back to indexRZA: Wu-Tang Clan, Kung Fu, Chess, God, Life, and Death | Lex Fridman Podcast #228
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The following is a conversation with RZA.
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The rapper, record producer, filmmaker, actor, writer,
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philosopher, Kung Fu scholar, and the mastermind
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of the legendary hip hop group Wu Tang Clan.
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This is the Lex Friedman podcast.
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To support it, please check out our sponsors
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in the description.
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And now, here's my conversation with RZA.
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In the Tao of Wu, you write,
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when my mother left the physical world, I lost one
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of my main links to the universe.
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They say that you have an umbilical cord
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and an etheric cord, which is the invisible cord
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that attaches you to your soul, your mother's soul
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and all other souls.
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When one passes away, you really lose something.
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It's physical and mental.
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What have you learned about life from your mother?
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I mean, I learned life itself from my mother.
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You know, being one of 11 children
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and seeing the sacrifice that she gave to us,
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therefore given to life.
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It's really the greatest lesson of life.
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The thing that shook me as I wrote those words
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was coming up young with arrogance, confidence,
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knowledge of myself.
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They called me the scientist.
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We was taught you're the supreme being.
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In order to be the supreme being,
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you gotta be supreme amongst other beings.
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I understand that more now than I did then
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because then it was so literal.
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You know, the word God derived basically
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from the Greek language, as they say,
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and it meant wisdom, strength and beauty.
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Yeah, we could have that.
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But the power to control life and death
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is something that you would assume is a God trait.
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So now here you are saying that you're a God, right?
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And you're reading the Bible,
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how Jesus brought back Lazarus.
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And you know, now it's your turn to do something.
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And when my mother was laying there in the hospital bed
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and air was no longer coming out of her lungs
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and going into her lungs,
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where's my power to bring her back to life?
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Yeah, so you can't truly be God.
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Yeah, or God is not the definition
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that we need to use to describe it
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because it's a translation of wisdom, strength and beauty.
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So you could be that.
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But so I'm answering your question,
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what did my mother teach me about life?
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I learned that day on her physical passing,
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that okay, you know what I mean, there's a physical me.
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Do you think about her, do you miss her?
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Of course, I keep my mother in my prayer every day.
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And the thing I pray the most beyond giving thanks
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is I pray that her name is honored
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and remembered by my family.
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I don't know if the world's gonna remember that, right?
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Even though if you watch my movie, Love Beats Rhymes,
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I named the school in that movie after my mother
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just to leave it somewhere else.
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Yeah, in physical space.
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But yeah, painful.
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The pain of my mother's passing is indescribable.
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Only until it happens to a person they know
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and then they won't describe it either.
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Only the people that lost their mother,
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they could look at each other and they got this nod.
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You know what I mean?
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But one other thing happened to me was the joy of life
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hit me differently.
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And I think it was the realization of my own mortality
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versus my immortality.
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It's a big, big thing.
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And I don't know if we'll get to expound on that,
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but there was a joy that overcame me
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because I was kind of free of a certain illusion
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about the immortality of my physical being
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versus the mortality of my physical being.
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And I was like, okay, wow, I understand.
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So that was the first or the hardest realization
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you've experienced that you're mortal.
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And I'll say mortal and what you're looking at here
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physically, I won't say my soul is mortal.
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I'll say it's immortal because at the end of the day,
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it's just like I can sit here and I could just hum,
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please, please, please, by James Brown.
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But James Brown is not gonna come in here and do that.
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So in some sense, James Brown is still here.
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In another sense, he's gone.
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Well, it lives through you by you singing it.
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It lives through you by you listening to it, celebrating it.
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And the hope is that the human species continues
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to celebrate the great minds
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and the great creations of the past.
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I will add this to that equation.
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When I say it's immortal,
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I don't think it's not just only
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because somebody sings it, right?
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It's like, where's the fire at right now?
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You just gotta spark the spark.
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So it's always there.
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Are you afraid of death?
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Nah, I'm not afraid of death.
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I'm not trying to see it.
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I'm not watching that nowhere near me, right?
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Because all I know is life, right?
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My life is living.
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I read a lot of ancient texts,
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people probably know about me.
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I love one of the great teachers named Bodhidharma.
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And there was a thing written in one of the books of his
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or one of the teachings of his.
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And the question, somebody asked him similar question,
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you're scared of death or what are you gonna be
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And his answer was, I don't know.
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He had answers to everything.
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But he was like, I don't know.
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They said, oh, he doesn't know that.
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So yeah, because I haven't died yet.
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Yeah, well, the uncertainty to some people is terrifying.
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Not knowing what's on the other side of the door.
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I mean, especially when you're young.
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You know, as a kid, fear permeated my life.
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You know what I mean?
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You know, I was actually watching horror movies
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and I believed in all type of supernatural things
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that could or can happen.
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I thought I saw things as well.
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And you know, whether it was being projected
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in my own mind or whether it was there visible to me,
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I don't know, right?
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But life is beautiful and we have it.
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And we should use it all the way to the last drop.
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Realizing the mortality, the gift your mother gave to you
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is realizing the immortal.
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And in so doing, help you realize that life is beautiful.
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On this topic, Quincy Jones, I read, said to ODB and you,
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when it rains, get wet.
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What do these words mean to you?
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Well, I think what Quincy was saying at that time was,
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you know, I think I was more conservative,
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And like, you know, I had money.
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Anything I kind of wanted, I probably could have had.
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You know what I mean?
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And he was just saying, when it rains, get wet.
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It's raining on you.
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You know what I mean?
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Don't put up the umbrella.
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Don't go back in the house.
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Experience the moment.
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Yeah, and enjoy it.
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And I didn't take total heed to him at that time.
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A couple of years later, I took some heed.
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But at that time, I didn't take heed.
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And when I took heed,
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I think that I may have misinterpreted
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by looking at his example of getting wet
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versus my example of getting wet.
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And I can tell you right now,
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I'm getting wet right now in my way.
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In part, thanks to your mother.
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But overall, you just learned how to appreciate the rain,
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just like the experience of every moment.
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Yeah, and I'll share this with you
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because this is going to be a very open conversation
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and I haven't had this conversation.
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So definitely in part to my mother,
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then in part to my wife.
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I meet my wife, it's my second wife,
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but I met her after my mother passed.
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And she was just a friend.
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You know, some girl I met, I thought she was beautiful
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and actually built a friendship with her.
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But a few years later, when the relationship became like,
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you know, this is going to be my woman,
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it was actually when I was doing the middle of my divorce
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and I was like, you know, do I run wild and hey, hey, hey,
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you know, me and my wife already filed, we were separated.
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And do I run wild?
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And I didn't run wild, a little bit, but not too wild.
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And you know, I'm still a man, I'm a hip hop guy, so.
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I read you know how to party.
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But the funny thing is that my wife now, her name is Talani,
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my uncle said, she reminds me of your mother.
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He knew my mother before I knew my mother.
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And he saw that and we ended up dating, got engaged
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and then her mother passes.
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And so now there's a total understanding of everything.
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And we actually help build each other back up.
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So of course I have to thank my mother for the awareness.
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Then I thank my wife for bringing that awareness
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to actual actualization, like to actually feel,
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I don't think I'll be talking to you right now
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and talking as much as I do these days,
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if it wasn't for the security and peace and harmony
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that I was able to gain at home, you know, so.
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And like you said, you now share that look
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of having both lost your, your mom.
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What have you learned from Quincy about music,
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about business, about life?
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Quincy Jones is a great mind, great artist, you know,
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a treasure in all reality.
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He seen it from when it was, he couldn't walk in this,
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he couldn't eat in the same places he played his music at
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to owning places bigger than ours.
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So what a beautiful life, you know?
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He's the type of guy, if you spend one hour with him,
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you got a lifetime of information.
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And I was blessed to spend multiple hours with him
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and days with him.
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And, you know, there's a certain period of time
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where we came across each other and he was always
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there to share the knowledge.
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Like that's another thing about him that I think is special.
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And hopefully I picked that up,
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is that he's always willing to share,
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share with his experience, his knowledge.
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I mean, I think he'll even share his home
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to the right person if he feels that that's what they need
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to get back on their feet.
