AMC has acquired the rights to both The Vampire Chronicles and Lives of the Mayfair Witches, both by Anne Rice and both about, well, vampires and witches. Between the two series, that’s 18 novels the network can now develop into TV projects under the supervision of Friday Night Lights veteran Rolin Jones, with Rice and her son Christopher serving as executive producers.

“It’s always been my dream to see the worlds of my two biggest series united under a single roof so that filmmakers could explore the expansive and interconnected universe of my vampires and witches,” Rice said in a statement. “That dream is now a reality, and the result is one of the most significant and thrilling deals of my long career.”

Going all the way back to 2016, Rice has been actively trying to turn her creative world into a television series on par with Game of Thrones after finally securing the rights to The Vampire Chronicles from Universal. However, Rice fans might want to temper their expectations about this latest development, at least for now. The journey to AMC hasn’t exactly been the smoothest.

According to Variety, Paramount Television was the first to jump on The Vampire Chronicles property, and it even had Hannibal showrunner Bryan Fuller attached. That project stalled when Fuller exited shortly after his involvement was announced. The rights reverted back to Rice, who then sold them to Hulu in a “competitive bidding situation.” Unfortunately, updates on The Vampire Chronicles‘ new home on the streaming service grew quiet. Following a cryptic Facebook post from Rice in early December, trades began reporting that the Hulu deal was dead, and the author was once again shopping the property, which has now landed at AMC.

“Like Lestat, this project will live forever,” Rice wrote in December. “We know you thirst, and we, Lestat and all the others who share the dark gift shall satisfy that thirst very soon.”

(Via THR, Variety)

Previously on NWA Powerrr: Way back in the halcyon days of early March we saw The Question Mark and Shooter Stevens call out the Rock ‘n’ Roll Express, Royce Isaacs try to break Sal Rinauro’s arm because of VLOG JEALOUSIES, and ventriloquist dummies from mysterious foreign lands.

If you’d like to keep up with these columns, you can do so on the NWA Powerrr tag page. Remember, NWA Powerrr and all its extra Rs is free to watch on YouTube, so check out episode nineteen if you haven’t already:

World Health Corganization

Welcome back to NWA Super Powerrr, the ersatz Clash of the Champions concept that was supposed to serve as the go-home show for the now-postponed Crockett Cup tournament. The special is book-ended by messages from NWA impresario William Patrick Corgan, who takes a break from being artisanal Kenny Rogers to let us know that while they’re frustrated they can’t do normal episodes and pay-per-views as planned due to the Circumstances ( WWE), the National Wrestling Alliance isn’t folding and will pivot to a new show, Carnyland, until our general outbreak nightmare is over. No word yet on what that show will be, but I assume it revolves around former Oakland Athletics third baseman Carney Lansford. [checks notes] Sorry, Kizarny Lansford.

Jokes aside, it does my heart good to know that the NWA’s keeping the shit afloat during the global pandemic and will get back to the GPB Studios as soon as possible, assuming Atlanta doesn’t go full The Walking Dead between now and the end of summer. Be safe down there, everybody. Be safe anywhere!

Madi Maxx Goes Beyond Thunderdome

Meet Madi Maxx, who more or less has a Haley from Modern Family gimmick despite being named “Mad Max.” Shouldn’t she be covered in dirt and trying to win matches for gasoline, or something? At least when Mad Maxine was around she had a green mohawk and had post-apocalyptic punk vibes. Why are you Santana Garrett? Do you know how much pro wrestling could use an Imperator Furiosa character? Come on. Like, imagine Aliyah from NXT, except her name is INDIANA JO-ANNS. Maybe she’s a raider of the lost character arc. Who knows?

Anyway, she’s here to get completely eaten for breakfast by the debuting (in the ring) Kamille. The NWA previously released this match and the promo that goes with it on YouTube, and I’d recommend giving it a watch. They do a great job of making Kamille out to be a sort of realistic, modern day Mr. Perfect, where she’s spent her entire life being wildly dominant at everything she’s ever tried, which has caused these conflicting feelings of “fuck you” confidence and the complex, emotional fragility that comes with constantly having your accomplishments marginalized and denied. It could easily be sympathetic, but isn’t, because she’s so jaded and spiteful about it. Love it.

Also, it doesn’t hurt that she’s out here bodying folks with big-ass leg lariats and monster spears with a goddamn forearm in your face on the cover.

Pretty sure Kamille could take anyone else wrestling on this episode, or at least come close.

Villain Enterprises Goes Under

Super Powerrr’s main event is the Powerrr debut of Villain Enterprises — specifically Brody King, who rules, and Marty Scurll, whose name gets mispronounced by Dave Marquez despite him arguably being the most known star on the show — in, get this, a loss to Strictly Business. This is Strictly Business’ house. It ain’t loosely business.

This is the kind of match Powerrr can do really well. It utilizes a lot of southern tag team wrestling tropes, which are still mint, but it keeps up a good pace and doesn’t outstay its welcome at just under 10 minutes. While it’s not the “best” match I’ve seen on TV recently, it’s closer to my platonic ideal of modern pro wrestling than anything. It’s four guys who know what works, doing what works. It makes sense without being dense or necessitating a full knowledge of the characters and histories to tell a story. It’s the KISS principle. Keep it simple, stupid.

