RZA is many things—founder of the Wu-Tang Clan and a hip-hop pioneer, a Hollywood power player, an entrepreneur and spiritual motivator with a taste for Korean vegan food—but before it all, he’s a nerd at heart.

Before the shoot, he immediately begins searching not based on titles, but on the identification numbers on each film’s spine, and re-emerges with two choices: a box set spotlighting the work of actor, athlete, and political activist Paul Robeson and the 1959 legal drama Anatomy of a Murder. On camera, his choices are a combination of things you’d expect—a Bruce Lee greatest hits collection, Jim Jarmusch’s Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (RZA composed the score for it)—and a smattering of classics across eras and genres. He speaks on writer-director John Cassavetes as affectionately as he does Godzilla, hitting loose martial arts poses and ending thoughts with his signature call of “bong bong.” As he makes his final choices, he asks the staff and me if we have any recommendations for Japanese films. I suggest a recent favorite: Masahiro Shinoda’s 1979 folk-horror movie Demon Pond. Into the tote bag it goes. “I don’t normally accept gifts,” RZA tells the staff as we’re about to leave, eager to take the 8-disc Godzilla set home to his son, “but this is a special one for me. Thank you so much.” 

Film was integral to the life of the man born Robert Fitzgerald Diggs years before he picked up a microphone. As a youth running the streets of 1980s New York, he and his cousin Russell Tyrone “Ol’ Dirty Bastard” Jones would spend weekends taking in kung fu flicks at theaters around 42nd Street. Samples from several of those films pop up throughout Wu-Tang’s 1993 full-length debut album Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), meshing well with the dingy waterlogged beats RZA conjured for himself and his eight bandmates. There was a filmic quality to both his production process and the music it birthed, which manifested in both The Wu’s growing global dominance and RZA’s eventual breakthrough into Hollywood. 

Ghost Dog was his first time working on a movie in any capacity, but his first time as something close to a director came in 1998 when he self-financed a short based on his album Bobby Digital In Stereo. He found it a bit “embarrassing” at first, mainly because he was more a glorified producer with notes than an actual director, but eventually screened it one time that year at the Staten Island Film Festival. It would be several years, albums, and lesser acting roles before he’d get his shot at directing proper with 2012’s kung fu epic The Man with the Iron Fists, which he directed and scored, and co-wrote with horror filmmaker Eli Roth. A student of John Woo and Quentin Tarantino as much as hip-hop, RZA found a way to bring his two worlds together, unlocking the next step in his creative evolution. 

Today, those worlds are converging at a nexus point for RZA’s legacy. He’s on the verge of premiering One Spoon of Chocolate, his fourth film and first as a full-blown producer as well as writer-director, at the Tribeca Film Festival. He’s also less than two weeks away from the start of Wu-Tang Forever: The Final Chamber, a 27-date Wu-Tang Clan farewell arena tour featuring every living member. That’s a lot of pressure for anyone, but as we make our way from Criterion to a taping of the MSNBC program The Beat with Ari Melber, RZA is all smiles and good energy. In a checkered blue blazer and a flat cap any Black uncle would be proud to rock, he speaks often of people’s “chi,” and the Five-Percenter slang he’s trafficked in for nearly 40 years (“a-alike,” “build,” “overstand”) slips as easily into his business calls as it does into his casual conversations. At once, he’s both the man responsible for hip-hop’s most prestigious group and a fly, affable 55-year-old entrepreneur still chasing the cream and a dream. Below are excerpts from the handful of conversations RZA and I had over lunch and on the way to his other press appearances.

When did you first discover the Criterion Collection? And what effect did it have on you as a film fan already? 

The Criterion Collection kind of came to my clear awareness when I saw Jim Jarmusch’s Down By Law. The day that I saw it was the day that one of the stores had a Criterion section. I realized that there were very rare films in that collection that were films that I’ve heard of, films that other directors have informed me of.