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He's a very beautiful man.
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So just the kindness, the goodness of the man
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is like the thing that really rubbed off on you.
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Yeah, I mean, minimum, right?
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I mean, Quincy Jones also in his fifties,
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as a producer, produced one of the greatest albums
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of all time and one of the greatest selling albums
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Not just great critically, economically great.
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And I mean, I think he did it at the age I am right now.
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So I might have a great year coming up.
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Time and well, yeah.
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So now you got a taste of what greatness is.
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You get to see what greatness is.
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So you know what you need to do for yourself.
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Exactly, how to strive for yourself, yeah.
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You have a few people you've worked with
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who are fascinating like yourself.
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Quentin Tarantino, you worked with him.
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When somebody asked you to describe him with one word,
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you said encyclopedia.
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What have you learned from the guy
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about filmmaking and about life again?
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A very generous man with his knowledge.
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And for me, he shared it, I think,
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in a way that was unique in a sense of,
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you know, at a point in time,
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you know, we just was super duper tight.
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Like, you know, like I'm going to this crib
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and watching movies and just having long conversations
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about art and about life.
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You know what I mean?
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So I learned a lot.
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I consider him, you know,
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especially when it comes to anything cinematic in my life,
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I consider him the godfather of that for me.
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I think, you know, I humbly asked him to mentor me,
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which is a very humbling thing to do
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coming from my neighborhood, coming from who I am,
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coming from, I was already a multi platinum artist,
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you know, I mean, it was a year,
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it was past the year 2000 already.
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So like 2001, 2002 that I asked him to mentor me.
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So I was the wizard already, you know what I mean?
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But I humbled myself because I saw in him
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a craft of brain power that to me resonated with me,
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but I was just a Patamon at it, I was a novice at it
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because I was trying to make movies in my music,
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you know, trying to make videos.
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And here was a man who was a master of it
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and an encyclopedia of it as well.
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Like film history.
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Film history from whether it's the actor,
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the director, the cinematographer,
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maybe even the costume designer.
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He may know 50, 60,
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he may know the 50 greatest costume designers
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Yeah, I mean, it's a guy's brain.
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Both of you have pretty good memory.
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I'd love to be a fly on the wall of that conversation.
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And kung fu movies, most of you guys want.
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We actually started,
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I think we started our relationship
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trying to outdo each other.
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Knowledge wise or what?
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Yeah, movie knowledge wise.
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Actually kung fu movie knowledge wise.
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And I think that, if it wasn't another category,
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I wouldn't have had a chance,
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but at least in that category,
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I was pretty holding my weight.
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I'll be honest and say that I may have said a few,
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he didn't see, but Quentin is older than me.
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So he could go back.
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Yeah, he could go back to 72
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when I didn't see one yet.
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You know what I mean?
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Well, he said Master of the Flying Gate Team
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that I got a chance to,
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that you commentated over today
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and I got a chance to see the screening of.
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He said that's one of his favorites.
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For you, the 36 Chamber of Shaolin,
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the Master Killer is your favorite.
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Best ever, would you say?
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That's the greatest Kung Fu movie ever?
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It's hard to say the greatest ever, right?
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Because somebody may make another one
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and it depends on your own phase of life.
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But I will put that first.
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If I want to introduce somebody to Kung Fu movies,
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that's a beautiful entry.
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You talk about knowledge, you talk about wisdom.
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What kind of wisdom do you draw from Kung Fu movies?
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The, you know what?
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The martial art itself and the movies.
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It's endless wisdom to be drawn and I draw it, you know?
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I draw it in a way, you know,
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that I could decipher it in my own life.
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So for instance, in the movie, Master Killer,
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he basically, when he does Kung Fu,
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he does it really a style called the Hung Ga technique.
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And the director of the movie
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is actually a Hung Ga expert who has a lineage
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that traces all the way back to Shaolin Temple.
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And this director always wanted to keep his movies pure
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and to bring Hung Ga to the world.
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It's like he wanted to show the world this lineage.
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In fact, you just said Master of the Flying Guillotine
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is Quentin's favorite movie.
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And we mentioned that 36 Chambers is my favorite movie,
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but the action director of Master of Flying Guillotine
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is the director of 36 Chambers of Shaolin.
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And some of the things that's happening
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in Master of the Flying Guillotine
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is really the infant stage
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of what this action director is going to learn
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and then use later on in his movies.
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So that's the beauty of it.
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It's almost like, you know,
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Quentin is seeing him in his generation.
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So Quentin might have been the same age I was
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watching that movie.
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And then when he becomes a director,
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I'm at Quentin's age and now I'm seeing his work.
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So some symbionic relationship there.
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And I'll end this question by saying,
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Hung Ga deals with the five animal technique,
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the tiger, the crane, the leopard, the snake, and a dragon.
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Those are the five, that's the five pattern.
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Some people go seven, some go 12,
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but it's a stick to the five pattern fist.
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How do a man emulate a tiger?
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And you see a tiger's fists.
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He curls before he spawns on you.
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How does a man emulate a snake?
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It doesn't have to be only in the Kung Fu move.
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It's in the ideology of the snake.
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It's in the agility of the crane.
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At any moment, sometimes punching a person
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is not going to work,
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as they would say in leopard fist or tiger paw.
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So sometimes you might have to poke them in the eye
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with the crane's beak.
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So having your mind able to adapt the instinct
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of the animal when you are being attacked
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or when you are being the aggressor,
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that's something that you don't need a form for.
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That's the mentality.
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So Kung Fu, like I said, it informs me endlessly
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because at first I was trying to learn how to hold my,
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like, I can't really hit you with that
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and really hurt you unless I've been banging my hand
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a thousand times on some bricks
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and made it so callous or muscles are so strong.
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But the idea that if me and you was to get into a fight
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and I'm going to tiger up on you and take that instinct
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and prance when I'm a prance,
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or fly away like the stork, you know what I mean?
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Like, yo, that's the mentality.
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It's much more than the technical moves.
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Yeah, it's interesting.
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I mean, when I see the Kung Fu movies,
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because I love martial arts, all martial arts,
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and competitive ones too,
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like the actual competitions and so on.
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It just seems like Kung Fu movies go much deeper
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than just like the techniques.
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Yeah, they start, I mean, if you see it, right,
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even I watched the great MMA fight recently,
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just interesting because he was on top of the guy,
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and the way he got from under him,
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it had to be his spirit got from under him.
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It's some like mixture of crane and whatever.
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Snake, ill, with the slippery ill technique.
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No, I love that when people become artists in the cage
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or that's much bigger than just like winning,
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much bigger than particular techniques.
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It's just art, especially at the highest level competition
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where millions of people are watching.
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Which is pressure within itself.
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Yeah, that's art under pressure
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is even more beautiful art.
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You know, you look at some of these fights
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and you wonder like why somebody wins and lose.
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And sometimes the less talent guy could win
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because he could deal with the pressure.
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But the other guy, he could have beat them
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if they were somewhere else, but not in this arena.
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So you're a scholar of history, including hip hop history.
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I've listened to so many of your interviews.
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You've spoken brilliantly about some of the big figures
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in hip hop history, Tupac, Biggie, Nas, many others.
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Maybe let's look at Tupac and Biggie.
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What made them special in the history of music?
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Mm, that's a good question.
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So I don't know if I'm the authority to answer it,
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but I'll just speak my piece on it.
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And maybe I could just add on.
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Cause I'm sure it's a lot of people
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that spent a lot of time with them that could speak on it.
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But just as a fellow artist,
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I think not only was B.I.G a dope lyricist,
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I think he had a voice that was really immaculate.
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In a sense that some rappers get on top of music
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and you gotta get used to them
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when you gotta vibe with them.
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But he make a record sounds like a record immediately.
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If you go back and listen to his music,
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you could take his voice and put it on anything.
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And for some reason, it sounds like a record.
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You know what I mean?
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You mean just like the raw voice of the man?
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So you could just listen to it raw
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and it sounds like a record.
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Yeah, but if you put a beat,
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take his voice and put it on any beat,
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he just has a voice, it's immaculate, you know?
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So his lyrical skills and all that was great.
