“I’ve had my eyes on the Flatbush Zombies for sometime now,” RZA said in a statement. And when the RZA speaks, people listen. It’s hard to believe that the Brooklyn crew and the Staten Island producer had never linked in the past, given how Flatbush Zombies’ penchant for the macabre seems so aligned with RZA’s cinematic aesthetic. But now here they are, two NYC entities born in different eras, at the start of a new collaborative arc.
In the new “Plug Addicts” clip, the “glorious dead” Meechy Darko, Zombie Juice, Erick Arc Elliott, and The RZA are all dressed like Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs as they take turns dropping a verse. The video is sinister to say the least, and even culminates with RZA’s slasher re-enactment of Michael Madsen’s Mr. Blonde torture scene from the movie. They all play off of each other fluidly on the mic and the production sounds eerily similar to a certain project from the past. “Their style of dark hip hop lyricism is reminiscent of my days in the Gravediggaz,” RZA remarked about the Zombies. “This type of collaboration was overdue,”.
This is the first of their two singles, with another called “Quentin Tarantino” due on December 17th. Flatbush Zombies’ Eric Arc Elliott added some words on the collab:
“In a lot of ways I saw RZA in myself, as a fellow producer/artist. We are making history together at this very moment. The music he’s made over the course of his career had a lot to do with why I wanted to make music in the first place, it’s beautiful to see these things come full circle.”
Watch the video for “Plug Addicts” above and be on the lookout for “Quentin Tarantino” next week.