For me—just to be clear—I learned how to be a director from Jim Jarmusch, John Woo, and Quentin Tarantino. Those are my three mentors in my development phase, and some of [their lesser known] movies are in the Criterion Collection. When I saw that, I started to explore the collection myself, but then I started finding things that I never heard of, like Five Easy Pieces with Jack Nicholson. I’m a Jack Nicholson fan, of course, but I never knew that he did Five Easy Pieces and what it meant. Also, The Last Picture Show—early Jeff Bridges. The more I became a cinephile, the more the Criterion collection helped feed that hunger. And the way that makes them special is that it’s not just one genre of film so you could go to them and get The Blue Veil and Shaft, so they’re not stuck in one genre. And there’s other collections—I know you know about Kino.

I do, actually.

They’ve got great film noir stuff you could get into. To summarize it, the Criterion covers genres, directors, regions, time zones, meaning you go get something from Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps from back in the 30s and you can even get Armageddon, Michael Bay, in the 1990s. The range is beautiful.

You, of course, grew up a movie fan of all different kinds, but you didn’t want to make movies until you had met Jarmusch?

Yeah. I didn’t think I would be able to make movies. My albums, I thought, was movies. So I thought that was my way that I’d be telling the stories. And then of course, we started making videos. GZA became a video director before me. GZA got paid to direct videos. He was part of a video production company. I just [put in my] two cents here and there. But I was always doing the knowledge. And then when I caught the bug, it was first when we did Bobby Digital, I wasn’t, like I said, I wasn’t the official director. I was the financier—the star of the movie and the story. And then I would tell ‘em, put the camera here. I was trying to direct, but I didn’t fully understand.

Whatever happened to the Bobby Digital movie that was supposed to come out?

It’s sitting somewhere. It is, it is. There’s a DVD of it, a couple of DVDs that I remember making and stashing. I just never released it, you know, I showed it once to an audience…I showed it at the Staten Island Film Festival in the 2010s with Harry Belafonte. The thing is, I need to share it one day. It was embarrassing to share it at first.
Why?

Because I did it as an independent filmmaker, even though I had Ralph McDaniels with me. And he’s a master at making videos. But [at the time] I was trying to do a movie, and I didn’t have a script. So I [was] making up the movie as we [went].

It’s not easy to do that. I didn’t know that it wasn’t easy to do that. I thought I could make it like I make music. But we ended up with something. And maybe one day we’ll pass it through an AI filter and let it kind of modernize it, and see what that does. We shot on 35 millimeters, so it might still look cool…I don’t think the 35 millimeter print exists. I think the DVD exists and you gotta now use that as your master.

Did that happen before or after you scored Ghost Dog?

It was before. And almost during, too. After I started doing it, I kind of started falling in love with it, but still didn’t have the brain—I didn’t have the brain until my Tarantino days. John Woo was giving me advice at that time. He always would tell me I could do one thing or another. In fact, to me, in Bobby Digital, some of the sequences are copying John Woo. He got the two Desert Eagles. I was copying my sci-fi love and martial arts and mixing all that together.

So, you already mentioned the music. Considering how 36 Chambers came together and how that in and of itself was also a crash course. When you first started actually making movies beyond scoring Ghost Dog and making Bobby Digital, was there anything that you brought from the world of hip hop to filmmaking that kind of helped you find your way through it?

I mean, years later. I think when I did Man with the Iron Fists, I think that that’s when you see the evolution of it. If you think about me on the Iron Fists…Creatively, only a hip hop mind could have did that. You could feel the Shaw Brothers in it. You could feel the spaghetti western in it. When Lucy Liu walks into that walkthrough bathhouse with Jamie Chung and all those girls in the tub, and Kanye West’s “White Dress” comes on? Only hip hop can do that. Before then—you could quote me if I’m wrong, but dig it up—I don’t think that out-of-period [rap] music was really happening. Think about it, what movie gave you an out-of-period [rap] music?

Around that time, nothing comes to mind. There could be something, but I don’t got these things…

I might have probably made that. That movie is based in 1861. And Wiz Khalifa is rapping. 

Right. Because the only other example that came to mind was when Tarantino used “100 Black Coffins” in Django Unchained. 

