Hip-hop artist RZA, founder of the Wu-Tang Clan, released an album containing a ballet score he premiered last year with the Colorado Symphony. Titled “A Ballet Through Mud,” the album is available today from Apple’s record label Platoon.
RZA (pronounced “Rizza”), whose real name is Robert Fitzgerald Diggs, may be better known for the Wu-Tang Clan’s hardcore hip-hop sound that was wildly popular in the 1990s. His ballet, however, takes inspiration from ideas and experiences that have been in his mind since childhood.
“Every day I would go to school, I would make sure I write a lyric as my way of getting my art out, as well as kind of making a journal,” he told NPR. “Some of those lyrics, of course, was fantastical, some of them was dealing with your first experiences with love, alcohol, drugs, etc.” That childhood journal of lyrics became the source material for RZA’s ballet.
While scoring a ballet may be a surprising turn for RZA, the connection between classical music and hip-hop is not new: Wu-Tang Clan has sampled classical tunes in its music, for example Beethoven’s “Pathétique” Sonata on the 1997 track “Impossible.” Other famous examples include “Mars” from Holst’s “The Planets” sampled by Eric B. & Rakim on “Follow the Leader” (1988); Chopin’s Etude in E Minor, Op. 10 No. 3, sampled by Dr. Dre on “Still D.R.E.” (1999); and Vivaldi’s Concerto for Strings and Harpsichord in G major sampled on Meek Mill’s “Lord Knows” (2015).
In addition to hip-hop and now ballet, RZA also scores film soundtracks, including Quentin Tarantino’s “Kill Bill” Volumes 1 and 2.