Sure enough, the “villains” are outsmarted by the basic villainy of punching your opponent in the dick behind the referee’s back, allowing SB to score the underhanded victory and further the Scurll/Nick Aldis beef without one of them randomly pinning the other five times a month. The National Wrestling Alliance continues to be an SB Nation. It’s a shame they had to postpone the Crockett Cup to give us a payoff, because I was going to have cageside seats.

In The Least Important Strictly Business News Possible

May Valentine is extremely distraught about the fact that her vlogs have lost 100 followers due to her jealous, abusive boyfriend trying to maim one of her friends on television. YouTube, whatever. Serious question: are May Valentine’s vlogs available somewhere else? Can she have “subscribers” for a show that only happens in the middle of someone else’s YouTube show? Shit, now I want to see Paul Bearer start feuding with Brutus Beefcake about The Barber Shop doing better than The Funeral Parlor in the 18–34 demographic.

I’m not sure what’s funnier, the fact that “a vlogger might lose followers because her jobber boyfriend is being a dick to a different jobber” might be the lowest stakes wrestling story ever told, or May’s incredible dialogue:

“You don’t know my heart, okay? You know nothing about me. Do not accuse me of that again. I’m pure, okay!”

The Question Mark Cinematic Universe Expands

Literally!

Meet QUESTION MARK JR., Shooter Stevens’ “insurance policy” to protect his team from Trevor Murdoch during their match against the Rock ‘n’ Roll Express. My favorite part of the entire endeavor is Stevens trying to dump on Murdoch for showing up at ringside after saying he’s injured with, “I guess you FLUNKED HONESTY!”

Stu Bennett also gives us an early contender for call of the year during QMJ’s introduction:

Stevens: “From the Mongrovian Forest, weighing in at 450 mongroves”
Bennett: [long pause] “How many kilograms are in a mongrove?”

The Question Mark doesn’t seem to know anything about the existence of a “Question Mark Jr.,” so unless that creepy ventriloquist puppet from the previous episode got turned into a real boy by the Blue Mongrovian Fairy, it’s safe to say even in kayfabe that it’s clearly fatter Bouncer Brian Milonas under the hood. Trust me, it’s not important. In addition to the match containing the recommended dosage of Shooter Stevens shenanigans, Murdoch ends up chasing Question Mark Jr. around the ring until the poor guy has to collapse:

Stevens gets distracted by the general helplessness of his massive insurance policy and gets rolled up for the loss, because of course he does. The Rock ‘n’ Roll Express have pinned the Third-Degree National Heavyweight Champion!

(Mama) Storm’s End

There’s also some catharsis for the viewers (crazy concept, I know) when Tim Storm defeats immediate threat “Vanilla Godzilla” Jax Dane by using the time honored Braun Strowman opponent strategy of moving the fuck out of the way when a big guy is running at you. Based on the pro wrestling physics that cause you to run into the ropes, bounce off of them, and run back at your opponent on an Irish whip, a large man who has built up a head of steam can’t stop under any circumstances and must run into something before he can stop. If you dodged a charge from Braun Strowman and there was nothing for him to run into, he’d just keep jogging in one direction until he hit ocean.

The match is pretty good in the same way every local Texas indie show main event like this is pretty good, and I say that lovingly. There’s still a place in wrestling for big guys who do headlocks and shoulder-tackles and NEED YOUR SUPPORT, FANS, to beat slightly bigger guys. Afterward, per the pre-match stipulation, Storm gets five minutes with Danny Deals, the local improv comedy jerk who has been playing “Momma Storm” on Powerrr with an increasingly unclear motivation. Deals tries to dress up like Momma to avoid the inevitable manslaughter, which causes a super funny, “he’s not Momma,” chant. Storm, who is lovable and gullible but not stupid, calmly removes “Momma’s” Golden Girls wig and Boss Man Slams him twice.

Happy Mother’s Day, everybody.

Also On This Episode

Tasha Steelz, who signed with Impact Wrestling the morning after this aired and will presumably never be back, wins a triple threat match against Ashley Vox and the modern day Dean Malenko, Marti Belle. Marti gets through most of the match without an issue, but is too scared of Steelz’ knees to bend all the way over for a Codebreaker and sells them even though they came a solid two and a half feet from making contact. It’s all good. Good luck on Impact, Tasha!

Melina and Allysin Kay try to barter their way into a title match against World Women’s Champion Thunder Rosa — Melina wants it because she’s a “living legend,” Kay wants it because of interference in her rematch — and end up in a triple threat for Crockett Cup, whenever that happens. Fingers crossed that the match suddenly changes when Kay and Melina are mysteriously softball-batted 300 feet to right-center by someone who had to have been padding their stats.

Finally, Eddie Kingston, Eli Drake, and James Storm give an absolute masterclass in how to sound like a human being when you’re talking into a microphone, no matter what your character is. These characters are DRASTICALLY different. Kingston’s this casually intense dude with a Yonkers accent who speaks to the crowd like they’re his equals, which allows him to hit them with relatable emotional beats. Storm is a confident, masculine redneck who SCREAMS EVERYTHING HE SAYS because he’s PASSIONATE ABOUT THIS BUSINESS and LOVES TO FIGHT. Eli Drake’s doing the sing-songy Attitude Era promos everyone loved from guys like The Rock, Konnan, and the Road Dogg. They couldn’t be more different, but they fit together because they always, for better or worse, sound like they’re being themselves. That’s money.