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And you gotta think once again, he's doing all this,
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he's not even 25 years old.
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And then you go to Pac, once again, immaculate voice.
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But what Pac had, I think,
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was a way of touching us on all of our emotions.
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And especially on, like Pac had the power
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to infuse your emotional thought.
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Like Brenda has a baby, their mama.
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But then he had the power to arouse the rebel in you.
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And those two things, actually,
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he was probably more dangerous than Big, Notorious B.I.G.
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Like Notorious B.I.G., we could party with him.
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To this day, we are still,
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but Pac was probably going to a point,
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he was more going into the Malcolm X of things
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and society fears that.
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Yeah, so he was really good at communicating love
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and at starting revolutions.
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And that's dangerous.
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And they communicated love,
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but he wasn't starting revolutions.
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Well, it's interesting to think about
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what the world would be like if they were still with us.
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But it's the way of the world.
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Hendrix, a lot of those guys just go too soon.
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Yeah, it's a peculiar thing.
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Now, you asked me earlier, am I scared of death?
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And I answered, you know, I'm not scared of death.
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I'm not trying to see it, though.
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You know what I mean?
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It's like, that was the block of death.
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It's like, I'm not really going right there right now.
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I'm making a left or right turn.
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You know what I mean?
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Unless it was mandatory for some greaterness, greater good.
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It's like, okay, I got to drive through that.
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You know what I mean?
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Yeah, but it can still happen.
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That's the meditation on death part,
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where you could die at the end of today.
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Yeah, you could die.
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Well, dying and death, I think,
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is two different things, personally.
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The process you mean of death or just?
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Yeah, I mean, you could die.
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Like I said, you could die every day.
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You could die and not be yourself.
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You know what I mean?
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But to get to a point of no return,
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you know, that's a whole nother chamber.
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I mean, there's some sense in which
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RZA, the producer, becomes somebody else completely
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when you're making a film,
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becomes somebody else completely
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when you're, I don't know, playing chess,
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becomes completely something different
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when you do kung fu or watch kung fu
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or when you're a family man.
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All of those are little deaths
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when you transition from one place to another.
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So it's not like you're one being.
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You're many things.
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I would describe, now I would describe that
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as all life, dawg.
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Outside of you and anybody on Wu Tang,
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who is the greatest rapper from a lyrics,
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like a Wart Smith perspective in hip hop history
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or some of the greatest, maybe some candidates?
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I mean, you're gonna have to start with Rakim.
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You're gonna have to pick Coogee Rap in there.
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You know what I mean?
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Yeah, you're gonna have to pick up
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with those brothers first.
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You might have to, if you want to get,
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technically you might have to start with Grandmaster Cass.
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You know what I mean?
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Who you might not even heard of.
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You know what I mean?
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But you may have sung his lyrics
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every time you sang Sugar Hill, Rapper's Delight.
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Yeah, they copied his and they made it theirs.
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That's my point being made, but I'll name a couple more.
link |
I gotta pick Nas in that category.
link |
You know, we got a chess board in front of us
link |
and one of the greatest chess players,
link |
the youngest Grandmaster, you know, before I think Carlson,
link |
All right, so let's use Bobby Fisher as American.
link |
One of the greatest American chess players.
link |
Of course, Susan Polgar may have tied his record
link |
as the youngest Grandmaster
link |
and she's the youngest female Grandmaster, I think to date.
link |
But he was a master at what, 14?
link |
Yeah, something like that.
link |
So now to me, I met Nas when he was 15.
link |
He was already a master lyricist.
link |
It takes about 10 years to become a master lyricist.
link |
So by the time the world heard Wu Tang,
link |
most of us had 10 years of rapping in us already.
link |
So that's why you met us at mastery level.
link |
The Jizzer was already a master when Nas was a master,
link |
but Jizzer was 21, Nas was 15.
link |
Nas is like the Mozart of rap.
link |
Or the Bobby Fisher.
link |
Just Bobby Fisher, just born something in him.
link |
Or maybe those early years,
link |
just because he's not just good at the lyrics.
link |
He's also, he goes deep with it.
link |
So he's like, there's depth.
link |
It's not just like mastery of the word smithing.
link |
It's just the message you actually get sent across.
link |
Into a small phrase, right?
link |
That's the whole thing of energy.
link |
How do we condense all that energy into this
link |
so that it could fuel that?
link |
And he's definitely one of those artists,
link |
MCs that does that.
link |
And he was doing it at 15.
link |
Like I said, I think I'm five years
link |
or four or five years older than Nas.
link |
So I was always feeling my confidence
link |
of what I was doing.
link |
But I was like, this kid is only 15.
link |
I gotta step up my game.
link |
When he turned 19, then we got Illmatic.
link |
From you, what are the best and most memorable lyrics
link |
you've ever written?
link |
Well, that's a hard question for me.
link |
The stuff stand out?
link |
Like stuff you're really proud of
link |
that was like important in your career?
link |
Yeah, I mean, I think I did a song called Sunshower.
link |
I don't know if we put it on the Wu Tang Forever double CD,
link |
but only on the international version.
link |
But if anybody could go get those lyrics
link |
and write those lyrics down,
link |
you could just put that in your pocket.
link |
And I'm sure that it'll answer at least about 25%
link |
of your life's problems.
link |
Well, that's a good one.
link |
Sunshine, where you talk about religion and God,
link |
I think it's on A Diagram.
link |
I'm not a record guy.
link |
Might have been A Diagram.
link |
Do you have a lyric from it?
link |
Yeah, the answer to all questions.
link |
You're talking about God.
link |
The spark of all suggestions, of righteousness,
link |
the pathway to the road of perfection,
link |
who gives you all and never asks more of you,
link |
the faithful companion that fights every war with you.
link |
Before the mortal view of the prehistorical historical,
link |
he's the all in all you searching for the oracle.
link |
That's a good line, man.
link |
A mission impossible is purely philosophical,
link |
but you can call on your deathbed
link |
when you're laying in the hospital.
link |
You will call on your deathbed.
link |
I had a big, I have a scientist friend.
link |
Well, my wife's best friend, Rebecca,
link |
she married a scientist.
link |
They both scientists.
link |
They both were scientists, and she married Dr. Neil.
link |
I ain't going to say their last names.
link |
But Neil and Rebecca, my wife's best friend, so they come over.
link |
And me and Neil, we go through the longest debates
link |
of science and religion.
link |
We could go break day with it.
link |
And before he had a child, he was more adamant.
link |
And I don't believe in God.
link |
You know what I mean?
link |
After a child, he still kept his thing.
link |
But I just hit him with the question.
link |
If you was about to die, because now you
link |
got a child to think about, right?
link |
It's different when you're thinking about yourself.
link |
If you was about to die, you don't
link |
think you're going to make that call.
link |
He's like, I'll make that call.
link |
And it kind of inspired my lyric, because it was like,
link |
yeah, you're going to.
link |
And I just want to say, as far as you mentioned lyrics,
link |
that is one of my favorite lyrics.
link |
But that's part two to Sunshower was the prequel to Sunshine.
link |
So if you ever get a chance to check out Sunshower,
link |
start us off with, trouble follows a wicked mind.
link |
2020 vision of the prism of life,
link |
but still blind because you lack the inner.
link |
So every sinner could end up in the everlasting winter
link |
But thorns and splinters prick your eye out.
link |
Your words fly out.
link |
You remain unheard.
link |
Suffering internal and external,
link |
along with the wicked fraternal of genitals and kernels,
link |
letting off thermal nuclear heat that burns you firmly
link |
and permanently upon the journey through the journal
link |
of the book of life.
link |
For those who took a life without justice
link |
will become just ice.
link |
It's been taught your worst enemy couldn't harm you
link |
as much as your own wicked thoughts.
link |
But people ought to be not unless in war.
link |
So they find themselves persecuted
link |
inside their own universal court.
link |
So it's a long one.
link |
It's like a three pager.
link |
Wow, that is about life.
link |
That's like character integrity, how to be in this world.
link |
And that ultimately connects to God.
link |
I'm glad you just asked that question because I actually,
link |
I'm going to have to make a distinguishable separation here.
link |
And it's funny because I heard recently,
link |
I heard a rabbi was debating with this historian, Dr. Ben.
