RZA

Bio

Robert Diggs is the RZA. He is the producer, the leader, the philosopher, the head of the Wu-Tang Clan. He is also, by general critical consensus, the most ambitious figure in 1990s rap, full stop.

He was born in Brownsville, Brooklyn, in 1969, raised in the Park Hill Houses in Staten Island. He started rapping as a teenager under the name Prince Rakeem; Tommy Boy gave him a brief solo deal in 1991, but it did not work. He pivoted in 1992 and assembled the Wu-Tang Clan with his cousins Russell Jones (Ol' Dirty Bastard) and Gary Grice (GZA) plus six other Staten Island MCs. The pitch he made to them was specific. He said: I am going to control the production for five years. I am going to make us a hit. After that, we all sign solo deals with different labels, and we use the leverage of the group's name to negotiate. He was 23.

Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) came out in November 1993. The production sounds like it was recorded in a basement, because it more or less was. It is one of the most influential rap records of the 1990s. "C.R.E.A.M." "Protect Ya Neck." "Method Man." The RZA's beats are dusted, dialogue-laced, kung-fu-movie-sampled, and conceptually all of a piece in a way nothing else in the genre had attempted at scale.

The five-year solo-deal plan worked. Method Man's Tical (Def Jam, 1994). Ol' Dirty Bastard's Return to the 36 Chambers (Elektra, 1995). Raekwon's Only Built 4 Cuban Linx (Loud, 1995). GZA's Liquid Swords (Geffen, 1995). Ghostface's Ironman (Razor Sharp/Epic, 1996). RZA produced essentially all of them. Five years of Wu-affiliated solo albums all coming out on different majors, all sounding like Wu records, all selling. The leverage strategy worked.

His subsequent career is genuinely odd in the best possible way. He scored Jim Jarmusch's Ghost Dog (1999) and Kill Bill: Volume 1 and 2 (2003 and 2004). He acted. He directed The Man with the Iron Fists (2012). He produced the single-copy Wu-Tang album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin (sold to Martin Shkreli in 2015 for $2 million, federally forfeited after Shkreli's conviction, resold for over $4 million in 2021). RZA continues to be the kind of artist whose every project is genuinely worth your attention.

He is, in 2026, fifty-six years old, still releasing records, still scoring films. The Wu-Tang plan, which is what people remember him for, was the kind of executive thinking nobody else in the genre had attempted in 1992. He pulled it off. The catalog is the proof.