Wu-Tang Clan forever, and ever

RZA is the cover star of Huck 83: Life Is A Journey – The 20^th Anniversary Issue. Order your copy now.

At 5:55 pm on December 15, 2025, RZA of The Wu-Tang Clan joins our call. His camera reveals the GRAMMY-winning producer at a desk. He’s relaxed, sitting upright, the confident posture of a noble prince. Black aviator sunglasses like those worn by Tom Cruise in Top Gun cover his eyes; a black snapback that reads ​“Park Hill New York” in gold rests like a crown upon his head; and the sly smirk on his face tells me he likes my question.

“You’re sitting at a bar in Brooklyn, and you look at the door as hip hop walks in. What do you see?” I ask.

”Let’s say hip hop is feminine,” RZA hypothesises – a touch of mischief in his tone. ​“I think that’s a bad bitch, yo.” His smile widens. ​“Is that Diahann Carroll? Is that Angela Bassett? She kept her shit together, yo.”

After a beat, the demeanour changes; the playful energy fades. ​“But if you want me to be quite honest…” sounding more profound now. ​“You know how sunlight touches everything? Even underground, there’s a certain ray that hits you. It’s ultraviolet. It penetrates through the whole planet. Hip hop is that. A light that comes through the door.”

“You know…” his baritone voice pulling me in as if to share a secret. ​“I don’t know if you’ve followed this… but they say hip hop hasn’t been in the Top 40…” I nod, affirming my awareness of the recent online discourse that followed rap’s failure to reach a high ranking position on Billboard’s coveted chart for the first time since 1990, ending a 35-year streak on October 25, 2025. RZA rejects these claims vehemently.

“It’s in every form of music now… And not just music,” he rebuffs.
​“It’s in the dance.”
​“It’s in the hairstyle.”
​“It’s in the swag.”
​“It’s in the fucking video director.”
​“It’s in the top, bro.”
​“It’s always going to be there…”
​“It’s the light!”

Born Robert Fitzgerald Diggs in Brownsville, Brooklyn, RZA first encountered the light in 1976, when his cousin, the elite rapper GZA, brought him to a block party between two buildings at the Park Hill projects in Staten Island. He was no older than seven, yet he could remember DJ Jones spinning records while MC Punch and Quincy riffed off rhymes. This was hip hop, when the budding youth culture was a gathering of obsessions: rhyming, producing, DJing, and breakdancing. ​“I always say GZA is a bridge between the first generation and the second generation of hip hop,” notes RZA, honouring his enlightener. ​“And I’m one of the first students of the second generation.”

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Like a true scholar dedicated to a range of passions, RZA’s curriculum began with writing rhymes at nine, rap-battling and self-producing by 11, and forming the rap group Force of the Imperial Master with GZA and another cousin, the late legend Ol’ Dirty Bastard, in their teens. At 18, his own apartment gave RZA a headquarters off the streets of Staten Island, where he cut demos with a close-knit crew who lived, hustled, and survived in the most dangerous neighbourhoods, who also loved MCing and hip hop as much as he did. RZA became the trusted Abbott, their de facto leader and spokesperson for a way forward. 

They were 10 deep in total. All alpha males RZA starved with, fought for, and grew to know like brothers, bonding over chess matches, martial arts movies, risky street schemes, spiritual practices like Supreme Mathematics, rap battles, and hip hop block parties while living through ​’80s New York. The harsh realities of adulthood at that time: heightened crime, gun violence, a drug epidemic, and mounting poverty entwined with their love of martial arts to inspire their music. Their sound was brash, aggressive, and dank in a darkness of cold truth where necks needed protection and cash ruled everything on the New York crime side. 

On November 9, 1993, four months after his 25^th birthday, The Wu-Tang Clan – the competitive clique RZA considered the best lyricists in all of New York and beyond, and who all signed to him under the record label he started, Wu-Tang Productions – released their debut album, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), produced entirely by him. Their logo, a winged W, has become a unifying banner for a group of individuals who, when they come together, create a greater force than their separate parts. 

36 Chambers captured that force and the weight of their times, the culture of their lives, with skill, style, humour, and hunger. It’s music that absorbed the atmosphere outside, translating how they spoke, what they heard, the sonics that vibrated off the concrete, that bounced off the walls. Their lively spirits, feeding off each other, never sound winded or wrinkled. In the spirit of returning to the beginning, I ask: ​“When you hear the date, November 9, 1993, what is the first memory that comes to mind?” 

