Music
Face to Ghostface
Ghostface Killah was in town for just ONE night as he played London's Shoreditch House for RBMA. We hung out with him for a bit before the show.
When you and the rest of Wu-Tang get together, do your spirits combine to create one unstoppable force?
Sometimes. It depends. If everyone is under that one spirit then it's on. It's on! There's no stopping it - and with the crowd too? It just doubles. It's right there. BOOM. That's why it is important in hip-hop, when you're doing the order of your album, to keep someone there to listen to your album all the way through. With a lot of my albums people can listen to them all the way through because of how I order it. You don't want to start off too slow. You want to start off up tempo and strong, then bring it down a little and take it back up. On stage when we're doing our Wu-Tang songs - you have to have these songs that sound good coming after one another, that keep the crowd right there with you going crazy. Even people in Wu-Tang with solo deals don't understand the science of that.
And when you're all on stage, do you feel ODBs energy and spirit with you?
Yes. Especially when we start doing ODB songs. I felt it crazily much more back when he passed away. If he was here, and I can't really say, but I believe if he was here in his right mind – remember he went through some sh*t which bugged him out. But if he was here as the Ol' Dirty that we know - the Return of the 36 Chambers Ol' Dirty Bastard? The game would be the same but Ol' Dirty woulda been the king of that. I think he would have been on everybody's song and they'd be calling for him, because he don't give a f*ck about nothing. It would have been crazy. He would have had more hits and I think we would have more hits too because we'd got this motherf*cker.
Do you find it weird that you can travel almost anywhere in the world and find someone with a Wu-Tang W tattoo or it drawn on their bag or on their clothes?
I've been everywhere - Poland, Russia, Japan.. They've got it. They've got it more than any other group in the world. I don't know, but I would love to bet on that because Wu-Tang just left a mark on hip-hop in that era. We probably could have come in, in this era and been strong but not as strong as how we was. For that era I think we left something with a lot of people that they will never forget. We're like a cult. We've got a cult following and for you to put a tattoo on you..! I'm not putting a motherf*cker's name on my body! I've not got one tattoo – for someone to put that on their body, it's not just out of respect, it's because they love you. I've seen my face on motherf*cker's legs. This one motherf*cker pulled down his pants one time and showed me a tattoo of Ol' Dirty. On his thigh. Goddamn - on the arms, everything. For you to put my face on you - and you f*cking your girl? You know what I mean? It's like wow, nahmean? It's incredible. They're going to grow old with that. You know when you get to 50 or 60, your skin's going to get all wrinkled. There's going to be a bunch of wrinkled W's walking around a motherf*cking house. They're dying and going to the grave with that. I'm in the circle, but I don't understand the power to that magnitude. This is powerful sh*t – someone inked you for life and then you're going to die. Do you know how many people with Wu-Tang tattoos have died already – shot in the street or in a car crash? I wonder how many motherf*ckers have did that, B? That are gone already – but then there are motherf*ckers who are going to live to 80 or 90 years old with that sh*t on them? All praise is due to God, the most high and I thank him for letting him be a part of Wu-Tang. This team, these guys that came and made a mark. I felt it in my gut that we were going to do something, but I didn't know it was going to be something like this.
Have you listened back to
?
No.
You don't know what it sounds like?
I know what it sounds like, but I haven't listened to it back. When I was doing it, I heard the record with people on it, but I haven't heard it all the way back to back of each other. I sent my verses in and I heard some of the songs with everybody on it, but I just do my sh*t and I don't give a f*ck about it no more. I do that with my own sh*t. I do records and I'm tired of hearing it as I have to listen to it over and over and over. For this particular record I didn't get to really hear it as an album: that's song number one, that's song number two, that song's number three... I just know the seven or eight songs I did. It's a beast. Some people might see it like, 'this is too hip-hop for me.' Nahmean? Too hip-hop might sound like '93ish. It was alright the sh*t that I heard. No, it was not alright, it was good. It was wow! Oh shit!