link |
I can't pronounce Dr. Ben name, but it was debating.
link |
And in the debate, they started going back
link |
through the etymology.
link |
They went way back beyond antiquity
link |
because they was debating.
link |
And so there was some things that was going deep.
link |
And they really went far, far back to kind
link |
of the first word of God.
link |
And when they pronounced it on this particular debate,
link |
And they said from that, they got Elohim.
link |
I've already agreed in my heart and my life
link |
that the father of this universe, proper name is Allah.
link |
And of course, in Allah, I get all.
link |
And I don't think that God is the same as that.
link |
I think Allah gives birth to God.
link |
In fact, if you take the word Allah, A L L A H,
link |
and you take it through numerology or numbers,
link |
the number letter A being 1, L being 12,
link |
and you add it all up to the last denominator,
link |
you're going to get the number 7.
link |
And the number 7 is going to bring you right back
link |
to that letter G. So Allah borns God,
link |
but God don't born Allah.
link |
How does that guy, how does Allah,
link |
connect to the oracle that you're
link |
going to be calling for when you're laying in the hospital?
link |
Well, what I was saying in that particular verse was that we're
link |
looking for the oracle.
link |
We're looking for somebody else or something
link |
to help us that nobody can really help you
link |
at the end of the day.
link |
So now that we, I don't want to say we're speaking on religion,
link |
but we're speaking on a way of life and a way of thinking.
link |
And I've read many books, of course.
link |
And I could say there's no book that my,
link |
the book that is the most strongest book I've ever read
link |
is actually the Holy Quran.
link |
It's stronger to me than the Bible, which I've read.
link |
It's stronger than quantum physics, which I've read.
link |
It's stronger than the Bhagavad Gita.
link |
It's just, and I read once a British scholar
link |
said it's the most stupidest book ever written.
link |
And it doesn't make sense.
link |
And so I said, oh, I see why he says that.
link |
I understand exactly why he said that as well.
link |
Because the structure of the words are just, it's peculiar.
link |
You know what I mean?
link |
But it's almost like how some people's songs,
link |
you don't really know exactly what
link |
they say until years later.
link |
Yeah, you have, actually with Joe Rogan,
link |
I think you talked about how a joke of Dave Chappelle's
link |
hit you like a long time after this.
link |
So this is kind of like the Quran.
link |
I tend to believe that we human beings cannot possibly
link |
understand anything as big as these ideas.
link |
So just, I don't know.
link |
Did you think that, like are you humble in the face
link |
of just the immensity of it?
link |
To be honest, yes.
link |
I'm humble in the face of the, if you could say the word
link |
again, I pronounce words funny.
link |
The omnipotence, the omnescence, the magnitude,
link |
I'm humble in the face of Allah.
link |
The problem that I may have had was
link |
that I wasn't humble in the face of God
link |
because it's just a definable thing.
link |
And that's why I think a lot of us, and I'm not saying that,
link |
you know, I know when we say God we're trying to say Allah.
link |
Like people are saying that, but you're actually
link |
not saying the same thing because you're actually
link |
putting something beside him.
link |
And that's the reason why you can have as many gods.
link |
You can find a whole bunch of them, you know what I mean?
link |
But you're not going to find many.
link |
There's no body beside Allah.
link |
So I know it's a whole thing, but that's my heart is there.
link |
I'm humbled by it.
link |
I'm at peace with it.
link |
And it doesn't take nothing or demerit anything from myself.
link |
That's the beauty of it.
link |
It doesn't take nothing from me from being who I feel.
link |
So if I say, if somebody woke up, yo, peace, God.
link |
I could take that because they're telling me that, yo,
link |
I'm a man of wisdom.
link |
I'm a man of strength.
link |
I'm a man of beauty.
link |
Or some attribute of that, you know what I mean?
link |
So Wu Tang, they the gods of rap.
link |
There's wisdom there.
link |
There's strength there.
link |
They will take that.
link |
So Wu Tang is one of the greatest
link |
musical, artistic, philosophical groups ever.
link |
Let's look hundreds of years from now
link |
when humans or robots or aliens or whatever that's left here,
link |
What do you hope they remember about Wu Tang?
link |
What do you hope the legacy is?
link |
Well, even if it's thousands of years,
link |
I hope we don't get rid of the humans.
link |
But you know, look, whatever happens is going to happen.
link |
But I think that my philosophy on it
link |
is that we're going to continue to advance and continue
link |
to advance things around us.
link |
But I don't see us becoming extinct.
link |
Well, I mean, the reason I bring up Wu Tang in that context,
link |
and this is a special moment in human history.
link |
It's like 100 years, and we've created all of this music.
link |
Just if you think of all the richness of music that's
link |
been created over 100 years, it's
link |
not obvious to me that that's not going to stop.
link |
There's a flourishing here.
link |
So it's funny because I could see
link |
where the book of human history is written.
link |
There's a chapter on this period of time.
link |
And one of the things we did well is
link |
all the technological innovation with the rockets
link |
and with the internet.
link |
But then there's also the musical innovation
link |
and film innovation.
link |
Just so much art that's being created.
link |
And Wu Tang's a huge part of that.
link |
So I just wonder if there's a few sentences written
link |
about Wu Tang, it just makes me wonder how they remember.
link |
I would hope that people, no matter how many years,
link |
are inspired by us.
link |
But I will say, if I could just use Wu Tang as itself.
link |
So we first started off the witty, unpredictable talent
link |
Natural game meaning natural wordplay.
link |
And then we went to the wisdom of the universe,
link |
the truth of Allah for a nation of God.
link |
Wisdom, universal, truth, Allah, nation, God.
link |
So let's just go back to a nation of God.
link |
Let's just take the last two letters.
link |
A nation of wisdom, strength, and beauty.
link |
And I'm going a little political here, but not going political.
link |
As we'll say, we're the greatest country in the world.
link |
What makes us the greatest?
link |
That should be a question we ask.
link |
Is it our strength?
link |
Now, let's just say, off the easiest answer,
link |
you know it's our strength.
link |
Nobody can really, between America and Russia,
link |
they say, that's the argument.
link |
Who could beat them?
link |
But where's the wisdom?
link |
Then they can argue, well, we got the technology.
link |
But then where's the beauty when there's
link |
so much suffering in the people?
link |
So it's not complete.
link |
The hope is that the wisdom is in the founding documents,
link |
in the imperfect but wise founding documents
link |
that celebrated freedom, that celebrated all the ideas,
link |
sort of having a lot of nukes, having a lot of airplanes
link |
That's not important.
link |
And the hope is whatever we're doing here with this, quote,
link |
greatest country on Earth, that we preserve the ideas
link |
and help them flourish, just like you said.
link |
Well, that's what I mean.
link |
So if you go back to the Wu Tang,
link |
that's what we're striving for.
link |
We're striving for that.
link |
But you started unpredictable and just like, yeah.
link |
But got deep pretty quick.
link |
I got to talk to you about Bruce Lee.
link |
Who's Bruce Lee to you?
link |
Who is he to the world?
link |
What ideas of his were interesting to you?
link |
You talk about Hendrix and music.
link |
Bruce Lee is that in martial arts.
link |
He just seems to have changed the game.
link |
I don't know if the word bold is the right word to say,
link |
but I wouldn't as bold as to say that he was a minor prophet.
link |
And I got that concept from the Holy Quran
link |
where it says that we send prophets
link |
to every nation, every village.
link |
We don't let nobody not hear the word in some form
link |
because it won't be fair.
link |
And so if a law is merciful, even a man who's deaf
link |
has to somehow get a sign.
link |
I don't know if Moses saw a burning bush.
link |
There was nobody else to talk to,
link |
so he had to talk to the bush.
link |
It could have been the bush this way too, right?
link |
But point being made, it says that they are minor prophets.
link |
And I see Bruce Lee as one of them
link |
because what he brought to the world through martial art
link |
was a whole shift in the dynamic of thinking.
link |
And that happens when certain entities are born.
link |
But he didn't do it only in a physical sense.
link |
He was also for the philosophizing
link |
in the same process.
link |
And he was also striving to be the best of himself.
link |
So you got three things going on.
