A few years ago, RZA had a very good week. He got to hang with Snoop. He ate barbecue with Russell Crowe. And the Wu-Tang Clan mastermind shared first tequila, then noodles, with Interpol’s Paul Banks. “It was one of those New York magic weeks where a lot of good people are in town,” RZA recalls now. Only one of those encounters, nurtured over games of chess, has so far resulted in a just-announced album. (Imagine if RZA were helping Crowe revive his old band, 30 Odd Foot of Grunts.)
On August 26, Banks and RZA—as Banks & Steelz, the latter invoking RZA’s longstanding Bobby Steels alias—will release Anything But Words, which features guest appearances by Kool Keith and Florence and the Machine’s Florence Welch, along with Wu-Tang’s own Ghostface Killah, Method Man, and Masta Killa. The album was recorded in an array of studios on both the East and West Coast, including a live-in space near the beach in Malibu called the Woodshed. RZA and Banks recently chatted by phone about chess god Bobby Fischer, the actual Hindu god Shiva, Leonard Cohen, and of course, this new album.
Banks is a longtime hip-hop fan, while RZA acknowledges he came to rock more recently, partly through a Christmas gift of a 30,000-song iPod from System of a Down's Shavo Odadjian. They also share an affinity for former Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante. Banks calls his own 2013 rap mixtape, Everybody on My Dick Like They Supposed to Be, a set of “sound experiments” given away free to clear up space creatively for his next project. If rock and rap meet, Banks tells me, the hybrid should work in a natural way: “On this record,” he adds, “nothing was forced.”
Pitchfork: How did you guys first meet?
RZA: I was in New York at the time. Paul was in New York, and my manager—I don’t know exactly what happened. I know I was smoking a lot of weed during that period. All I know is that I met him at a tequila bar, I remember that. And once we met it was just two New York musicians connecting. That was really the foundation of it. My manager was a fan of Interpol’s work and he got me familiar with it as well, so it was more like two musicians hooking up, breaking bread, and just vibing out in the city.
Paul, what do you remember about this first meeting?
Paul Banks: [It was at] a tequila bar in the East Village, Mayahuel, and then we went down to—[to RZA] do you remember the name of the place, the noodle place? Isn’t there a better word for noodles, for when you’re talking about that type of food…
RZA: Yeah, but these were handmade noodles. You know, traditional Chinese noodles. You can’t get these in a package.
Banks: You were calling it “pho” that night.
RZA: No, pho is Vietnam.
Banks: Scratch that. But we were with his martial arts instructor.
RZA: He took us to this spot. I’ve been there a few times, it's such a good place. I don’t know the name of it, it’s in Chinatown—it’s legit. That’s the bottom line. It’s hard to get a seat.
How did you start playing chess together?
RZA: We’re both into chess. It’s a great way to forget about everything else in the world, and just put your ideas into that board. Paul being a player, we talked about, “Yo, next time we hook up, let’s play chess,” and then we made that happen.
Banks: It’s another New York connection with that film Searching for Bobby Fischer. Ben Kingsley’s in it, it’s a story about a kid who really existed in New York City [chess prodigy Joshua Waitzkin]. I got the chess bug when I was finishing high school, we were doing chess tournaments at my house. I never got to a very high level. But I am good on a clock because—I don’t know why I’m telling you this—I had a job after college where I didn’t have to do shit, basically, and my supervisor was some other kid that I knew from college, who was just sleeping all day, and it was kind of a data-entry thing. But I figured out this way that you could get “blitz” games in. If your boss walked in and you’re in the middle of a 20-minute game, then you’re fucked. But if you’re playing a one-minute game, I could squeeze in five to six games before anybody walked by my cubicle. So I got really good at blitz, one-minute chess games. But that’s kind of like the cheap chess version.
RZA: No. Blitz chess is a technique within itself. I’m actually weaker at blitz chess, to be honest. I also use chess to measure my emotions sometimes, right? If I get to a point where I’m making a lot of bad moves I know I gotta look back at myself and see what’s bothering me. Well, one thing I know that’s been weak about me over the course of my life is time, because I don’t really have the same respect for time as most people. I take that extra day to think about it. Even though you may need the answer today, I’d rather meditate and get the answer because I know this much: The decision is permanent. But when you playing chess on the clock, no no no. You gotta make a decision that may not be the best decision but you gotta make a decision, and that’s where I find my weakness at. And that’s why [to Banks] you beat me on the clock.