Well, my movie is presented by Quentin Tarantino, right? We’re just rubbing off on each other. I [was his] student at that time. And musically, he said he was my student at that time. But other than that, other than our circle, you’re not gonna find that. And especially hip hop. I think I’m the first guy to throw hip hop in like that in 1861. 

I’m happy you said that, because the thing about all of your work—whether it’s your music or your directing—you’ve always been about intersectionality. You go all the way back to the beginning of Wu-Tang…I wish there were more opportunities for people to [talk about how movies and rap influence one another].

King of New York is a good example. They took songs by Schooly D and ran it through.

Or even something like Dope.

Dope was dope. Dope was really cool. You know what’s so cool? Going back to talking about intentions: I strive as a filmmaker—as an artist who became a filmmaker, which is still an artist—I strive to intentionally do something that is of the craft and not of the craft. So if I think about my film, Cut Throat City, I’m telling a story about something that’s real: New Orleans in a hurricane. But the hero is a comic book [artist]. So the comic book vibe of him, that nerd vibe, is me. So now I be giving to this character, right? In the original script, the character dies. And my version of it as a director, and as I’m looking at my own life, I was given a second chance. 

RZA’s not here if a second chance don’t exist. And so even though my family watched him get shot up and all that shit, and people always ask, “Is he dead? Is he not dead?” I leave that up to you, but I wanted to make the point of: “Yo, what if we had a second chance?”

All of our violence is no longer coming out of our bodies. Not coming physically. It’s being performed in our music. 16 shots! It’s lyrical now. So all that anger and violence has found its way into the art. That’s an intention—to have art fulfill that. And I do that by mixing film culture, music culture, comment culture, fantasy culture, Godzilla… all that shit finds its way into my art.

After you made The Man with the Iron Fists, was there anything from that experience that you brought back to music?

I don’t think it ever translated properly, but yes. By the time you get to The Man with the Iron Fists, I’d composed over a dozen films. I’m able now to even compose and make the soundtrack. My knowledge of music grew. Now the knowledge of music may not actually be necessary for hip hop—it might be too much for hip hop. I think this generation is different and even with somebody like Tyler [The Creator], you know, you see that jazz, and those seven chords, those six chords are finding their way in.

In my phase of it—in the early 2010s—that knowledge wasn’t easy to apply to hip hop, but it applied to me. I learned a lot from folks from that, and the most important thing I learned I think—not only just the art—is being a totally responsible human being. Being a director is almost like running a small country, right? And the reliance upon you is consistent. A director gets hundreds of questions a day. The assistant director’s job is to ask those questions. The assistant director is worse than having five nagging wives, right? That’s how much of the assistant director is going to be on your ass if they’re good. You gotta have the patience and tolerance to go through it hundreds of times before you finally take the shot. That process for me? I came back from China. I was fully evolved as a man. In fact, when you see the Wu-Tang concerts now, that’s the result of [the China trip]. You saw the N.Y. State of Mind Tour?

I didn’t get a chance.

Listen, bro. Everyone, NAS, Busta [Rhymes], everybody was happy. When Busta got to the show, the other band had already hooked up his shit, alright? For me, I couldn’t help it. [I had to step in.] I told him, “I want your shit to be like this.” He’s like, “Usually [this would be] competition.” I’m like, “Nah, the audience is the only people that we are competing for our entertainment to entertain them.” That’s the competition. That the audience is gonna walk away, like, “Yo everybody was dope.”

When the second year of touring happened, and Busta couldn’t make it, then De La [Soul] came. They wasn’t in the first year, so they didn’t know exactly what was going on. They showed up and they had their little thing, but I was like, “Can I talk to y’all for a second?” I said, “Nah, let me hook this up. Don’t worry about money or none of that.” And I hooked it up. Usually, you don’t turn the big screens on for the opening act; I said, “Nah.” I tell them to start the show with “The Magic Number” and end the show with “The Magic Number.” When [Posdnous] does his verse, we put Pos and Mase, and at the top of the screen, will be Trugoy. That’s gonna end the first act. And then after that, Nas is coming. It’s not like it was just us going one after the other. Our shit was intertwined.  