link |
I studied Bruce Lee multiple times.
link |
And first, of course, when I saw my first Kung Fu movie,
link |
it wasn't really Bruce Lee.
link |
It was a few Green Hornet clips cut together.
link |
And then I saw Black Samurai.
link |
Then my following Kung Fu movies was like Fearless Fighters,
link |
the Ghostly Face, the Fist of Double K.
link |
But basically, in Fearless Fighters,
link |
the lady put the little kid on her back
link |
and flew across the ocean, across the lake, right?
link |
So Bruce wasn't doing that.
link |
And then I went on to Five Deadly Venoms, and Spearman,
link |
And these movies are beautiful, and yet they're all heightened.
link |
Bruce, they're heightened beyond doable.
link |
You're not going to.
link |
Yeah, it's surreal.
link |
They play with the world that's not of this world.
link |
Bruce played with this world.
link |
So when I first saw Bruce, I actually
link |
didn't think he was as good as these guys.
link |
He's not flying in the movies, right?
link |
But then when I saw, because the first one I saw
link |
was The Big Boss, which they retitled Fist of Fury.
link |
But then when I saw Chinese Connection, which
link |
is the real Fist of Fury, right?
link |
I saw something different there.
link |
And I got enamored.
link |
And then, of course, Enter the Dragon, right?
link |
Just really complete.
link |
That's why my first album was Enter the Wu Tang,
link |
36 Chambers of Shaolin.
link |
So it's Enter the Dragon and 36 put together,
link |
because those are the two epitomes.
link |
So what happened is that's young me.
link |
Then teenage me studies him again.
link |
And I realized, wow, look at his physicality.
link |
Look how he's really moving for real.
link |
And then I studied him again.
link |
Wow, look at what he's saying.
link |
Then I studied him again.
link |
Wow, look at what he stands for.
link |
Which do you like in the realm of martial arts, the real
link |
or the surreal, or the dance between the two?
link |
Yeah, I like the dance between the two,
link |
because a movie, to me, is to entertain you.
link |
So I'm cool with Obi Wan Kenobi disappearing out of the cloak
link |
when Vader strikes him down.
link |
And then I'm like, yo, what happened?
link |
And he's like, run, Luke, run.
link |
I'm cool with that, right?
link |
Because that's the imagination.
link |
And the imagination gets stimulated to the point
link |
to where as things that we saw imagined by an artist,
link |
we strive to create in our real world.
link |
Thus, Star Trek, to me, is just a precursor to our cell phones.
link |
So for me, I like to mix the two.
link |
Yeah, it's funny how science fiction pushing
link |
into the impossible actually makes it realize eventually.
link |
We humans, once we see an idea on screen,
link |
no matter how wild it is, we're trying to make it.
link |
Yeah, we're trying to make it.
link |
Some weird young kid, he gets inspired and watch that.
link |
Be like, I'm going to build that.
link |
So I don't know who's going to come with the Back
link |
to the Future time machine.
link |
But do you have any classmates that you think
link |
this is going to be a time machine?
link |
I thought you were going to Back to the Future, like the,
link |
what is it, the hoverboard?
link |
Somebody, they got, you see the one on the water?
link |
No, you know the surf hover?
link |
It actually, if you are a Back to the Future fan,
link |
you feel like you made it to, you made it there.
link |
Well, now we just got to work on the time trial.
link |
And it was cool to hear you talk about the Master of the Flying
link |
Gaijin today, that that inspired the lyric for the Wu Tang
link |
client, Nothing to F with.
link |
How does that go again?
link |
What, the curse word or the lyric?
link |
No, I remember the curse.
link |
I am Russian, but the lyric.
link |
I said, I be tossing and forcing.
link |
My style is awesome.
link |
I'm causing more family feuds than Richard Dawson.
link |
And the survey said, you're dead.
link |
The fatal flying guillotine chops off your head.
link |
And it was interesting to see the guillotine in the movie
link |
today, how, I don't know.
link |
That's surreal, right?
link |
It's like, it's engineering.
link |
It's both surreal and it just, and it adds this chaos
link |
into this real world that, and then challenges everybody
link |
to think what you're going to do with that.
link |
How are you going to beat it?
link |
How are you going to beat it?
link |
Both when you have like the good and the evil
link |
and the mix of the bad guys and good guys
link |
and you're not sure who the bad guys are.
link |
It's the old question of good versus evil, right?
link |
Like you said, then the question of who was good, who was evil.
link |
But they all had a similar problem when the guillotine came.
link |
But in terms of the real, you mentioned The Godfather,
link |
That's your favorite movie.
link |
What makes it great, do you think?
link |
The characters, the study of family, of justice, of power.
link |
What connects with you?
link |
Oh, oh, I mean, every one of those themes
link |
connects in the real and it connects in a cinematic way
link |
The difference, I think, with me and The Godfather
link |
was I've seen it during a period of time
link |
when my father was absent.
link |
And therefore, family structure and family values
link |
was actually adopted in my family because of that.
link |
Me and my brother Devon, we actually
link |
took so much heed to that movie and our family life.
link |
And we kind of mimic that family in its structure of somebody
link |
has to be the leader of the family,
link |
even if it was the younger.
link |
Michael was younger than Sonny and Fragile.
link |
You know what I mean?
link |
But he was worthy.
link |
And my brother Devon is older than me.
link |
My brother King is older than me.
link |
And it's funny, sometimes Devon calls King Fragile.
link |
And I know King wants to.
link |
King was actually, he actually was,
link |
he said he could beat our ass, to use my language.
link |
But you're Michael.
link |
And not by choice, just by definition of that's what I am.
link |
You know what I mean?
link |
And it's just a blessing for me to have my older sister,
link |
my older brothers, and my younger brothers look to me as,
link |
just as a good light in the family.
link |
And like I said, that movie helped us.
link |
My sisters, too, we, the cool thing about my family,
link |
I don't know if I share this a lot,
link |
it's a big, we all watched these movies together.
link |
And so the A Diagram, Pole Fighter, Master Killer,
link |
Five Deadly Venoms, my family knows these movies.
link |
It's not just I know them.
link |
And then you extend it further, my friends know them, too.
link |
So there's a language that we all can have that actually film
link |
has informed our communication.
link |
So The Godfather, which also is still a fictitional story
link |
of something, but since it was based in reality,
link |
based on something real, and it was human,
link |
it wasn't so heightened, I think the purity of it resonates.
link |
And the purity of it is something
link |
that resonates with me.
link |
You got to plan ahead.
link |
He didn't want to deal with the drugs,
link |
but that time of business was upon him.
link |
It's like, it's almost like, this is a tough one,
link |
like sometimes when the Muslim brothers come from the Middle
link |
East to America and they open up delis, they would sell ham.
link |
And we would go in there and complain to them,
link |
and make them like, they used to get mad at us
link |
But that's as a kid.
link |
But as a man, I'm like, yo, he's here to sell.
link |
Now, he still don't have to sell to him.
link |
Vito Corleone didn't want to sell the drugs.
link |
He didn't have to do it.
link |
And it cost him some bullets to eventually,
link |
somebody in the family ended up doing it.
link |
What about this idea that it's family before everything else?
link |
So there's different laws you live according to in this world,
link |
and family is first.
link |
That's mathematically correct.
link |
I mean, there's a certain sense of you look at powerful people.
link |
You look at Putin.
link |
There's a certain sense in which the people who
link |
are in the inner circle, that's who you take care of.
link |
And anyone else that crosses you,
link |
that there's a different set of ethics under which you
link |
operate for those people.
link |
Well, Jesus said the same thing.
link |
When he said, love thy neighbor and thy brother,
link |
he was talking about that community.
link |
When that other lady, the Samaritan, say, hey, Jesus,
link |
my brother not feeling so well, and he said,
link |
give not that which is holy unto the dogs.
link |
If you're going to tell a woman, give not
link |
that which is holy unto the dogs.
link |
And she's a woman.
link |
He just called her a dog.
link |
If I translate that into hip hop, she's a female.
link |
He called her a dog.
link |
I know how that goes.
link |
But she said to him, but even a dog
link |
is allowed to eat the crumbs that
link |
falls from the master's table.
link |
And he went and helped.