Next Week

As a character in the story of Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley is unique in that he was both an accomplice and an antagonist. When they were competitors in the 1993 Finals or teammates on the Dream Team, Jordan and Barkley were great friends, teeing off for rounds of golf between Finals games and gambling into the night together. But since Barkley criticized Jordan’s ownership style years ago, the two had a falling out.

Now, Barkley is taking issue with the way The Last Dance portrays Jerry Krause as the villain of the documentary.

“Anybody who thinks Jerry Krause broke up the Bulls has got to be a fool,” Barkley told Dan Le Batard on his radio show this week. “The reason they broke up the Bulls is they didn’t want to pay anybody.”

Added Barkley: “When it was time to pay everybody, they broke up the team.”

Indeed, Krause is portrayed as the villain of The Last Dance, and many have taken issue with this aspect of the film. Reinsdorf is able to answer for his actions, but because Krause has passed away, his voice is missing. It gives Reinsdorf the convenient opportunity to put it all on his general manager, as in Episode 2, when Reinsdorf says he actively encouraged Scottie Pippen not to take the contract that Reinsdorf himself was offering him. It’s an obvious exaggeration, yet no one balances him out.

“Reinsdorf is throwing (Krause) under the bus and drove over him like 10 times,” Barkley told Le Batard.

As Barkley pointed out, Jordan’s contracts were small until his final two seasons with the Bulls as well, and Dennis Rodman and others were underpaid, too, even as contracts were ballooning around the league in a manner that would eventually lead to a lockout. Somehow, a dynasty kept its costs down.

“It’s Jerry Reinsdorf’s money,” Barkley said. “If he wanted to keep that team together, it would have stayed together.”

The film paints a slightly different picture, even if it is quite sympathetic to Pippen. Maybe this is Barkley’s way of continuing to take shots at Jordan, or he truly has an issue with the way the film was put together. Either way, Barkley also insisted to Le Batard that he is “too stubborn” to make amends with Jordan.

Haim’s recent choreographed video for “I Know Alone” seems to have put the sisters in a dancing mood, and that’s a vibe they’re looking to share. Today, the trio took to Twitter to announce a run of Zoom dance classes they will be hosting during the next few weeks.

They will be hosting a class every Sunday for the next four weeks, and each one will be focused on one of their dance-focused videos. The May 17 class will be based on “Want You Back,” while May 24 is “Little Of Your Love,” May 31 is “If I Could Change Your Mind,” and June 7 is “I Know Alone.” Interested potential participants can sign up to get an invite to the Zoom call here.

The announcement was made with a video, which is styled like an intentionally cheesy commercial. In it, the sisters begin (while alternating words), “Hi, we’re Haim. Do you dance? Dance? Dance? Dance? Dance? Dance? Dance with us. Yeah! Dance with us, every Sunday, for the next four Sundays.”

Este, Danielle, and Alana appear to have experience with Zoom, or at least in a video chat setting. Last month, Haim guested on The Late Show and gave a performance of “I Know Alone,” with each sister in a separate room.

“The disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein is dead.”

Those are the first words you hear in the trailer for Netflix’s Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich, followed by, “Did he kill himself? Was he killed?” But the four-part docuseries (wisely) doesn’t seem to be about suicide conspiracy theories. Save that for Reddit. Instead, it exposes a “horrifying story of relentless manipulation and sex trafficking,” with “Epstein’s survivors [serving] as the series’ pre-eminent voices, providing powerful testimonials about their experiences, and inspiration in their resilience,” according to Netflix.

Directed by Lisa Bryant, Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich tackles how Epstein was portrayed in the media and high-society circles, as a “stunningly” rich “Gatsby-like figure of mystery,” to the monstrous ways he used his wealth and exploited and abused underage women.

Here’s more.

Leading up to his 2019 arrest, mysterious tycoon Jeffrey Epstein was accused of abusing women and underage girls for decades, assembling a network of enablers to help carry out and cover up his crimes. Epstein came from humble beginnings yet managed to lie and manipulate his way to the top of the financial world. He eventually gained tremendous wealth and power while running an international sex trafficking ring. The serial sex abuser made a secret plea deal with the government in 2008 avoiding a potential life sentence and continued to abuse women. With their frightening firsthand accounts, Epstein’s accusers are the leading voices in director Lisa Bryant’s four-part docuseries Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich. By revealing their emotional scars, some for the very first time, the sisterhood of survivors intend to stop predators — and the American justice system — from silencing the next generation.

Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich premieres on Netflix on May 27.

There are moments you imagine for yourself as a teenager. Wild visions of success and wealth and coolness. Being smack in the middle some ultra-vivid “scene.” The sort of experiences that famous people seem to always have and the rest of us almost never do.

Moments like hanging out in the basement of a Staten Island mansion, watching The RZA, founder and architect of the Wu-Tang Clan, walk into the room with his crew. Seeing him dressed in a black leather jacket and boots, black jeans, and a black cap — no jewelry, no splashes of color. One part rockstar; one part austere Daoist.

