It’s been a long time coming since RZA announced he was dropping an album with DJ Scratch. Now that it’s finally out, we can definitively say it was well worth the wait.
LISTEN: RZA and DJ Scratch chop it up with Ed Lover
RZA and DJ Scratch joined Audacy’s Ed Lover as they took us inside their new album Saturday Afternoon Kung Fu Theater. The seeds of a collaboration had been planted for some time as Scratch recalled their initial conversation.
“RZA had reached out to me in the beginning of the pandemic, back in March 2020 just to check on my health, check on my family,” he said.
After the two talked for a bit, RZA asked him if he still had a beat that he made for a Wu-Tang Clan track that was never released. “He’s like, ‘I wanna MC again, but I don’t wanna wear both hats. You wanna do an album together?’ I was like, ‘absolutely!’” DJ Scratch said.
As for RZA’s desire to collaborate with Scratch? It’s all about paying tribute to Hip Hop’s roots of an MC and a DJ. “Going back to the foundation with DJ Scratch as the producer, the DJ, and me as the MC, that’s going back to the roots. I just wanted to do that and I’m blessed that we did it,” RZA said.
Listen to Wu-Tang Clan and more on Audacy’s East Coast Rap
Unlike a lot of the music they’ve put out in the past, the two were set on only having seven songs on the record and didn’t entertain the idea of recording more. “All the EPMD albums,” Scratch says. “If the album had 14 songs on it, that means we did 20.”
“With this album” he added, “let’s just do seven.”
RZA called the album a “nice chunky tape” and recalled when he played it for a group of friends. “I ended up playing it and it played three times and nobody complained. I had a whole crew of people and it went back around, they thought the intro was the outro,” he said.
Check out their full conversation above and be sure to listen to music from Wu-Tang Clan and other East Coast Hip Hop legends on Audacy’s East Coast Rap.
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