link |
Now, let's go back to what you just said about Putin
link |
or Vito Corleone or myself and my family.
link |
Of course, the family is first.
link |
But once the family is good, it has
link |
to then spread to the community, then
link |
to the state, country, world.
link |
The problem we have sometimes is that,
link |
and this is the reason why a lot of powerful families
link |
was overthrown, like why do they behead
link |
their own king with the guillotine, right?
link |
Because once the family was strong,
link |
they didn't let the wealth, the opportunity expand out.
link |
You look at Wu Tang, yes, our family was made strong first.
link |
But then all the Wu members were able to form
link |
their own corporations.
link |
And they had their own subfamilies.
link |
It has to grow out.
link |
And they took over the world.
link |
You've talked about being vegan.
link |
I don't think I heard you explain this,
link |
because it connects somehow about how you think about life.
link |
So you talk about when your family's good,
link |
you grow that circle of empathy.
link |
You grow the community.
link |
Is that how you think about being vegan,
link |
that just the capacity of living beings on Earth to suffer,
link |
that you just don't want to add suffering to them?
link |
Yeah, I mean, you said it clear.
link |
It's like nothing, in all reality,
link |
I came to a realization that nothing really
link |
has to die for me to live.
link |
The plants themselves, right?
link |
So let's just say you want a steak, which is probably
link |
the most, I don't know, the most expensive piece of meat.
link |
But let's just say the steak is top of the line, nice steak.
link |
And you're eating the steak for the protein to help
link |
build your muscle.
link |
And I don't know if you got it from a cow or a bull,
link |
but whether it's a cow or a bull,
link |
they grow to about 1,500 pounds.
link |
And if it's a bull, it's all muscly muscle.
link |
And it's only eating grass.
link |
Yeah, it's possible to, both as an athlete
link |
and just as a human being, to perform well
link |
without eating meat.
link |
That's something, especially in the way
link |
we're treating animals, to deliver that meat to the plate.
link |
I think about that a lot.
link |
So I do, I'm a robotics person, AI person.
link |
And I think a lot about, I don't know if you think
link |
about this kind of stuff, but building AI systems
link |
as they become more and more humanlike,
link |
you start to ask the question of, are we okay?
link |
If we give the capacity for AI systems to suffer,
link |
first to feel, but then to suffer,
link |
to hate and to love, to feel emotion,
link |
how do we deal with that?
link |
It starts asking the same question as you ask of animals.
link |
Are we okay adding that suffering to the world?
link |
And I don't think we should add the suffering
link |
because it's not necessary.
link |
Like, look, if it's necessary, right,
link |
because we're survival or the first law of nature,
link |
self preservation, if you are in a desert
link |
and there's nothing else to eat,
link |
but that lizard, yeah, okay, you gotta do what you gotta do.
link |
Lizard's gotta go.
link |
Yeah, you gotta go, you gotta do what you gotta do.
link |
Because at the end of the day, man is,
link |
when they say man has dominion over these things,
link |
his dominion is almost like a caretaker.
link |
The way we do our dominion, we dominate it,
link |
Like who's the first guy that looked at the lobster?
link |
He was like, I'm gonna eat this thing.
link |
Like, first of all, it's hard to eat it.
link |
You gotta go through a process to get that.
link |
A crab, I remember we used to eat crabs when we was kids
link |
and I didn't know why I was always getting itchy throats
link |
and all that, you know, you don't know, just eat.
link |
But at the end of the day, a crab didn't provide
link |
no more than a finger worth of meat maybe.
link |
And it was hell getting that thing, getting it out.
link |
It's like, it's not worth it in all reality.
link |
You could have gave me a banana
link |
and did better for my body and my appetite
link |
and my being fulfilled as full.
link |
Like, look at the blessings of life, right?
link |
If you take a seed or you get an apple and you eat it,
link |
in that apple is multiple seeds in it.
link |
If you plant that seed, it'll give you a whole tree
link |
with a whole bunch of apples with all multiple seeds.
link |
But if you kill a fish, it can't reproduce, it's done.
link |
If you kill a, it's done, it's nothing coming back.
link |
But when you deal with the plants,
link |
even after you eat the apple and then you defecate,
link |
your defecation is what feeds the ground
link |
to cause the apple to grow more.
link |
Yeah, it's a circle of life.
link |
And especially there's a guy named David Foster Wallace,
link |
he wrote a short story called Consider the Lobster.
link |
If you actually think philosophically about what,
link |
from a perspective of a lobster,
link |
that's like symbolic of something
link |
because you're basically put in the water, like cold water,
link |
and then it heats up slowly until it's no more.
link |
It's torture, yeah, it must have been like,
link |
do you think they started eating lobsters
link |
in the Inquisition?
link |
Yeah, they just enjoy,
link |
they would probably enjoy torturing animals
link |
and they realize they're also delicious
link |
after the torture is finished,
link |
that's probably how they discovered it.
link |
Let me ask you a question,
link |
I know you're asking me the questions,
link |
but I just wanna talk a little bit about the AI,
link |
and you said something about trying to
link |
put the emotion in it, right?
link |
So are you thinking there's an algorithm for emotion?
link |
Yes, but I think emotion isn't something
link |
that there's an algorithm for for a particular system,
link |
we create emotions together.
link |
So emotion is something like this conversation,
link |
it's like magic we create together.
link |
So I've worked with quite a few robots,
link |
I've a very simple version of that,
link |
I've had Roomba vacuum cleaners,
link |
I've had them make different sounds
link |
and one of them is like screaming in pain, like lightly,
link |
and just having them do that when you kick them
link |
or when they run into stuff,
link |
immediately I start to feel something for them.
link |
So the emotion, okay, so the emotion you're saying
link |
is imposed back on the human,
link |
but I'm asking, do you think there's an algorithm
link |
for the emotion to be imposed from machine to machine?
link |
Yeah, that's a really good way to ask it.
link |
It's difficult because I think ultimately
link |
I only know how to exist in the human world.
link |
So it's like, it's the question of
link |
if a tree falls in the forest, nobody's there to see it,
link |
does it still fall?
link |
I still think that ultimately machines will have to
link |
show emotion to other humans
link |
and that's when it becomes real.
link |
I've been thinking about this a lot too.
link |
No, I'm not gonna hit you with this
link |
because I've been thinking about this
link |
and this is your field here.
link |
Well, do you think the emotion is wave?
link |
Like light is wave or do you think it's particle?
link |
So emotion is just a small,
link |
it's like a shadow of something bigger.
link |
And I think that bigger thing is consciousness.
link |
So emotion is just.
link |
I don't know if it's a wave or a particle.
link |
I haven't thought about that.
link |
I have thought about it, whether it's,
link |
there's something like whether consciousness
link |
or emotion is a law of physics.
link |
Like if it's that fundamental to the universe.
link |
I had a lyric that said this, it comes out.
link |
They did this documentary about the planet
link |
and I wrote a song, it's called The World of Confusion.
link |
And I'll try to paraphrase the lyric,
link |
but in the world of the confusion,
link |
where there's so much illusions,
link |
we suck the blood from the planet.
link |
Now it needs a transfusion
link |
and the redistribution of wealth,
link |
of health and wealth of self
link |
and a deeper understanding about mental health.
link |
The doctor prescribed the physical solution.
link |
The psychiatrist wants to build a bigger institution,
link |
but neither have the solution or the equation
link |
to make an instrument to measure
link |
the weight of the hate vibration.
link |
What is the weight of hate?
link |
Is it heavier than the weight of love?
link |
Is it heavier than the weight of lead inside of a slug?
link |
With just 10 milligrams, it's all it takes to kill a man.
link |
But anyways, do not go on from there.
link |
Damn, that's good.
link |
But the question, you see the question there, right?
link |
Yeah, yeah, yeah, can it be measured?
link |
Can that be measured?
link |
I think so, I think so.
link |
Just look at the instrument, yeah.
link |
Yeah, we're in the dark ages of that,
link |
but I think it could be measured.
link |
I think there's something physical,
link |
like something that connects us all this much.
link |
We tend to think we humans are distinct entities
link |
and we move about this world,
link |
but I think there's some deeper connection.