Having him come over and ask how your vegan pizza tastes before drifting over to an Alesis Sample Pad in the corner. Bobbing your head as The Scientist starts tapping out a beat — something he can charge a whole hell of a lot of money for but is doing right now just for fun. Reminding yourself to stay in the moment and not text your fellow ’90s hip-hop nerds until later.

That all sounds equal parts incredible and unlikely, right? Hanging with The Abbot himself in the underbelly of a partially-restored mansion, once owned by a sea captain, now occupied by a collective of performing artists. Discussing cashew cheese with Young Dirty Bastard (ODB’s son). But that’s precisely the situation I found myself in two weeks before the quarantine started. And the most surreal part was yet to come.

Once his beat was looped, RZA pulled up a chair and started beatboxing over a mic. He waved a second mic toward the 15 or so people looking on. “Who’s dropping a verse?”

Except when Bobby Digital says it (I could pepper different nicknames for the man born Robert Fitzgerald Diggs through this entire piece and never run dry), you have to imagine the very distinct way he speaks. The Staten accent, the rapper’s syncopated delivery, and the voice that sounds like he was just about to blow a smoke ring, then bit it in half and held a piece in his mouth to season each word.

At first, no one jumps at the opportunity to freestyle. It is, after all, pretty intimidating to be offered the mic by the dude who put Meth and Inspectah Deck on wax (“What RZA put together let no man tear asunder“). So The Abbot keeps the second mic for himself and unfurls a few bars. Multi-hyphenate artist Emmanuel Everett grabs the sample pad and starts layering gothic synths that fit the Amityville mansion vibe.

“Sometimes I feel like a motherless child / Sometimes I feel like I’m in a motherfucking zone / Outerspace, out of canals / Sometimes I’m just floatin’ down the Nile…”

The RZA was never known as an “off the dome” rapper, but watching him do so reminds me of years back, when Jay Leno asked Michael Jordan if he could still dunk and MJ gave the late-night host a scathing look before replying, “Are you stupid? Yeah, I can still dunk.” It would be stupid to wonder if Bobby Diggs can still rap.

When RZA waves the second mic again, a poet, Peter Lange, reaches for it. The crowd tightens a little. He raps a few bars and hands it to comedian Riley Soloner who spits a few lines of his own and passes it on. Folks are dancing, the mic makes its way around the room. Everyone’s having fun.

And then… And then… And then…

With the niceties out of the way and his hero looking on, Lange takes the mic a second time. Something’s different in him now — eyes burning, vibe electric. He charges headlong into a freestyle. Time telescopes in that peculiar way the universe uses to tell us, “this is something; pay attention.”

Lange drops the rhymes and starts to sing-scream — kicking his legs, clawing at the air. Then, just as naturally, he starts linking up couplets again. He’s owning the room while wearing stocking feet. One moment yelling, the next whispering so that we all collectively lean forward to hear.

The crowd is transfixed by this eruption. The RZA’s eyes widen and he starts punching in highlights. Lange paces, testifies, dances. It’s unbelievably cool. An origin story. Like something you’d see on the RZA-created Wu-Tang: An American Saga.

A full ten minutes later, when Lange’s creative burst finally winds down, performance artist Nicoletta de la Brown appears from the kitchen with a birthday cake (vegan and gluten-free, like all items when Prince Dynamite is in the building) and sets it in front of the free-flowing poet (I’ll find out later that it’s Lange’s 23rd birthday). He’s rapping with his eyes squeezed shut and Brown guides him to sit cross-legged on the floor in front of the cake. In every likelihood, he can sense the heat and flicker of the candles but keeps his eyes closed.

Brown tells Lange to open his eyes and they immediately well up with tears. Brown is crying, too, and the beat hasn’t stopped and neither — absolutely inexplicably — has the rapping. Young Dirty Bastard and I are standing across the room from one another and he gives me this head shake like, “Crazy, huh?”

And it is crazy. The bizarre-surreal-amazing variety of crazy that modern culture is calibrated to give us far too little of. A burst of free expression in a pre-COVID era when so much creative output still felt manufactured, heavily stylized, and generally edited. Raw and real in equal parts. A man coming into his own while freestyling in a Staten Island basement — a remix of RZA’s past and a complete metamorphosis for Lange.

“I feel like in that moment all that was in me was the energy for release and transformation,” Lange told me later. “Being in a space with RZA woke me up. He rapped ‘sometimes I feel like a motherless child’ and I’m adopted, so it felt like he was speaking straight to me. Like ‘stop playing games and just let your creative self be born.’”

The RZA is also having something of a creative rebirth right now. At least in the public-facing sense.

After years of pushing Wu-Tang as a group, he took a little distance from hip-hop in the mid-2000s. He worked with a more eclectic range of artists (System of a Down’s Shavo Odadjian, Interpol’s Paul Banks), scored movies (Kill Bill, Afro Samurai), acted in movies (Funny People, Popstar), and eventually started directing movies (The Man with the Iron Fists). But during quarantine, Price Delight has been a highly visible figure in the ’90s hip-hop resurgence. His Verzuz battle with DJ Premier might not be the most-watched of the series (that goes to Erykah Badu v Jill Scott), but it certainly felt like a galvanizing cultural moment.

Watching him speak to Talib Kweli on Uproxx’s People’s Party Live the week after the battle, it was clear that RZA had fun being back in the rap game.