So you’re tour directing?

That’s what filmmaking helped me do. It helps me understand all the categories, all the different aspects of art. ‘Cause in film, you gotta deal with music, color, fashion, makeup, hair, set design, and all that shit gotta be then framed.

Wu-Tang is about to go on their final tour ever. Why was now the time for the final tour?

The time now is really based on our physical lives. Physical time, physical energy, physical responsibilities, and so much that we owe to our families and the people that we’ve gathered on the journey. So now that we have so many things on the journey, the opportunity for us to go back out to our fans who helped pave the way.

It’s your fans who help you gain the resources to send your son to college. We are product creators—and therefore we need consumers. So the fans who consumed our music and were willing to buy and pay for it, they put economics in our pocket for us to grow our families, so a chance for us to go back and rock with them again—those chances become less and less as our family and journeys expand. It’s always been hard to get us all together. And many of the tours haven’t been all of us together. But, my pitch was like, “Yo, at this age and at this point in time of life with ourselves, let’s come back together one more time for real, and walk back through the world together one more time.”

Basically my slang term is, “Let’s run around the globe one more time together.” Now Ghost may run around the world 10 more times after this. Now is the time that we do it, and we dedicate this portion of our career and of our lives to this moment. And that’s how I pitched it to the brothers and [they] agree. Of course, nobody wants to say “final.” Nobody wants it to end. 

Wu-Tang is forever. And I’m not saying Wu-Tang is ever going to end; Wu-Tang is going to be forever regardless to me. Regardless of whom or what. The Wu-Tang master—or the abbot of Wu-Tang in China—told me that personally when I went to China. He said history predicted me to help spread that word alone. That word, “Wu-Tang,” loosely translates to  “man that is deserving of God,” or “man that’s deserving of God’s grace,” basically. 

You look at us, we needed the grace—you dealing with high school dropouts and felons. You got good people, strong people, knowledgeable people, but not people that fit the system, and the system is controlling everything. So now they have neither way out. And we made it through our music, and then that music attracted people that were a-alike us and people that were unalike us. You got some people that only listen to Wu-Tang because they feel like Wu-Tang is their big brother.

It’s very real. I’m a little younger, but I can’t tell you how many people I know around my age [say] that discovering 36 Chambers and Liquid Swords and Supreme Clientele changed their lives, these albums that were a tiny, tiny bit before our time. But people do look at y’all as big brothers and uncles. There are so many people whose only experience with rap music is Wu-Tang. You go somewhere like Jakarta, and I guarantee somebody’s wearing a Wu-Tang t-shirt right now. That’s what your legacy is.

That’s the beauty of it. And so for us to say now, Wu-Tang Clan has never collectively went to Jakarta. We should. We’re going to start here in America, of course—this is the foundation—and the vision of it is to go to places where we haven’t been. We haven’t been to Japan since the 90s.

Wow.

Exactly.

Looking back on the legacy of Wu-Tang and everything y’all have done together and separately, what are you most proud of?

To ask the question what I am most proud of is a tough one. I know you’re not talking about my children, my wife, my family, you’re talking about my career. I mean, of course, your children, your wife, your family, that’s everything. Career-wise, it’s a tough question. I’m sure I could give 100 answers to a question like that, but I’ll say I’m proud of what Wu-Tang has done, not just for itself, but for so many others. Let’s talk spiritually. Many people have sought more knowledge, more study, more spiritual reality because of the lyrics of Wu-Tang. 

Now, let’s talk economically. You know how many families in our country, even around the world, have been fed because of Wu-Tang? Every time we show up somewhere, there’s money being made. Even the guy who got to plug the light in has a job that day. Think about the TV show—five years of work where hundreds of people got top-pay salaries and health insurance covered. We could just keep going. The economic value of our records…the economic impact of what this is isn’t missed. 

