RZA Breaks Down Hip-Hop’s Cultural Lineage On The Joe Rogan Experience

When three distinctive personalities sit down for one roundtable discussion, you can expect a few gems to fly. Legendary artist RZA and actor slash comedian Donnell Rawlings (The Wire) recently linked up for a conversation on The Joe Rogan Experience, which spanned a little over two hours long. For the most part, Donnell was running amok, dropping jokes and bantering at every opportunity; while hilarious, it did overshadow RZA’s more soft-spoken nature, which proved frustrating for some. Still, Bobby Digital dropped a few notable gems, showing a deep level of cultural awareness within hip-hop’s DNA.

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“Hip-hop is a pure American culture,” explains RZA. “When it was formed, a lot of young black men, going back to Hool Herc, Grandmaster Flash, Melle Mel, Spoony G, Grandmaster Caz. Within Grandmaster Caz’s crew The Cold Crush Brothers, you had Charlie Chase. You got the Spanish brother there. Our first hip-hop songs we loved, LL Cool J’s “Rock The Bells,” guess who produced that? Rick Rubin. You got the white brother there. The youth culture of America at that time…all these things was melding from our culture. It’s a dominantly black expression. We dominated the culture. It took angles from every part of New York to make it exist. It took our Spanish brothers and their culture, it took our white brothers and their culture. And then when Wu-Tang came we brought the Asian culture in.”

Dubbing it an “inclusive American art-form,” RZA explains that people should be proud of how hip-hop came to manifest. He also details his extremely niche diet, the game’s changing business practices, and gems for days. Check out the Wu-Tang style courtesy of JRE.