“I had to go backwards, yo,” he told Kweli and cohost Jasmin Leigh about preparing for Verzuz, “and rekindle all the things that was happening while I was happening. And I’ve realized there were so many beautiful things happening.”

RZA has always been introspective, but his contemplative return to his rap roots seems to be part of the “chamber” of life he’s in right now. (RZA’s unit of time is chambers — which is a reflection of his interest in both numerology and Kung Fu.) His twin pursuits at the moment seem to be his own work in film and TV and the mentorship of a new generation of creative minds (“Wu-Tang is for the children!”). At the end of February, when he rapped with Lange, RZA was in the writers’ room for season two of Wu-Tang: An American Saga and had a new directorial project launching, Cut Throat City (the film was slated for debut at SXSW and has since been delayed because of the COVID-19 pandemic). The day after the freestyle session, he quietly released an album of narrated meditations called Guided Explorations.

It was actually that album, that brought Lange and me to Staten Island. We were both there for a RZA-led creative retreat — an extended brand activation by Tazo Tea called “Camp Tazo.” Guided Explorations was the cherry on top of the whole initiative. As wild and spontaneous as it felt, the party in the mansion also fell under that umbrella. The moment was unplanned, but someone else footed the bill.

Camp Tazo actually started months earlier, with a nationwide contest, which RZA judged. 12 winners and two journalists (of which I was one) were then flown from Florida, Alaska, and every other corner of the country to New York. Once there, participants had two days of focused time with The Abbot and his personal gurus across multiple locations — including the aforementioned mansion and Snug Harbor Cultural Center’s Chinese Scholar’s Garden.

As a group, we studied chess from Hip-Hop Chess Federation founder Adisa Banjoko and practiced kung-fu with longtime Wu mentor and legit Shaolin monk Sifu Shi Yan Ming. We were given entire blank walls to paint our personal creative manifestos on and instructed to write letters home about our ambitions. When we got hungry there was vegan food. When we were thirsty there was an endless supply of tea.

“It’s beautiful when someone who has lived experience can instill it into a young mind, or any mind that’s inexperienced in a field,” RZA told me of the camp and his mentorship role. “If Einstein taught us E=MC^2 back in the ’20s and ’30s, we’d be a fool to start back and try to learn it all over again.”

The retreat, structured as a series of explorations, was powerful in its own right. Much credit is due to the creative safe space that performance artist and “head counselor” Nicoletta De La Brown designed. Even before RZA arrived, she set the tone of inclusion, free expression, bracing honesty, and collective nurturing. The result was a room full of people open to soak up whatever the Wu leader threw at them. But it was RZArector who tied the whole thing together. He learned all of our names in five minutes. Within an hour he knew our goals and would repeat them back to us, like mantras.

“I’m comfortable being that person who helps someone evolve thanks to what I’ve already experienced,” he said. “All it does is push the art, the wisdom, the information, the experience further. Let’s just say it took me 40 years to figure something out, and I tell it to a 20-year-old. Look how far ahead they are.”

To help contest winners turn what they learned into sustainable creative success, Tazo gave them a $2,500 grant. RZA also handed out his personal email to each camper while having his assistant make a note of their goals and needs. And Brown started a text thread that every single attendee of the camp is still actively involved in — sharing wins and commiserating over tough breaks.

“I was on a creative and spiritual journey before the camp started,” multimedia artist Nneka Gigi told me after the retreat. “Once I got to camp there were activities that gave me the confidence to express myself without feeling like I had to perform. There was no fear of the gaze of others.”

The Abbot’s ability to form a collective, first shown all those years ago with the Wu, was in full evidence over the course of the three-day camp. But his ability and desire to guide and mentor a new generation of voices — like Lange’s and Gigi’s — was even more striking.

“Being around RZA there was a… I guess the best way to say it is a warm vibration, if you will,” Gigi said of her experience at the camp. “That’s the beautiful gift with someone who can reach millions: even his presence was enough. His very existence is the result of actualized creative possibilities.”

The experience seems to have given something to RZA, too. It allowed him to pass wisdom on while making space to enter his own next chamber.

“If you spend time with me, it’s my duty to share and impart my knowledge to you, right?” he asked me. “All it does is ignite your flame. But at the same time as I’m imparting, I’m also laying off a load from myself. That way, another load can come on.”

This means that RZA’s mentorship is likely to give birth to more of his own creative output. It might be in rap, it might be in film, it might be — as he says in the interview below — with a written/directed/scored Disney movie. The world is now officially put on notice: RulerZigZagZig Allah is feeling fully charged up. Be hyped.

***

Between guided meditations, chess lessons, impromptu performances, and being instructed to scream “Merry Christmas!” while practicing Kung Fu, I had the chance to speak with Bobby Diggs on the record at the retreat. We talked about fully stepping into the role of mentor, honing his intuition, and his dream of scoring a Disney movie.

You’re mentoring people this week and that seems like such a natural role for you. Does it create any fear at all? Like, “I’m still in the game and I’m giving the playbook away”?

