The RZA Explains the Real Reason Ol' Dirty Bastard Bum-Rushed the Grammy Awards, and Why Wu-Tang Really Is For the Children

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In February 1998, at the 40th Grammy Awards ceremony, Wu-Tang Clan’s gloriously chaotic double album Wu-Tang Forever, a nominee for Best Rap Album, faced some steep competition—The Notorious B.I.G.’s Life After Death, Puff Daddy’s No Way Out, Wyclef Jean’s The Carnival, and Missy Ellott’s Supa Dupa Fly— and lost. Diddy’s win was not televised, but Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s revolution definitely was.

Near the end of the night, as an unsuspecting Erykah Badu and Wyclef announced the winner of the Grammy for Song of the Year, the artist sometimes known as Ason Unique somehow made his way onstage and planted a kiss on Badu’s cheek. South Dakota–born folk singer Shawn Colvin and her producer and co-writer John Levanthal were all smiles as they walked out to accept their award for “Sunny Came Home,” the moving tale of a woman who burns down her own house. As they waved excitedly to friends in the audience, Dirty commandeered a microphone, and his voice cut through the applause. “Please calm down,” he said, deadly serious. He had something to get off his chest, and he was determined to be heard.

Questlove’s all-star 50th anniversary jawn notwithstanding, the Grammy Awards’ troubled history with hip-hop is well documented. When Chuck D first posed the question “who gives a fuck about a goddamn Grammy?” on Public Enemy’s seminal album It Takes A Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back in 1988, there was still no category honoring the genre. One year later, the Recording Academy finally recognized the rebel, renegade, must-stay-paid cultural revolution that was hip-hop with an award of its own. But a nation of millions did not get to see the inaugural Grammy for Best Rap Performance because it wasn’t televised. Nominees DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince, Salt-N-Pepa, and LL Cool J boycotted the ceremony that year, an act of solidarity that strong-armed the awards show into televising hip hop for the first time in 1990.

Still, Grammy voters’ out-of-touch decisions since then have often left hip-hop heads, and artists, pissed off. The list of rap legends who’ve never won a Grammy includes 2Pac, Biggie, Snoop Dogg, DMX, Busta Rhymes, Nicki Minaj, A Tribe Called Quest, and Wu-Tang Clan. Over the years, the hip-hop community has responded to this legacy of oversights with cryptic lyrics, salty tweets, guilty text messages, and voluntary withdrawal from the whole thing. But only one rapper has ever had the mettle to stand up, seize the moment, and speak truth to power on “music’s biggest night.” That very special individual was Russell Tyrone Jones, better known as the late great Ol’ Dirty Bastard.

“I went and bought me an outfit today that costed me a lot of money today,” Mr. Jones began. “Because I figured Wu-Tang was gon’ win.” (His fit was indeed resplendent, from the white silk scarf to the burgundy trench over a rich brown suit, accented by a tastefully understated gold chain and medallion.) “I don’t know how y’all see it, but when it comes to the children—Wu-Tang is for the children,” ODB continued. “We teach the children. Puffy is good but Wu-Tang is the best, okay? I want y’all to know that this is ODB and I love you all. Peace.”

“I’m confused now,” Colvin said, holding her trophy and scratching her head as Ol’ Dirty Bastard departed the stage as quickly as he’d materialized.

Although he set the template for Kanye West’s subsequent awards-telecast stunts—infamously disrupting Taylor Swift’s big MTV Awards moment in 2011, then playfully running up on Beck at the Grammys four years after that—ODB undertook his fearless intervention for a nobler cause than belaboring Beyoncé’s supremacy. Russell Jones was not just another mad rapper, snubbed by the Academy and society. He was standing on principle, expressed through the apparent non sequitur “Wu-Tang is for the children.”

The next morning Howard Stern invited ODB, “the man of the hour,” to come on his radio show and talk about a moment that went viral before virality was even a thing. Playing back Dirty’s statement, Howard asked “What are you talking about there? What do you teach the children?”

“Love,” Big Baby Jesus replied, sounding embarrassed as Howard and his co-host Robin Quivers ROTFL’d. But according to his younger cousin Robert Fitzgerald Diggs, better known as The RZA, ODB was not kidding.