link |
And, but we're so, listen, science is in the,
link |
we just had a few breakthroughs in the past 100 years
link |
from Einstein on the theoretical physics side.
link |
We don't know anything about human psychology.
link |
We barely know much about human biology.
link |
We're trying to figure it all out.
link |
Yeah, I had another theory,
link |
because, you know, you think about quantum, right?
link |
As long as you say that there's an uncertainty
link |
and you have me believe there's an uncertainty,
link |
then there's an uncertainty.
link |
But if there's not an uncertainty, what happens?
link |
So I'm only saying that, it's not,
link |
because you look at quantum computers,
link |
they're gonna give you the O, the one,
link |
the one, the O, they're gonna take two things
link |
and make it eight things.
link |
And by the time you multiply four of those things together,
link |
it's like this chess board, right?
link |
The moves goes into the millions.
link |
But the thing that's introduced is the uncertainty, right?
link |
You're gonna make a move.
link |
You know this already, right?
link |
Because this has been played a thousand times,
link |
but sooner or later, something uncertain is gonna come in
link |
or make your next move.
link |
I like the weight of these.
link |
They add the certainty.
link |
I think just like what we were saying, unpredictable,
link |
there's something about us humans
link |
that really doesn't like everything to be fully predictable.
link |
I mean, chess too is perfectly solvable.
link |
There's nothing unpredictable about chess.
link |
Right, well, I could agree to that
link |
because Bobby Fischer said in one of his books,
link |
which I actually love what he said.
link |
He said, every game of chess is a draw.
link |
The only way somebody win is when one of us makes a mistake.
link |
I mean, it doesn't get any better than that.
link |
Like, how do you think about chess?
link |
What's at the core of your interest in chess?
link |
Do you see Kung Fu, music, film, all of it, life,
link |
all just living through chess?
link |
Yeah, I see, it's the most stimulating passage of time
link |
for me that's also, it's like, it's a pastime
link |
that stimulates my mind, my music,
link |
my thoughts about life at the same time.
link |
So while some pastimes is like,
link |
say baseball is a pastime.
link |
And baseball could stimulate you
link |
depending on how you look at it, right?
link |
But most likely, you're not gonna get
link |
this much brain activation, this much calculation,
link |
and this much thinking about yourself
link |
in a game of baseball.
link |
I mean, the player maybe, but not the viewer.
link |
Chess is something that I can engage in too.
link |
And even though it's a pastime,
link |
it's given me all the stimulation of real time in my life.
link |
It's funny because it's also, it's a funny game
link |
because it's connected through centuries of play.
link |
Just some of the most interesting people
link |
in the history of the world have played this game
link |
and have struggled with whatever,
link |
have projected their struggles onto the chessboard
link |
and thought, and the nations have fought
link |
over the chessboard.
link |
The Soviet Union versus the United States,
link |
Bobby Fischer represented the United States.
link |
Spassky represented the Soviet Union.
link |
I gotta, before I lose track of it,
link |
when we were talking about The Godfather,
link |
you were in American Gangster, great film.
link |
You said it's one of your favorites too.
link |
What, you were in it with Denzel Washington.
link |
What makes that movie meaningful to you?
link |
What was it like making that movie?
link |
Because it's a great, great American film.
link |
That was a great American film.
link |
It was so many things in that film.
link |
Being a part of that film was probably a blessing
link |
and a treasure, because even if I wasn't a part of it,
link |
it just caught such great filmmaking
link |
and to me, a really cool, great story.
link |
The thing that I love about it the most
link |
really is the process of it.
link |
Which part of the process?
link |
I wouldn't have known the process if I wasn't part of it.
link |
So as a film joy, it was a great film,
link |
but even the process of making it
link |
was like high level education for me on multiple levels.
link |
I'm working with Ridley Scott, which is,
link |
and this is a bold statement if I say this here,
link |
cause I got a lot of friends that's going to probably,
link |
but he's probably the best living director.
link |
Because watching him allowed me to understand
link |
a principle that I've coined to him
link |
and I don't know if people use it yet, called multi vision.
link |
He seems to have the capacity to see eight things
link |
I heard on Robin Hood, he had 18 cameras.
link |
I wasn't there for that.
link |
And you think he keeps them all in his mind, just seeing.
link |
I seen him do it when he went to the monitors
link |
with the video playback guy.
link |
I seen him bring everything back to a point,
link |
but nothing was the same on the frame.
link |
He was already there.
link |
And he knew if he had what he was or not.
link |
And he placed the cameras there.
link |
And he saw it in his own way.
link |
And I just humbly asked him.
link |
He was gracious enough to speak to me and talk to me.
link |
And confirm what I thought I saw.
link |
And I was able to utilize it, as I'm a filmmaker now.
link |
And I see, I can at least see three or four things.
link |
I can't see eight yet.
link |
I'll be there though.
link |
But I could definitely, even right now,
link |
just I could go like this in the room, OK?
link |
I got how to make this right here,
link |
which is just us all sitting.
link |
How do I make this dramatic?
link |
There's a story there.
link |
There's a story there.
link |
And I might just go off his hanging watch
link |
or his hanging wristband.
link |
Because there's something else there too.
link |
And even though this is the scene.
link |
Yeah, you keeping that in mind, all of this in mind.
link |
What about like, can you give an inkling
link |
of other parts of the process, like the editing?
link |
Like where does the magic happen?
link |
Pedro, I don't pronounce Pedro last name right.
link |
I had a chance to play rugby with him.
link |
He was on, was he on my team?
link |
We were in both teams.
link |
But Pedro, the editor who edited many great films,
link |
once again, he has, I will call, deciphering power.
link |
A good editor is a decipher, almost like breaking
link |
the enigma, because he's dealing with thousands,
link |
or we'll call it a film, with millions of feet of film,
link |
at least a million feet of film.
link |
That's a lot of film for a feature.
link |
He's dealing with that.
link |
But he's dealing with multiple cameras.
link |
So it ain't like it's like two cameras.
link |
He got an A, B, and he could just go back.
link |
He may have six cameras, and he has to go back
link |
and deal with that process.
link |
And you know what?
link |
He knows how to tell the story again.
link |
And he proved it on American Gangster
link |
as me being a witness, because it's so much information.
link |
Even when the brothers all start getting their little business
link |
and then he put one in the Bronx,
link |
he just captured every neighborhood within one minute,
link |
and you knew what would happen.
link |
You saw the whole rise of fame.
link |
You watched the Palmer and Scarface,
link |
who does it in two minutes, but it's only one character.
link |
So you see him go to the bank.
link |
He drops the money off.
link |
You see him buy the lion.
link |
You see him gets his wife, or the tiger.
link |
You see him gets his wife, you see all that.
link |
And then it ends on the big side of him in a big house
link |
with all the TV screens.
link |
And you seen him go through it, right?
link |
But in American Gangster, you're going
link |
to tell that story of rising, but you also got
link |
to include these five brothers.
link |
And that's all in the edit.
link |
But also all in the director knowing that as well.
link |
And you got to keep thinking about them, because that
link |
was a story right there.
link |
While I was hearing it, I don't know
link |
if they was taking pictures of him,
link |
or they might have a little party over there.
link |
They're playing chess in the distance.
link |
You said that you were always an old soul
link |
and see the world as if you're 200 years old.
link |
Because your creative vision allows
link |
you to see the final piece you've created,
link |
or you're creating very quickly, quicker than others.
link |
I heard that as if you've almost lived many lives.
link |
You have this experience that allows you to see the vision.
link |
So let me ask you on creativity, where
link |
does this creativity behind RZA come from,
link |
both musically and film wise?
link |
I don't know if I have the answer to that one, right?
link |
Seriously, where does it come from?
link |
Only thing I could say about that
link |
is that for some reason, it seems endless.
link |
And that's peculiar when I think about it myself,
link |
because I was taught a lot of things from the JZA.
link |
He introduced me to mathematics.
link |
He introduced me to hip hop itself, to break dancing.
link |
I got other cousins that introduced me to graffiti,
link |
cousins that introduced me to DJing.
link |
I realized that I had a lot of introductions,
link |
but the JZA definitely, my older cousin,
link |
gave me a lot of early inspirations.