That would be selfish. And art is actually not selfish. At 21, 22, 23 would I have given it away? Probably not in this capacity, I don’t think. At the end of the first album, I consciously put a skit that says, “It’s our secret. Never teach the Wu-Tang.” And I remember me and Dirty laughing like, “Yo, we ain’t going to teach it to them until we’re ready.” And then on Wu-Tang Forever, it started opening up. You know what I mean? And I said, “Well, they ain’t going to figure this out ’til the year 2000 anyway.” Then in 2000, I think it was balanced after that. I honestly became quiet after 2000, if you hadn’t noticed.

I did.

My own life took a unique turn, you know what I mean? Losing my moms and things like that. You got to lose your mom to understand that, right? And that was like… it took a sense of purpose out of me. And it took the rekindling of that purpose with a second wife because me and my first wife — we didn’t work. So it took my second wife and that child that we had together, that rekindling, that rebirth of life, to put me back on a path of being able to create flow and gain experience again.

By doing that a second time around, yeah — I became more gracious with it, right? Because look, at the end of the day, I’m from New York City, right? And New York City was a place that in the ’60s and ’70s people was dealing with the knowledge of self, it was a black movement against the system. And yet there was another man who they called the father, who was really not against the system. He was helping the system because he was about helping the growth of the country, the growth of the youth, and the growth of the truth. And so his studies is what came to me. And it says, “Knowledge is free.”

He’s like, “The Christians, the Muslims, always trying to sell it to you. The Masons try to hide it from you.” He said, “Knowledge is free.” And so I’m from that school.

So I’ve had two conversations with you, and one thing that has always struck me in those two conversations and then researching for having you on The People’s Party, I’ve read this thing I’ve quoted to about 100 people. Where you said — and if you didn’t ever say this, tell me — but where you said that when you stopped eating fish you could “taste the death in it,” right?

Yeah.

And what strikes me about you that, one of the many reasons I’m so fascinated by you is it seems like as you have gone further down your path, your intuition becomes sharper, basically. And so that much of what you do is all of a sudden driven by intuition because it’s the communication between your brain, body, soul is so fast right now. Is that what you’re finding for yourself as a creative person? And then how is that shaping what you create right now?

That’s a good observation. That’s a pretty… the is word “shrewd.” That’s a shrewd observation. And the reason why I say that to you is because I said to my daughter who was going through a tough time: “Baby, you just got to get further and further away from that person that you was. That’s all.” And it’s like, “If I shit in this room right now, you going to smell it. But the further I walk away you won’t smell that shit. And then more time you’ll forgot that I did it. And next thing you know, it doesn’t exist anymore, right?”

So that’s part of that everything that I’ve stopped in life. It’s just like one of the campers said… I’m not going to say what they said. I think. In one of the rituals, she’s saying that she used to smoke weed for her creativity, and then she stopped because she realizing that even though she thought that was what she needed to create, she started smoking it and not doing nothing, right? Now wow — that happened to me, right? So I can relate to that. And I stopped doing weed, I might be going into five years now, if not longer, so I definitely felt that, right?

I can imagine.

It’s like so many things for me, it’s like the myth of things have gotten farther erased because of the reality of me living and seeing, “well, that wasn’t for me.” So it does build a certain type of intuition and instinct.

You’ve done so much. Do you have goals that you see five steps out, where you’re like, “Oh, this is what I’m going to be called to do in a couple of years,” or, “This is a project that I know is kind of on the side burner, I’m going to heat it up in a couple of years.” Does that happen to you?

Yeah, it does. It happens. But I also have a couple of dreams left to start from scratch.

Yeah. What are the biggest ones? For a guy like you, who’s so accomplished —

On a artist level, we’re talking as an artist? We’re not talking like —

As an artist.

On the artist level, I guess one of my biggest dreams — and this might be a selfish one — I want to score a Disney movie.

A RZA-scored Disney movie? That’s a good one, man.

I want to score a Disney movie, man. I’ve had this dream for almost, it feels like it’s been 14 years since… I was working on Kill Bill in 2002, right? And I started thinking about this in 2004 or 2005. I kind of like thought about it but didn’t take it seriously. But then around 2009, my son might have been three years old, and he saw Jungle Book and he loved it. And then I was like, “I got to do this.” I told my agent, and I told everybody, but it never happened yet. And maybe it won’t ever happen, but that’s an existing dream.

Well, you just put it out into the universe. That’s one of the ways that you told us this week that we can make things happen.

True. So that’s one of my dreams. I’m not shy to say it.

You had one of the most fascinating spans in the history of creativity, in my mind.

Wow.

You went into the basement and you came out with two group albums, seven solo albums, and you made every single track on every single one. You said, “I smelled bad, I looked bad, but I was creative every second.”

Yeah, I was ugly.

How did you know… We’ve seen so many great musicians, so many great artists who didn’t know how to keep their foot on the gas. How did you know, “Look, this is my moment. I can’t leave, I need to stay in this space and do whatever I can do in the time I have”? Did you just sense?

It’s hard to describe that, right? But I can just describe my personality. I honestly find great joy in completion, right? And I think an artist’s got to want to get to the finish line of things. You know what I mean? He’s got to want to start and finish. Now, the thing that kept me in a basement, it’s actually ironic because I was in the basement because I made promises to companies to deliver. But when I made the promise, I already had the cake, okay? And I’d been in the basement before I had the cake. So yes, I was in a basement during that period of time, but I was already in the basement for a long period of time before that any fucking way.

