed from movie soundtracks. Or as Raekwon once complained to him, “You’re still playing that Chinese shit.” RZA shrugged, and compared the Chinese five-tone musical scale to the musical vocabulary of the blues.
7. Shaolin vs. Julliard
The RZA has worked as an actor now and again, in films including American Gangster, Coffee and Cigarettes, and GI Joe: Retaliation. He said that there’s a unifying quality to his performances: “I act like a Chinese kung fu guy.”
8. Commissioning Gordon
The RZA directed the reverential 2012 kung fu film The Man with the Iron Fists; Mitchell touted an upcoming sequel, The Man with the Iron Fists 2. The RZA wanted Gordon Liu, the star of 36th Chamber, to appear in his film as an aged abbot. Liu was reluctant, the RZA said, until they met and he told him how his movies had changed his own life and he wanted to provide the same inspiration to a new generation. The clincher was the character’s dialogue, which RZA had to show him in person, because the lines “weren’t in the screenplay, only in my BlackBerry.”
9. Protect Ya Neck
“The Wu-Tang Clan, you’re looking at nine individuals who needed to come up for air. It was either swim or drown,” the RZA said. He spoke respectfully of Salt-n-Pepa and Run-D.M.C. as hip-hop pioneers who went to college, but opined that the difference with the Wu-Tang Clan was that seven of the nine members were felons, and were supposed to be dead or imprisoned.
10. Wu-Tang Forever
The RZA said he had internalized the movie’s themes of sacrifice, brotherhood, and “the self-discipline of building yourself.” He cited the five-year saga of self-improvement that San Te went through, and compared it to the recording of “Ice Cream” (the 1995 Raekwon single), when he was willing to stay up all night in search of the right sound while other producers might have gone to sleep. The Wu-Tang Clan’s DJ, Mathematics, had come over to observe the session, but fell asleep. At 7 A.M., the RZA said, he completed the track — and when Mathematics woke up, and heard how it had evolved “from a snare to one of Wu-Tang’s biggest songs,” he was inspired to become a producer himself.
Article Appeared @http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/features/re-enter-the-36th-chamber-the-rza-on-a-kung-fu-movie-classic-20140924