link |
And not saying that he's not creative,
link |
as creative as he was then or now,
link |
the wide span of creativity, I don't see him doing that,
link |
And I don't see the cousins that taught me how to DJ.
link |
I didn't see them move from DJing to making the beats.
link |
My cousin who actually got me into instruments,
link |
I didn't see him leave funk and rock.
link |
I'm an orchestra composer now.
link |
So I just said to myself, I just accept myself as an artist,
link |
as a creative artist.
link |
I have to accept that.
link |
Now, where it comes from, I don't know.
link |
If I was to try to say where it comes from,
link |
like, hey, give me some type of answer,
link |
I would say from life itself.
link |
But what does it feel like?
link |
Because you mentioned during this pandemic,
link |
for example, for some reason, more
link |
came to you in terms of writing.
link |
And so do you feel like you're just receiving signals
link |
from elsewhere, or do you feel like it's hard work,
link |
or you're just waiting?
link |
It's not even waiting, nor is it hard work.
link |
It's almost like I said in one of my other lyrics,
link |
this is for the MC part of it.
link |
I said, MCing to me is easy as breathing.
link |
So it's like breathing.
link |
Yeah, it's just like, in fact, there's
link |
actually was a scientific thing I read about that.
link |
Now that you've said that.
link |
I know you've had to hear this.
link |
They say that the atoms in our atmosphere, which
link |
seem to be infinite in number, are not infinite
link |
in the space they occupy.
link |
Because they're in our atmosphere.
link |
And so there's a chance that at least 1 million atoms
link |
that you breathe in your life was breathed by Galileo.
link |
You heard this before, right?
link |
It's very accurate.
link |
How does your body digest it?
link |
Oh, let's start at the fact that most of the atoms that we're
link |
made of is from stars, right?
link |
So we're all really connected fundamentally somehow.
link |
And then the atoms that make up our body come and leave.
link |
And the same with the cells that are in our body,
link |
they die and are reborn.
link |
And we don't pay attention to any of that.
link |
That all just goes through us.
link |
That makes me feel like I'm not an individual.
link |
I'm just a finger of something much bigger,
link |
some much bigger organism.
link |
Well, because you're drinking the coffee there, right?
link |
You're going to digest that.
link |
You're going to digest those atoms,
link |
whether you're going to put them through the bowel
link |
or through the urination, it's coming out.
link |
Or maybe you'll sweat it out.
link |
You might sneeze it out.
link |
But they're going to make their way out.
link |
How do you digest the atoms if you just breathe in Galileo?
link |
And that's what I think an artist does.
link |
I think something in the artist, it's
link |
like some people eat things and they're going to gain weight.
link |
Some people ain't going to gain weight.
link |
They're going to gain muscle.
link |
I'll just give you an analogy here.
link |
I'm thinking that the artist breathes in and translates it
link |
First, they got to hear it.
link |
I think most of us don't hear that.
link |
We receive it, but it just doesn't come out.
link |
Yeah, we not have the frequency.
link |
I said this to a lot of artists.
link |
And even we all can consider ourselves artists
link |
But let's just say there's only one million artists
link |
Because it's probably 10.
link |
If you divide that into the population,
link |
what part of the table would it be?
link |
It might be that, right?
link |
And yet, it's that that inspires that.
link |
And you know what's so crazy about that, though?
link |
There's also a chance.
link |
I'm just going numbers and I'm just hypothesizing with you.
link |
But there's also a chance that all of this
link |
is actually informing that.
link |
The artist is just watching this, all of this,
link |
all the chaos of this.
link |
Yeah, so it's hard to know where the beauty comes from.
link |
Is it the artist or the chaos from the?
link |
So I just say I don't have the answer.
link |
But if I was to be forced to say an answer,
link |
and you're not twisting my arm, but I'll say.
link |
I can if you want me to.
link |
In Tao of Wu, you write something about confusion,
link |
which I really like.
link |
Confusion is a gift from God.
link |
Those times when you feel most desperate for a solution,
link |
The information will become clear.
link |
The confusion is there to guide you.
link |
Seek detachment and become the producer of your life.
link |
So I got to ask you advice.
link |
If a young person today in high school, college
link |
is looking for some advice, what advice
link |
could you give them to be a producer of a life
link |
that can be proud of?
link |
Read the Tao of Wu.
link |
Let's start with the Wu Tang manual first.
link |
No, you could do that second.
link |
I think you could read the Tao of Wu first
link |
and then do the manual.
link |
Because the manual is not to put the two books against each
link |
other, but the manual is talking about things
link |
that is so deeply connected to the music.
link |
And the people in the Tao of Wu goes beyond that.
link |
So I would actually start there, which is not normally
link |
what I would prescribe.
link |
I always tell people, start in knowledge, then go to wisdom.
link |
But since the Tao of Wu.
link |
Skip ahead to the wisdom.
link |
Yeah, I think for a young man in high school,
link |
go to the Tao of Wu and then go back.
link |
It's just like sometimes you have my son's generation,
link |
they have to watch the second round of Star Wars.
link |
And then they go back.
link |
You know what I mean?
link |
This generation is watching The Force Awakens.
link |
And then they go back.
link |
But what, because if you just look at your life as an example,
link |
that's one heck of a life.
link |
There's very few lives like it.
link |
You've created some of the most incredible things
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artistically in this world.
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Like if somebody, you talk about that like 1 million, right?
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At the corner of the table.
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If somebody wants, strives, dreams to become one of those,
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how do they do it?
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Well, the beautiful thing is that there
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are footprints left by those who've done it.
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And the best way is to study that.
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To study those who've already done what you want to do.
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We live on a civilization.
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As we said, this is the greatest country in the world.
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But our seal is a pyramid with an I on it.
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You know what I mean?
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Because they did it before.
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And they may have failed for some reason
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or something happens.
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But it was just a strong enough example to take us further.
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Elon Musk is sitting here trying to do better than what
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the rocket builders did before.
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He's not the first one to build the rocket.
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He's not the first guy to think of with the electric car.
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He's doing it better.
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He's advancing it to the point that whoever
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picks up after him, maybe they'll
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get to that flying car.
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So that's the beauty.
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There's a good verse.
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I love finding verses to say things to confirm.
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Because this way, people could take it verbally, physically,
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and then maybe even spiritually.
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But Christmas has said a verse.
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He said, the fastest way to heaven
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is by spending time or studying the wise people.
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Meaning the wise people who are living
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and those who live before you.
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Study the masters.
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Let me ask you a big, perhaps ridiculous question,
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but give it a shot.
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What is the meaning of this whole thing?
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What's the meaning of life?
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I'm not going to rush into the answer.
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I'm going to give you somebody else's answer first,
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and I'll give you my answer.
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I remember asking this when I was 15, 16 years old.
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One of the brothers was studying in mathematics.
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And the letter I itself means I Islam.
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I meaning the individual being in total accord with Islam.
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And let me finish this.
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Then they took the word Islam, and they
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defined it as Islam is an Arabic word for peace.
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Then they said, peace is the absence of confusion.
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So then they took them.
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This is something that really hit me when I never forgot it.
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And I'm going to decipher it.
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But then they took the word Islam,
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and they broke it down by the letter into an acronym,
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like cash, with everything around me.
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And they broke it down to I stimulate light and matter.
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And I was like, what?
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Because what hit me is that if you're not here,
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then light and matter don't exist to you.
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So you're stimulating it, or it ain't here for you.
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So anyway, taking all that.
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But then I said, so what's the meaning of life?
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And the brothers just said, love Islam forever.
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And I said, I ain't saying the religious point of it.
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I'm just saying all those other elements
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I just spoke about in front of it.
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I stimulate light and matter.
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And let me give you my definition of life.
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I think life is simply for each and every one of us
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Like you said, the masters.
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Life gave you life.
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I don't think there's a better way to end it than talking
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about the meaning of life.
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RZA, I'm a huge fan.
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It's such a huge honor that you spend your valuable time
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Thank you so much.
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Thank you for inviting me.
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Thanks for listening to this conversation with RZA.
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To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors
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in the description.
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And now, let me leave you with some words from Plato.
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Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.
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Thank you for listening, and hope to see you next time.