My brother Divine made it sound funny the other day. He said it in a… He was angry. Not anger. What’s the word? Discontent. Discontent provoked him to say it. And it was about some of the crew, I think he was having some… We had these weekly calls and we’re trying to figure out what to do, and sometimes it’s hard to get everybody on the same page because everybody is kind of doing what they’re doing, but they supposed to, not knocking nobody for their hustle, right? But he was like, “I don’t understand why everybody ain’t together with what they doing.” Then they may not come together because, as you’ve seen in the documentary, they got something against him, right? Sometimes you hear like, “Oh, Divine, Divine, Divine, Divine.” And he was like, “Yo, I didn’t go to their houses to smoke weed. I never been to half their houses. They always was at our house.”

You know what I’m saying? They wasn’t playing music at 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning at their house. They was playing music at 3:00 in the morning at our fucking house. What’s the problem at the end of the day? That’s what this has been, the location for it. And I was like, wow. When he said it, I was like, “He’s not talking about after success. He’s talking about before and after.” You know what I mean? So like Deck said, “Yo, RZA’s mom was in there. We had to go there, his ma’s telling us turn it down.” So now you think about that life. That’s been the life I live, right? The life of creativity. I’m so grateful for that gift of creativity, yo, and I’m so grateful that one day I realized it, right?

Are you spending time in the writer’s room on Wu-Tang: An American Saga, too?

Yeah, I’m in the writer’s room every day. I mean, I got a week off because I’m doing this, but this was already scheduled. And Hulu was taking time to figure out what they want to do, and they figured out “yes, we want a second season” which is beautiful.

[RZA has been intermittently playing me a track on his phone and it finishes.]

So where would that track end up? Or do you not even worry sometimes?

Look, that’s underneath. In the show, Bobby talks about being a producer and how he feels the pain of another artist in joy, right? So as a producer, he’s someone who can empathize but never sympathize because music must relate to the voice of the community. And that means the joy as well as the siren of the cops, the noise of the train, or the foot patter of eight million people walking through traffic. So from the gunshots to the screaming children to the crack heads fiending, okay? That which is real never ceased to exist.

So I’m just saying, it’s like, who knows where it goes.

Right now, you’ve been successful enough where you get to just say —

Be creative.

Back then you had to say like, “look, I got mouths to feed. I got friends to take care of. I got this group that I’m at the forefront of. I’ve got to get an album out the door. I got to get a tour out the door.”

Now you’re like, “Look, I’ve been rich for a little while.” And that’s good. All power to you. But you can say, “All right, I could be creative however I want. And the moment’s going to come that I know all these things.”

That’s a blessing, right?

It’s the greatest blessing for a creative. It’s what we all aspire to, right? Creative flexibility.

I wish that on all artists though, right? So in some countries, they put a lot of money into the arts. You think of places like France and Italy, where they was giving people money to be artists. And in our country, we are cutting in the arts, which I think is a bad thing for us because our country is actually the leading inspiration of art, especially musically, right? And cinematography as well. You know what I mean?

And we need story. We need story. We’re in a changing nation. We’re in a changing time.

So I’m grateful that I have… I’m grateful that economics is not driving my creativity. I’m grateful for economic freedom. You know what I mean? But I will honestly say this to you, and I’m saying this to you because I can say that now: Creativity never was about economics for me. It’s always been flowing through me. I couldn’t walk to school without seeing a movie in my head. I’m that guy. You know what I mean? Like I said, I’m the guy in the classroom that finished the test quick, so he’d go write the rhyme. You know what I mean? So it really had nothing to do with money. I lost more lyrics than I ever released. You know what I mean? I lost more phones full of lyrics than any album.

So I will say I appreciate it that I’m not in a one-bedroom apartment with a drippy faucet, dingy smell. The truth of the matter is my baby slept on the floor. My girl, who became my wife, slept on the floor. I slept on the floor at night. And that day I rolled that mat up and people came over to the studio, didn’t even know that I slept on the floor. And during meal hours boxes came, right? Which was my records, and I mailed them out. And it was just like, people would call, “Hi, mom. Hold on. I’ll call you back, ma.” “Wu-Tang Records, can I help you?” “Oh hold on, it’s for you Ghost.” because he lived there too.

So I understand. I’m glad we’re not doing that no more, okay? I’m blessed with that. But to be creative is just to be. If you’re going to think that money, all that stuff is the reason to be creative, you’re going to fail at being creative. My biggest fall — beyond the thing that happened with my moms, right? Which was unpredictable and I cannot explain that to no reader, listener, or anybody — my biggest fall was my first bit of creative stagnation. And that’s when I had got up to about $135,000 a track, okay? And then if you didn’t call with that number, I didn’t answer, nor did I make beats. All right? So I went through a phase of conceit, okay? Of course, Bobby Digital was born and hey, you got a gold album out of it. No problem, right? But still, it stage of conceit, a stage of doing what I want to do. “How much? Nah, I don’t care.” It was, I wouldn’t go to the studio without money.

And I can say half my team became that way. Before, we just showed up to the crib with a beer and a blunt. And now it’s like, yo, the money ain’t there, you ain’t showing up, okay? So I’m glad that I did escape that phase. That’s a very dangerous phase. And you know what? I think is one of the hardest phases to escape, and I would warn any artists of that. If money becomes the reason you make art, your art will have a short life.

