BLACK LIPS at Yonge-Dundas Square, tonight (Thursday, June 18), 10 pm. Free.
GZA at Yonge-Dundas Square, Sunday (June 21), 8 pm. Free. nxne.com.
GZA interviewed by JIAN GHOMESHI at CBC Broadcasting Centre (250 Front West), tonight (Thursday, June 18), 8 pm. Free w/ NXNE wristband. cbc.ca/q.
GZA interviewed by FAB 5 FREDDY at the Hyatt Regency (370 Queen West), Saturday (June 20), 1 pm. Free w/ NXNE pass. nxne.com.
GZA turns to the band of white kids backing him up and winces.
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Arm outstretched, he raises his voice above Black Lips’ cacophonous squeal: “Hold up, hold up. Yo, stop that, stop that. Stop that.” The music grinds to a halt. “That shit sound mad loud, I can’t hear myself. We not gonna do this fucked up.”
But it’s too late – the idea of the Wu-Tang Clan member performing with the self-proclaimed “flower punk” band at Austin’s South By Southwest festival was fucked up long before anyone set foot onstage.
Yeah, yeah. The Internet and the advent of the iPod have erased genre boundaries, making it normal for indie kids to appreciate Ciara and rappers to sample Daft Punk. We know this. In the age of “Coldplay ft. Jay-Z,” disparate collaborations are nothing new.
So it’s evidence of just how odd the coupling of GZA and Black Lips was that their show became one of the most talked-about at SXSW.
Both acts are going to be playing free (yes, we said free) gigs at Yonge-Dundas square as part of NXNE, which raises the possibility of another pairing of the absurd. So where is the common ground between these crazed garage rockers and the hip-hop legend.
Let’s compare.
Also known as The Genius, GZA is an East Coast rap traditionalist whose no-nonsense, lyric-intensive flow hasn’t changed since Wu dropped Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) in 1993.
Black Lips is an Atlanta-based garage-psych group whose lead singer, Cole Alexander, has both played his guitar with his penis and pissed in his own mouth at shows.
The band is also known for its onstage make-out sessions – an act that had police chasing them out of India in January – but that’s nothing when you’ve, you know, pissed in your own mouth. (And did we mention that he spat his urine into the crowd?)
Talking from the side of the road in Stockholm, Sweden, Lips bassist Jared Swilley defends their musical union with GZA, which the Village Voice describes simply as “a train wreck.”
“It makes sense because we’ve been into sampling for quite a while, and hip-hop is based on samples,” he says. “And I really like how Wu-Tang used a lot of psychedelic samples and, like, cool movie clips and sound effects. We can relate to that.”
GZA, whose publicist set up the collaboration, agrees that it wasn’t as contrived as everyone made it out to be.
“Hip-hop is a combination of all things,” he says on the phone from his place in New York.
“If you take a song like ‘We will, we will rock you,'” he sings. “‘You got blood on your face….’ He’s rhyming on that!
“And if you take the lyrics out of that song, you get a hip-hop beat. It’s a rock song, though. So it’s not out of my element for me to get with Black Lips. I didn’t do it because I wanted to be different, even though I wasn’t feeling the group. No, I have to like the music in order to be a part of it. So I felt like they had a pocket I could fit in, and I went for it.”
He went for it in the studio, too, throwing down a part on the band’s hazed-out single The Drop I Hold, from their iTunes EP of the same name. In the RZA-inspired dirge of a track, Alexander lets off a lumbering stream of consciousness before GZA drops a paranoid-sounding verse.
“I guess more than anything the song is about acid,” Swilley says. “And taking psychedelic drugs. As we all know, taking psychedelic drugs leads to incoherence.”
GZA only learned that Black Lips are playing at North By Northeast during this interview, but it’s possible that they’ll try to rekindle the magic this week. More likely, though, the group will team up with fellow NXNE performers King Khan & BBQ, who play the Horseshoe tonight (Thursday) at midnight. The two bands made an album together that comes out in September.
“It’s sorta like ‘hail Satan’ music,” says Swilley.
GZA won’t be releasing a new album soon (he put out Pro Tools last year and still tours behind his 1995 classic, Liquid Swords), but a couple of his Wu-gambinos will.
Raekwon’s forthcoming Only Built For Cuban Linx II is slated for an August 11 release, so it’ll be out in December. It’s being billed as the second chapter of his well-regarded 95 debut, a concept Rae’s fellow clansman isn’t necessarily feeling.
Asked if he would ever sequelize Liquid Swords, GZA is categorical.
“No. Not at all,” he says. “I think artists sometimes go back to something when we never should. For many different reasons. You hear a lot of stories that make you feel good about the work and the project, sometimes you try to relive that, like, ‘I want to make a part two.’
“I don’t think I should go there. I think I should move on and try to make something just as great or greater, not try to bank on that. You know, that’s a classic.”
Ghostface Killah has announced that his next record will be straight R&B, a change in direction he attributes to his artistic maturity, which GZA supports.
“It’s a good move,” the avid chess player says. “I don’t think that’s going out of his character, because Ghost was always singing, a lot, on songs. Sometimes, before we’d perform a Wu-Tang set, we’d throw on a Delfonics song and Ghostface is singing his heart out. He loves soul, and when I heard him speaking about doing an R&B album, I thought, ‘I could see that.’
“A lot of artists are changing it up nowadays, which is a cool thing,” he says. “I don’t think it’s bad. You know, it’s good to be an originator, to be a trendsetter.
“That’s hip-hop.”
music@nowtoronto.com