Late January, 2024. Wu-Tang cofounder RZA stood in a noisy green room backstage at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, California, watching turntable master DJ Scratch tear up a medley of Wu-Tang classics on a large flat screen monitor. It was the second-to-last day of the NAMM Show—an annual convention put on by the National Association of Music Merchants, a music-biz body that predates the Recording Academy by more than 50 years—and the RZArector had just made his own, authorized trip to another awards-show podium, to collect the NAMM TEC Innovation Award, honoring him for his creative use of recording technology.

RZA is the first hip hop artist to be so honored, joining such distinguished company as Les Paul, Stevie Wonder, and Herbie Hancock. Afterwards, he told me, with evident pride, that he’d received congratulatory messages that day from Jimmy Jam and Nile Rodgers. During his acceptance speech he thanked his wife, Talani Rabb, for never complaining about all the musical gear he brings home.

“Every city I go to,” he said, “I go to a music store and I come back with something. And she never riffs or argues about it.”

“We space it out,” Talani said later when asked if their house was getting cluttered with all the tools of RZA’s trade. “And we have children that are into music. So they’re taking a few pieces to their house.”

“Would you be shy to tell ’em what equipment we have in our bedroom?” RZA asked Talani.

“A piano,” she replied with a smile as her husband laughed. “The instruments are our furniture, and the art is the guitars on the wall.”

“I serenade her every morning,” RZA said. “Why not?!”

As DJ Scratch wrapped up his turntable attack, the noise level subsided inside the backstage green room full of jubilant well wishers. Seizing the moment, I asked RZA to sit down with me for his only interview of the night.

GQ: What does it mean to you to receive this award from a group like NAMM, which represents creators of audio equipment, instruments, and musical gear?

RZA: I mean, any award is a blessing, right? And for me, for this particular one—I’m a kid that cut school to hang out at [the music-equipment store] Sam Ash. So I’m that kid. Alright? So for these people who created this equipment, who innovated by taking whatever technology that came from NASA or whatever, and [giving] it to us to be able to use it, make beats, touch screens, and move waves—for them to see me also as an innovator of taking those tools and then using them in an innovative way. I’m gonna keep using this word—it’s a blessing. And I’m very grateful.

I don’t think Wu-Tang has gotten enough awards for what you all contributed to hip-hop. One Grammy nomination, and zero wins. That doesn’t make sense to me.

I mean, except for Method Man.

Right, he won for a single with Mary J. Blige, which you produced. But the collective didn’t win anything. I’m thinking back to Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s famous phrase, "Wu-Tang is for the children." That came from a moment of disappointment at the Grammys.

[RZA laughs] Yeah. From a moment of disappointment.

Did you know that ODB was going to do that on that particular night?

Nah, no. No. Nobody knew. Well, I do know he was pissed off cause we lost the American Music Award that year too. [Laughs] And he thought that—it was funny. I’ll never forget. I’ll tell you the story. We lost it, right? And we was all dressed in hip hop gear—and the whole room was full of tuxedo guys. This is at the American Music Awards—AMAs—which was first, then the Grammys were second. And I actually said to him, I said, "Listen, they’re not gonna give us no award, G." It’s like, I was very pessimistic in that, at my younger age. I was like, we lack validation. Like, they ain’t gonna give it to us. "Look at us. We the real shit. Look at where we at!" And so he misinterpreted that when I said, "Look at us." So he was like, we lost because we wasn’t dressed for the occasion. [Laughs]

The 1998 American Music Awards took place at L.A.’s Shrine Auditorium, one month before ODB’s impromptu Grammy speech. Wu-Tang was up for Favorite Rap/Hip-Hop Artist, competing with Puff Daddy and Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, the eventual winners. Both Puff and Bone had scored #1 hits that year with poignant, melodic tribute songs for the dearly departed—“The Crossroads” in honor of Eazy-E and “I’ll Be Missing You” featuring Faith Evans and 112 in honor of Biggie. Wu-Tang Forever, which debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200 Albums chart, was a totally different story. “Yo, this is true hip-hop you listenin’ to right here in the pure form,” said “The King Ruler Zig-Zag-Zig Allah, commonly known as The RZA,” on the intro to Disc 2. “This ain’t no R&B with a wack nigga takin’ the loop… All that player dressin’ up actin’ like it’s some kind of fashion show. This is hip hop right here.”

