It’s all art when you look at it – it’s a way of expressing yourself.

When children hear that, they gravitate towards that faster than they would R&B or rock and pop, because it’s spoken word.

But if you think about it, something that children are attracted to immediately: even a lullaby – “Hush little baby don’t say a word / Papa’s gonna buy you a mockingbird” – that’s rhyming.

It was something I loved so much, we didn’t know it was going to change or revolutionise the world as a music genre. It was just a culture that I was moved by, and I knew that was my calling…For us, it was just a passion and a hobby it was something that is so much a part of my makeup. The DJs and MCs there were way more advanced than the neighborhood I was coming from. I was only around 11 years old, and sometimes RZA would come with me. I would often take trips from Staten Island to the south Bronx, which is originally the first place of hip-hop. There was no hip-hop yet, there were just DJs that were playing disco, funk and pop music, and we would gather round, go to the parks and dance and enjoy ourselves. I had a few DJs in my neighborhood that would play music in the streets. I would listen to those songs, to the flow, and I’d balance it back and forth with the nursery stuff I had. At that time, albums didn’t have explicit stickers on them, so some of the songs had profanity on them, and I was moved by that. I would go to an aunt’s house, and she would let me play music, and she had The Last Poets album. “I used to read a lot of nursery rhymes, and I learned a lot of those rhymes word for word. With its extensive use of film dialogue samples, free association wordplay, and an undying atmosphere of grit, Liquid Swords has since entered the pantheon of greatest hip-hop albums, not only of the mid-’90s or from Wu’s expansive discography, but as a historic standout in the genre as a whole. Twenty-five years ago, Geffen Records released the second solo album from Wu-Tang Clan co-founder GZA, Liquid Swords. Anything other than historical fact should be dismissed strictly as non-canon from a Wu-Tang Fan. DISCLAIMER: The following article reflects views of the author and the author alone.

Gza liquid swords album download