“So many things… But I’ll say the album release party.” Where exactly the party was is fuzzy. ​“Either Webster Hall or Hammerstein Ballroom,” he ponders, but the experience is still vivid: ​“The place was packed with celebrities.” Then RZA takes an unexpected detour in his recollection. ​“As a New York MC who actually got on late, if you look at my peers, we’re all around the same age,” he said before naming the contemporaries who were already making progress in their careers. A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, Leaders of The New School, and Onyx.

“My Wu-Tang brothers are a little younger, but I wasn’t,” he continued. ​“I had rap battles or moments with all these greats, but the world didn’t know who I was. The industry wasn’t… you know… In those days… If I tried to go to the club, I wasn’t getting in. I had to wait 15, 20, 30 minutes til somebody let me in.”

There’s humility on the tail of every word as he goes back further in this memory, as if the experience of wanting to be inside, but forced to wait, hasn’t left him. ​“And that night, the whole industry was at the club for us, for me, for Wu-Tang, for Staten Island. That was an amazing moment in time, and it was the lighting of a wick that continues to burn.”

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I’m intrigued. I want to know more about that day. How did it begin? I ask. ​“I recall preparing for the party…” his mind still working backwards. RZA recalls dealing with Steve Rifkind, the founder of Loud Records (who signed Wu-Tang to their first distribution deal), and 50 other things that caused him to arrive at the party 10 minutes before the group performance. ​“There was so much stuff on me as the producer, as the president of the company, as the mind behind it, as the creative force, all these different things, as well as being a guy that got to grab the mic and do my verses,” RZA remembered, ​“That day and many days of that time was consumed by me wearing multiple hats.”

There’s a slight pause before he adds: ​“In the beginning, you don’t get the full benefit of success until after millions of records are sold…” and then, for the first time since our call started, RZA brought up Wu-Tang Forever: The Final Chamber Tour. Alongside Run The Jewels, the entire clan, including Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s impressive son Young Dirty Bastard, completed the US and Canada dates in 2025 – 27 cities, all arenas, and all sold out. It’s billed as a farewell, potentially the last chance to see Raekwon the Chef, Masta Killa, U‑God, Cappadonna, Method Man, Inspectah Deck, GZA, RZA, and The Ghostface Killah all on stage together. 

“I want to honestly say,” his voice sounding incredibly sincere and reflective, ​“This Final Chamber Tour has been one of the funnest moments for me, because it’s kind of more reaping what I’ve sown versus sowing new seeds.”

“Like,” a grin spread wide across his face, ​“I’m having the time of my life on all the dates. I’m the last guy to leave the venue. I might walk out of the venue at like 1am, taking shots with fans and shit. Then go to the studio bus and record some shit and just live it, you know?”

“Did you anticipate this reaping what you sowed experience when preparing for the tour?” I ask. 

“Not personally,” he replies. ​“Besides making sure that my brothers got a chance to globe-trot one more time, I couldn’t predict the personal effect it would have on me. I feel like I’m living the blessings of the ​’90s right now.” 

His enthusiastic response to being back on the road with his brothers reminds me of how great the entire group looked when I saw them in Atlanta on their fourth tour date. It was a packed house, full from the floor to the rafters. All ages, all colours, all creeds. A room of lovers of hip hop, there to see grown men in their 50s shining, healthy-looking, rapping every bar, never sounding out of breath. Their entire two-hour set made me feel like flipping through a CD of classics. Classic in a timeless way. Classic in a forever sense. Although they’re legends already, seeing them on The Final Chamber tour felt special, like viewing their graduation into immortality. I left feeling like I witnessed one of the greatest rap phenomena by one of the greatest rap groups of all time. 

It’s remarkable how The Final Chamber Tour was conceived as part of a seven-year plan RZA set in motion back in 2018 to cement Wu-Tang’s legacy. Wu-Tang Clan: Of Mics and Men, a four-part documentary directed by the late Sacha Jenkins, produced by Mass Appeal, and released in 2019, was phase one. The Hollywood adaptation of their origin story, Wu-Tang: An American Saga, completed its third season on Hulu in 2023, which was phase two. 

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The European leg in spring 2026 will conclude the Final Chamber Tour and mark the end of phase three. Providing all the needed context on how Wu-Tang are the true pioneers of East Coast hip hop from its golden era. Who came with scorching wordplay, Shaolin slang, and a fresh brand of production and lyricism at a time when the East Coast needed a wrecking crew of fire-spitting dragons to burn a new path for the future. The newness was landscape-changing, like a tornado wrecking an unsuspecting town. 