When the Clan rolled up to meet the press backstage at the AMAs, the media was taken aback by their attire. Apart from U-God, who opted for an all-black suit with a matching brim, they were decked out in head-to-toe Wu Wear. “Where are the tuxedos?” one reporter asked.

“Huh?” said RZA, sporting an oversized white jersey emblazoned with a Wu logo, an American flag, and an AIDS awareness ribbon, with black and yellow goggles perched over his ski cap. “This is Wu Wear.”

“This is Wu tuxedos right here,” said Raekwon.

“Word, the Wu tuxedos,” RZA affirmed.

“How’s Wu Wear been going?” another journalist asked.

“Excellent,” Rae replied. “We got cologne!”

“Yeah,” RZA agreed. “Wu Wear is pretty good. It’s getting support from our neighborhood, our community. A lot of support from Staten Island, New York. I love it. If not, it got a lot of support from me.”

“See one thing about the Wu Wear,” Raekwon added, stepping to the front. “It’s like uniforms. We like a baseball team or whatever. So you know, we got fans all over the world, and they got love for us. And the way they show their love back? Go buy some of this gear right here. That’s all.”

RZA assured the press that every Wu-Tang CD contained mail-order and catalog information. “You don’t get the top-of-the-line stuff,” he said. “But we got some nice stuff in the mail order.”

Fresh as their top-of-the-line Wu Wear may have been, RZA couldn’t help but feel out of place at this particular showbiz ceremony. Although the Clan had won for Artist of the Year, Group at the infamous 1995 Source Awards—the same year Death Row and Bad Boy’s bitter rivalry spilled out onstage—the AMA’s were a whole different vibe. So when RZA’s pessimistic prediction came true and Wu-Tang lost to Bone Thugs, ODB decided to take matters into his own hands.

RZA: So for the Grammys, he went like, “Fuck that. I’m gettin’ right.” Cause he knew and felt that arguably—and they say self praise don’t mean nothin’, and I’m gonna praise myself. But if I was to put it on a scale of measurement of hip hop lyrics and rawness and what hip hop is? Yeah, we was the best. Okay? And so when you’re the best, you think the best wins. But that’s not the case in many fields. You know I mean? And he was just unaware of that, I think. He didn’t realize that the vote was already casted before you got there that night, brother. You know I mean?

GQ: And industry politics plays a part as well.

Yeah. He don’t know none of that. He’s raw. We are raw young men. And so he was like, “Wait a minute, what? Hold on... Wait a minute!” [Laughs] He thought that he lost based on his appearance.

So at the Grammys he was like, “I got a nice suit on now!”

Yeah, yeah. “Something is wrong, motherfucker! Yeah he’s good, but we the best, motherfucker! And I thought this was supposed to be like the award goes to the best!” And awards don’t go to the best. I mean, that’s why a reward and an award is so different. And we gotta understand that. The reward is the people, the fans, to know that something that you sat in your crib and you played with, it’s on my table now. That’s the reward. The award is your peers or whoever want to give you that. And you take it or you don’t take it.

So that’s why when he rushed the stage, he started off by talking about how much his outfit cost.

Yeah! He really believed that it had an effect on it.

And then he said, Puffy’s good...

He’s good, but Wu-Tang is the best. And Wu Tang is for the children.

Now what did that mean to you? Because I always heard “Wu-Tang clan ain’t nothin’ to fuck with.” I wasn’t thinking about children when I heard that song.

Well, what he meant was this… And you know, he can’t speak for himself anymore, so I will interpret what he meant. And I actually could potentially interpret and maybe even totally validate and agree. He meant that based on what we started—from where we started, what we bring to the world, what we put into it—that a child and a young mind would be better to follow our path than to follow that path. You know what I mean? He knew that was a path of struggle, of righteousness, of brotherhood. You talkin’ ’bout guys from different communities that don’t get along, that’s going to get along. And not only do we get along, it’s gonna get our communities to get along. You’re talking about Staten Island at the time when racism was at a peak, right? And yet in our organization, it’s black and white brothers there. You know I mean? Everything is there in that Wu world. So the children need that energy to help them grow versus the idea of “just step on anybody you can to get rich.” That’s a different energy.

Very different.