And then just talk about the culture. Jay-Z says, “Yo, I got the blueprint from you,” or Kanye says, “Yo, Supreme Clientele is what got [me] to be this,” and you can keep going through the list, but you’ll see that the culture itself was shifted. Even for those that you won’t even expect. I’m not going to throw my brothers’ names out there like that, but even if you go west, south, whatever, they’d be like, “Yo, we were trying to be y’all.” Like, “Y’all made us put the gloves on tight.” So the cultural impact—it’s about being proud. Family, spiritual, culturally, economically, socially—you know how many people that were socially awkward and found their tribe because they were Wu-Tang listeners?

Yeah, I do. I know that from a firsthand experience. 

I’m serious bro. That’s why I say it’s a loaded question. But I’m proud of that effect on the world because I can honestly say, “If it was good, it was intentional. If it was bad, pardon me.” But all the good shit was intentional.

Do you have any regrets?

You learn as you live. Take all those same elements I just said and I won’t say I have a regret, but I would say I would have done it differently. Let’s take all those elements: economic, spiritual, culturally. In all reality, it’s kind of scattered. It’s not centralized. 

The one thing we said in the beginning that I didn’t do because I made an economic decision—meaning I chose to feed our families and to get vehicles so we could move—the first thing I wanted to do when I started having success…it was [my] original plan. There was a building on Staten Island that I wanted to buy and make a school. This was like in 1993, bro. The building was only a half million dollars at that time. I didn’t buy it. Instead, we built the studio, we bought MPVs, we kept investing into the company, we got an office, we went that way, we went corporate, we didn’t go spiritual or educational. 

But if I would have built that first school, it might have been 20 schools around our country that meant something when you could go from any religion, creed, whatever, be able to walk in, find a-alike people and build. I never built my school or built my temple the way I said in the beginning. And instead, it’s become a temple of the people, meaning it’s in the people. It’s where you walk, somewhere you can walk to, besides the studios and all that. I said I was gonna do it and I didn’t do it. But I’m striving now to figure out, “How do I build the temple?” Now that everything is different now, you know what I mean?

Let’s talk One Spoon of Chocolate…Did the title come first or were you making the movie and then it came to you?

No. That’s been the title for almost 13 years. It started right after I finished [The] Man with the Iron Fists. The next film I wanted to do was this film. Or, I had three ideas. I stepped to the executive, Adam Fogelson, and I pitched all three ideas. I started writing it and I got stuck first at page 20 or 30. I got stuck. Then, a couple of years later I started writing it again and I got stuck again, page 50. I never was able to go [further]. 

So when did it actually start?

So then when the writers’ strike happened, and nobody’s supposed to be writing or whatever, I told my wife, “Yo, you wanna buy another home?” Because we was looking at a new house that we thought we wanted to get. She said, “What do you wanna do?” I said, “I wanna make a movie.” So she signed on as producer, and I became the writer-director and we started writing it. And I wrote a lot of it on the back of the tour bus. So driving through the country, driving around.

Which tour was this?

N.Y. State of Mind. And then bambalamma—Finished it. Went to production and got it done.

I love the fact that you and your wife are producing partners and that y’all create together. I think some of the coolest and most genuine stuff that happens in this field comes from that type of collaboration. 

I think that my wife, Talani, brings the truth. She’s not gonna like it because it’s me. She’s a pretty pure person. And I think that that helps me. She’s the first ear that heard some of the lines of the movie. Even when she disagreed with me—because she did disagree on some of the stuff—she let it be known that she disagreed, but she didn’t stand in the way of the art though. 

Yeah. Not to be able to say, “I don’t like that.”

You know what I’m saying? So she really brings that. We’re empty nesters now. There’s also accountability of trust that you get when you have your wife as a partner on a creative endeavor. My wife has been in this industry since she was a kid, whether she was doing plays or dancing, modeling. She writes some poetry and things like that. She has this artistic thing and a beautiful voice. And I know that when talking with her and dealing with her, I have a fellow artist beside me, but I also have a pure person because when it became time for her to be a mother, she became a mother. She put one foot in the water and one foot out. 