Yes, over time, their careers remained collaborative, but they diverged in various directions under different conditions. Some mainstream with classic solo works. Raekwon’s Only Built 4 Cuban Linx…, Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s Return to the 36 Chambers: The Dirty Version, Ghostface Killah’s Ironman, Method Man’s Tical, and GZA’s Liquid Swords are all certified platinum albums with over a million copies sold. Their more underground comrades, Inspectah Deck, U‑God, Masta Killa, and Cappadonna, continue to tour in both America and overseas as solo artists with supportive fanbases. 

But their time together, the start of their dynasty, the first bricks to build their empire, was more than just a cliff note to mention in interviews or a quick soundbite to appear in hip hop documentaries. They reshaped the music industry in ways no other rap group had, and that deserves proper documentation as a collective that went on to change hip hop forever and conquer all corners of the world. On their terms.

When RZA reached out to each of the nine surviving members about his idea to cement their group legacy, it was done with humility. ​“All my brothers are successful in their own right,” he says with pride in his voice, ​“But when we unify as Wu-Tang, there’s gravy on that rice, you know what I mean?”

Seeing how important Wu-Tang is to him doesn’t diminish the success RZA has achieved himself. As one of hip hop’s wisest polymaths with many accolades and titles to his name: New York Times bestseller, multi-platinum rapper, BAFTA-nominated film composer, the aforementioned GRAMMY, and director of four studio-backed films, he has inspired a generation of musicians, philosophers, martial artists, vegans, and MCs through knowledge shared across mediums. Even Rihanna and A$AP Rocky named their son after him. However, among all his accolades and titles, what I admire most about him is how he never stops representing hip hop. 

When I ask which medium he feels the proudest transferring hip hop into, he answers: ​“My mission has always been to leave footprints, but I guess one of my strongest footprints that I feel satisfied and proud of is my injection of hip hop cinema in the form that it shows up in.

“And then I will also say,” he adds. ​“My injection of hip hop into corporate rooms. I’ve been able to walk in a lot of rooms, through success, of course, and having a value that brings economics and creativity to a project, which allowed me to sit at a lot of tables as a hip hop artist.

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“You know,” RZA continues, ​“There were stereotypes about us… You know all the stereotypes. I think I was able to break some of them to make sure that hip hop has a place at the table or is able to bring something from the building and bring it back to the streets at least, and build our own table.”

Although there are 10 members, I always count the most recognisable logo in hip hop as the 11^th. Why wouldn’t I? Wu Wear was the first streetwear company launched and owned by a rap group. The logo has appeared on merchandise since before Sean Combs had Sean Jean, before Jay‑Z had Roc-A-Wear. Seeing the W removed from album covers or any context related to Wu-Tang doesn’t diminish the arresting, visually compelling nature of Ronald ​“Mathematics” Bean’s drawing. He effectively combined the beauty of New York graffiti art with an ancient Egyptian, hieroglyphic-esque design. Both innovative and iconic, it’s an emblem that will likely endure long after the artist it represents, remaining as timeless as their music. 

I either saw a video or read an interview with RZA that revealed what the W stood for. The revelation stuck with me as important lore to inquire about one day. For my final question, I ask him, ​“did you always recognise the W as a Phoenix?” 

“There are a lot of different stories on the W, and you’re going to get a lot of variations of it. And I won’t even try to debunk or confirm them,” he replied. ​“But I will say at first, the logo spelled out the whole word, Wu-Tang. I had the mind to take the W out of the word to put it on a book with a sword, so that you could choose the book or the sword. No matter what you chose, that W was there, because that’s the wisdom…”

“Some brothers saw it and were like: ​‘Yo, that’s the bat, yo, that’s the bird, yo, that’s the eagle,’” he continues, ​“And it may be because one of my favorite heroes is Dark Phoenix from the X‑Men. But I was like, yeah, the Wu-Tang is a phoenix….”

There’s a pause, brief and meditative, like the closing words of a sermon.

“And that phoenix will always be able to go down to come back up.”

See dates for Wu-Tang Forever: The Final Chamber tour via their official website.

Yoh Phillips is a journalist and author of Best Damn Hip-Hop Writing: The Book of Yoh.

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