I really haven’t got a lot to say about this. Via lyrical swords, I caught this link to a 1 hour, 8 minute guest appearance by The Abbott himself at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. It ain’t exactly your fav hip-hop podcast here, but it’s recommended by your boy, so I suggest that everyone sit down and take a good listen to this.
(click image to listen!)

He addresses some major things here. He gets on the chess-kung fu-5% thing without getting too spacey, he talks about his musicianship, and so on. He also has what I think is a really healthy outlook on the rap world today – I liked his McDonald’s analogy. When you’re ready for real food, you stop eating junk, nahhmean? It’s a cycle. Real talk.

Really, RZA just breaks shit down for you on a lot of fronts, and he comes this close to breaking down himself when he starts talking about the late genius, the Big Baby Jesus.

I’m not totally sure what to make of it. Hip-hop in an academic or otherwise non-street setting usually comes off as pretty stupid, square, and/or patronizing, but somehow this seemed sort of appropriate. Just listen.

Edit: At the request of some people at the wu-tang forums, I’ve gone ahead and converted the file to a downloadable mp3 format. You can get it here (hi-fi 128kbps, lo-fi mono (smaller file) version here. Welcome wu-tang corp forum members, and while you’re here, check out the rest of the site – plenty of good hip-hop to keep you busy.

(original link to ram file is (or check the original link to the R here)