Bjork Reveals Unreleased Collaboration with Wu Tang Clan’s RZA
There are many solo artists we think of as a unit, no matter the state of their partnerships. Simon? Garfunkel. Crosby? Stills and Nash (and sometimes Young). Buckingham? Nicks. But Bjork and ... RZA? The Icelandic artist has revealed her collaboration with, and affinity for, the Wu-Tang Clan mastermind.
In a just-released interview with Fact Magazine, Bjork addresses the emotional and obsessive derivation of her ninth and most recent album Utopia. But she also recalls her Homogenic era 20 years ago, and how she had wanted RZA to contribute beats to the album.
"I think what happened was… I wanted these kinda Icelandic, volcanic beats, and I was kind of struggling with it," she says. "I had done beats on my albums, but it takes me a long time to make them. And sometimes I get impatient and I want other people to do it, so I sit there and describe to them what I want them to do. So, I was in Spain, and Wu-Tang Clan were supposed to come to Spain. RZA was supposed to come. But then months passed. Then the album got finished and I delivered it. Then RZA was like, 'I’m ready! Shall I come to Spain?'”
Instead, Bjork traveled to New York City to meet him, and the two wrote some songs together, but they were never released. "Sometimes when you do things and you don’t plan them it’s magic. And I really think what we made was magic. But I think because it wasn’t part of the whole Homogenic thing and it wasn’t part of what Wu-Tang were doing at the time, it was better as an idea, if that makes any sense?"
Among her favorite memories of the Wu-Tang Clan, she says, was an in-store at Tower Records. "I’d never done anything like that before. I turned up – and seven of the Wu-Tang Clan turned up to, like, protect me! I was signing books for an hour, and they sent some of their team, standing there with me," she says. "It was magic. In my eyes, they’re punk. We are definitely [similar] – we do things in, like, a ritual way. The good thing was that I got to hang out with them. I got to see Wu-Tang’s version of New York. Which was pretty cool."
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