Did you learn anything new about yourself while you made this movie, as a director, that you didn’t learn on your last three?

If directing was a language, I’ve mastered the language now. I know what to say, how to say [it]. And I think when people see this film, they’re gonna see my intentions, and they’re gonna know that that was intentional. It wasn’t luck or mistake. The film probably could have been 20 minutes longer, if I wanted to kinda dramatize it more. But I held back this time on the dramatization which I’ve done in other films, like in Cut Throat City. I’ve got the pacing now. I’ve got the yin and yang of it. I got the language. And I was also able to talk to my DP and my crew and my actors, most importantly, how to get what I need out of them.

And now you’re bringing this, your fourth film, to Tribeca. Have you been to Tribeca before?

I was here for the documentary Of Mics and Men. That was it. Supporting my buddies and their films. This is an honor for me, to be at Tribeca. It’s New York. I feel like it’s so, I got a couple of music things here this year as well, but not in the directorial debut. I know Logic’s film would be here—he’s got a comedy.

Could you expand a little more on how you feel about having a directorial film? Something that you worked on as a director debuting at Tribeca because that feels like a really big deal, especially since this is [your] home. 

It feels like a big deal. You think about Tribeca, of course you always get the Robert De Niro—you know he pioneered this festival. And you always think about someone like a Scorsese film or Spike Lee film being there, you know what I mean? Or some of your New York actors and talent. You always think like that and it’s true. It happens. Mario Van Peebles comes back with New Jack City which is a New York movie. It’s like, it all makes sense. But RZA is a New Yorker. You know what I mean? I’m a super native.

And for me to bring my film back here is serendipitous in one way, it’s destiny in another, it’s homage in another. It’s earned, it’s deserving and it’s a blessing. Because it’s lucky too. You know what I mean? There were hundreds of submissions this year. 

Yeah. So, you know, even though you are RZA, like, you still needed to be picked to be here. 

Exactly. They have to watch it and say, “Okay.” I had to be bold enough to let them watch it in a way, because they watched it even before it was done. I felt confident enough that they’d get it, and they got it. And they said, “Hell, we’d love to have you.”

Wow. What do you want audiences who aren’t Tribeca judges to take away from this movie when they see it?

Well, first of all, I’m not entering the competition. So I want the audience to come and be entertained by my film, by me, my cast, my production design, my editor, my director, my photographer. We made a piece of entertainment for you. I want the audience to be entertained. But I think there’s a few questions that’s not answered in our film, and I want you to walk out and ask those questions. 

***

There’s a scene near the end of One Spoon of Chocolate that examines the transfer of literal and emotional power by way of tangible force. The moment feels as if RZA is speaking directly through the protagonist and the film itself, channeling the righteous indignation and pulpy charm of the kung fu and blaxploitation movies that raised him. This particular scene connected with the audience at the film’s Tribeca Film Festival premiere enough that film critic Elvis Mitchell asked RZA about this moment during a post-screening interview. 

“You can tell me 5 + 5 is 15 all you want, and you can even fool the audience, but it’s still 10,” RZA says. “Even though I’ve seen this movie 1,000 times, I feel the reality of it: it’s self-evident. The truth don’t need proof. It’s the lie that you gotta try to prove.” 

It’s easy to see how RZA has endeared himself to people across mediums at this moment. Fresh off the plane from the Raleigh stop of the The Final Chamber tour, he had gone from answering questions and signing records on the red carpet to dropping knowledge on the first audience to ever experience One Spoon of Chocolate in full. Watching from the audience, I didn’t see an industry insider or even a rapper-producer: I saw an eager, earnest film and music nerd savoring his first headlining moment at a major film festival. 

Photographed by Mark Clennon

Styled by Jay Hines

Written by Dylan Green

Skin: Elsa Canedo at Opus Beauty using 111skin

Flaunt Film: Yong W Kim

Styling Assistant: Amiah Joy and Michael Washington

Production Assistant: Maria Berkowitz

Location: Vidiots