GZA on 'Dark Matter' Album - Interview: Rapper Finds Muse in the Stars - WSJ.com
A Rapper Finds His Muse in the Stars .
By Anna Louise Sussman
Informed by meetings with top physicists and cosmologists at MIT and Cornell University, "Dark Matter" is intended to be the first in a series of albums that GZAborn Gary Grice in Brooklyn in 1966will put out in the next few years, several of which are designed to get a wide audience hooked on science.
"Dark Matter" is scheduled for a fall release. Another album will focus on the life aquatic, a subject he's fleshing out with visits to the labs of marine biologists and researchers, as well as meetings with the likes of Philippe Cousteau.
"After 'Dark Matter,' he said, "we'll be back on earth, but in the ocean."
In between will come "Liquid Swords 1.5," for which GZA will re-record the lyrics to his beloved 1995 album "Liquid Swords," backed by live bands.
Composer and producer Marco Vitali, a Juilliard-trained violinist, is helping to score "Dark Matter." He recalled a recent meeting in which GZA explained the images that the music should convey.
"We talked about frenetic energy, outer space, molecules crashing into each other, organized chaos," Mr. Vitali said. "The grandeur of the fact that the universe was born in a millionth of a second, in this explosion that created billions of stars, these overpowering ideas that are bigger than we can conceive. How do we make the record feel like that?"
In other words, how does one score the majesty of the entire universe?
"We don't have the answers yet," conceded Mr. Vitali. One thing he does know is that the score will utilize "the power of an entire orchestra," likely one from a smaller European country, to keep costs down.
Not bad
I forgot about Grandmasters
Forgive me breh
But I want the GZA with energy in his voice.
And that I haven't heard since 08.