Banks: I didn’t beat him. The clock ran out.
RZA: [laughs] Time has run out.
When it came to making music together, though, what was that process like?
RZA: Well, we had the opportunity to have a great company like Warner Bros. support us and give us a chance to make this music. They were very relaxed in the process, there was no pressure on us, they let it happen organically. We took the time to structure things and to have proper takes, and we had some great engineers along the path as well.
How did “Sword in the Stone,” with Kool Keith, come about?
Banks: RZA unveiled the beat one day when we were at Woodshed. Within 20 minutes, RZA was dropping the verse. That’s just one of the most bombastic songs on the record. It’s got a fucking banging beat, really high-energy delivery.
RZA: The first time I performed that song, I performed it handheld mic in my hand like I was on stage in front of 10,000 people. We had the doors wide open, you could see the Pacific Ocean from the studio, and the music was blasting loud. There was no feedback on the mic. Paul gave me the mic, the engineer got on the deck, and I just went for it like it was a concert, and that was the foundation of the song.
How did you guys connect with Florence Welch?
Banks: I was doing the last Interpol show from our last record, in Ireland I think, and she was on the side of the stage. When I walked offstage, she said that she was a fan and she'd really enjoyed the show. I got her contact info that day and reached out about having her take part in the project. We sent her a couple tracks, we settled on a song, and we did it remotely, but it was really fun actually just talking to her about what the lyrics should be about. She sent me the lyrics that she’d written, we talked about those, she sent me another pass, and I was absolutely fucking floored. She just killed that song. Even though she wasn’t there in the studio with us, I feel like nothing was lost because there was just great communication and a great dynamic with her.
How did the song with Method Man and Masta Killa on it end up being a Banks & Steelz track as opposed to a Wu-Tang record?
Banks: By the time they got to the studio that day, we had the song written, and the end of that song is me on drums, RZA on piano, and we were all over the place. That’s one of the most freeform and fun tracks that we recorded for the record, so I guess, I would have to be on a Wu-Tang record for that.
RZA, what were you thinking when you recorded the verses for the title track?
RZA: The foundation of the lyrics was inspired by the energy of Malibu, and combined with the idea of myself, and the idea of man himself. I was inspired to write the second verse as if a man is reflecting upon his life. And that’s why I imagined myself—we all pray for old age, you know—and I kind of took myself as if I could be one day on a porch with a stogie, thinking about my life. But I think the line that really resonated is when I said that we give man the wisdom to be a carpenter, a gardener, a mother, a daughter, a father—
Banks: Priest, king, or warrior.
RZA: —a priest, king, or warrior. The point being made is that beyond the gender of it, man is a mother, man is a father, man is a warrior, man is a scholar. Here goes a good reference: If you look at the Indian god, Shiva with the multiple arms, to me, that invoked the idea in my head. It’s like, I don’t think you’re ever going to meet anybody with that many arms, but the ability of a person to choose any path he wants to labor is in him.
Let’s talk another, “One by One.” It kind of reminds me of an Interpol song.
Banks: That’s one of my favorites. [to RZA] When did the beat come around to that one? It feels like it's a partner song to [their early demo songs] “Can’t Hardly Feel” and “Conceal.”
RZA: Yeah, that beat was part of that package of tracks. Paul had that track a long time. I probably came with the lyrics last on that particular song. But what I like about it is the atmosphere that it invokes, personally. On that, if you noticed, my particular cadence and voice tone is pretty different than some of the other songs on the album, especially for my first verse. I’m not shy to say where I get inspiration from sometimes, and I actually happened to be heavy into Leonard Cohen at this period of our album. And I just thought it would be something he would do, lyrically: put you there, put you in the middle of what’s going on. Paul’s singing, “We got this taste for blood.” So that’s a song that reflects our image of the brass knuckle and the dagger. Even though we’re clean and dapper, we are here for business and you don’t want to be the guy who we’re bringing that business to.
Was there a moment when you guys realized it was a full album, not just a single or an EP?
Banks: I think when we came up with the 34th song. [pause] Yeah, we got a lot of music.
So will there be another Banks & Steelz album?
Banks: Yeah, why not?
RZA: It's supply and demand. You guys demand it, we will supply it.