That was powerful. I really appreciate it the way you enter into an interview, you don’t hold anything back, nothing’s off the table.

What are we going to do, man?

I think you should be writing that Disney movie too, writing it and scoring it. I’m such a fan of The Man with the Iron Fists.

I mean, look, that’d be a super dream. You don’t see me smile a lot. You’ll see the smile.

I’ve been to Disneyland maybe six times or seven times in my life. I never left there uninspired. I’ve never went to Disney and not been charged up like a kid in his first candy store. Never. And it’s incredible. I’ve never walked out of one of their movies without some incredible inspiration. You know what I mean? And I appreciate that. You know what I’m saying? I would love to be part of the reason why some kid will walk out and feel the same way.

My greatest joy in Disney so far though, and this is an ego thing here, was last year we went for spring break, right? You know the Star Wars thing? Yo, would you believe I saw about four Wu-Tang shirts walking through Disney?

Oh, I bet.

Yeah, but I’m just saying that was interesting for me. And I looked around and I seen… I started… Actually I might have seen eight over the weekend, right? And then I said, “Well, I didn’t see a lot of Adidas t-shirts.” Let’s just say I’m kind of being conscious. I’m like, “Interesting. Is something happening here?” You know what I mean?

There was symmetry?

It was very interesting to see. And they didn’t know. People walk by, I’m just a regular dad with kids. You know what I mean? I put on my glasses and I wear a corny jacket. You know what I mean? That’s what I do. I don’t give a fuck. I’m just a guest. I don’t do all the paid fast-lane shit. I don’t do that. I’m a dad at Disneyland. I wait in line. You know what I mean? I don’t do none of that other shit. Some brothers do, and I got my wife, we’re friends with other celebrities and they do that. And we’ll go with a family and that family might but not me.

For me, it’s like: Are we taking the bus? Well, I want to take the bus. I want to be part of it all.

Uproxx was hosted at Camp Tazo by Tazo Tea. You can learn more about the Uproxx press trip policy here.

James Taylor is one of the best-selling music artists of all time, with five Grammy awards, more than 100 million albums sold, and an induction into the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame under his belt.

And yet the gentle singer-songwriter seems to ooze wholesome down-homeness, and a new video of him casually singing with his family from their home in Montana just reinforces that image. With simple, pure musicianship, Taylor plays guitar and sings while his wife and son sing harmony on his song “Now You Can Close Your Eyes.” And oh my goodness, the 3-part harmony is just soul-stirring. An absolutely gorgeous gift to us all.

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James Taylor: You Can Close Your Eyes (The Tonight Show: At Home Edition)

www.youtube.com

The performance was shown on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and included a call to raise funds for the Mass General Emergency Response Fund (https://massgeneralresponds.org), supporting the Boston hospital where 72-year-old Taylor was born and where his father worked as a doctor.

Thank you, James Taylor, for bringing this beauty to our homes during such a difficult time.

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It’s been a big afternoon for Zane Lowe on his Apple Music Beats 1 show today. First, he got to premiere the sentimental new The 1975 song and chat about it with Matty Healy. Shortly after that, he started a conversation with Ariana Grande to discuss her recent goings-on. During their talk, Grande revealed that she has a collaboration with newly minted No. 1 artist Doja Cat on the way.

Lowe asked Grande for her thoughts on Doja, and Grande responded, “I love her. I was able to work with her earlier this year on this song that I want to save for whenever it’s time again, to drop. But I love her so much. I love her personality. I love what she brings to the table musically. She’s just such a breath of fresh air. I think she’s brilliant and so talented.”

This comes shortly after Grande expressed the joy she felt at seeing Doja and Nicki Minaj’s “Say So” remix top the charts with Megan Thee Stallion and Beyonce’s new version of “Savage” right behind it. On her Instagram Story, Grande shared a screenshot of the week’s top 10 songs and wrote, “this is such an incredible moment in music [heart emoji] wowowoooowoowwowoo i love seeing this with all my heart,” then tagging the four artists involved.

Watch Grande talk about Doja above.

Up until the past few years, The Undertaker was infamous for upholding kayfabe, committing to always appearing in character. In a recent interview on WWE’s The Bump, Taker, out of character, said he doesn’t think he could pull that off today.

“It would be virtually impossible in this day and age to maintain the mystique of the character,” The Undertaker, who is currently the subject of a documentary series on the WWE Network, told the hosts. He explained that had to work hard to protect the character back then, and he thinks that would be even more difficult with the amount of cameras backstage at WWE today.

I never wanted anybody to see Undertaker not being Undertaker. I didn’t do a lot of outside projects because I didn’t feel like, ‘Okay, I can go and do this and then come back and then be Undertaker.’ It just didn’t work for me. So I put all my eggs in that one basket and this is the way it was going to be. I dressed in black everywhere I went. When they would book us on Regis and Kathie Lee and all these shows, Paul did most of the interacting. I sat there and stayed in character.

Taker doesn’t think he could do the same today with the increased amount of cameras not just in WWE, but in everyday life. “Everybody’s got a cellphone everywhere you go. It would be virtually impossible to do it and be able to maintain the mystique of that character.”