And so he meant that because he knew that Wu Tang, we deal with the knowledge, the wisdom, the understanding. The “W” in Wu, even though we may say “witty,” if you noticed, but it’s for wisdom. And the “U” is for universal. Wisdom is universal. It should be able to help anybody in any given time. So that’s just a paraphrase of it, but...

You’re dropping some gems. Reflecting on hip hop’s 50-year victory lap during the past 12 months, one of the things I’ve noticed is what you just said about hip hop’s original purpose, which is much more than entertainment and awards and gold plaques. All that is great, but hip hop is a path of salvation, a way of getting people out of problems. Giving people not only a creative outlet and an economic opportunity, but just a way out of danger and destruction.

Yeah. A redirecting of the energy. As Raekwon said in his first song “C.R.E.A.M.,” he’s like, “Figured out I went the wrong route. So I got with a sick tight clique and went all out.” So he couldn’t do it by himself. He was making mistakes, but he got with somebody with heart. But then Deck complements him even more. He says, you know, “You got stick-up kids, corrupt cops, crack rocks, stray shots on all my block. It stays hot. But leave it up to me to be livin’ proof, to kick the truth to the young Black youth.”

Along with DJ Jazzy Jeff, the other person who introduced RZA at the NAMM TEC Awards was Brian Rothschild, the co-founder of the John Lennon Bus, a non-profit mobile production lab and studio envisioned by John Lennon’s widow Yoko Ono that travels to K-12 schools all over the world. He reminisced about RZA and Yoko doing a performance art piece called “Chess Game,” playing with all pieces on both sides of the board being the same color.

“What can I tell you about the RZA?” Rothschild said. “Very simply, he is very moved by John Lennon. As a cultural change agent, as a person committed to social justice, as somebody who wasn’t afraid to use his celebrity to call attention to important issues. What’s exciting to us at the Lennon Bus is that through the RZA and Wu-Tang Clan, we get the opportunity to talk to kids about peace, to talk to them about love. Kids for whom The Beatles are something their grandparents and parents talk about. Wu-Tang is for the children.”

GQ: I had no idea about that connection. Tell me about your earliest memories of John Lennon and The Beatles.

RZA: The album that Yoko Ono had, [Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band]— I actually sampled that album, maybe in 1987, but I never put the track out. I sampled her voice and made a track out of it. And I always was gonna do it again. Cause a lot of stuff I did for Wu-Tang was a regurgitation of something that came from my youth. That’s why you hear the superheroes, you see the Kung Fu. This is part of my youth. Your youth shall inspire your manhood. But then somehow through travels me and Sean [Lennon] became friends. Actually we was on the same label, and we had time to spend together. So during that process, his mother started doin’ some other music thing again. And he remembered that I talked about that record. And that’s how I met Brian and the Lennon Bus.

Look, at the end of the day, of course everybody know The Beatles. Everybody know what they did. But then John Lennon himself took it a few steps further. And I was in New York livin’ as a kid the year that he got assassinated. And I didn’t know what my aunt may have known or my grandmother may have known, even what my mother had known. But the city was like—yo, that wasn’t a good vibe in the city, when that happened. And then you listen to a man that’s singing, you know, “Imagine all the people comin’ together”... And “All we are sayin’...”

Give peace a chance.

That’s all we sayin’. [Laughs]

And people are still saying it until now, as the world seems to be going crazy.

The same song. So when Brian invited me to do some festival, I did it. And that was actually business at first. But then I just decided that anywhere I could help spread peace and love to the children—which that Lennon Bus is doin’—I’m in. I’m in personally. If I have to do philanthropy, donate, I’m just in to help. And that’s how that energy started.

Does peace really have a chance? Because the world is really trippin’ right now…

No, no. Peace does have a chance. Peace does have a chance, of course. Because it’s almost like the best way I could say it to you, the world is not trippin’, but we are pointing the lens to the trip.

So the media plays a part?

I won’t say the media plays a part, cause I’m part of the media. I’m media. I’m just sayin’ even our own interests. You may open up your phone and skip past 20 things and stop on some ugly shit. Instead of watchin’ a bee get pollen and take it from one flower to another, which is beautiful, you may skip over that. You may skip over the broccoli, the asparagus, and the spinach, and go right for the motherfuckin’ oxtail. [Laughs] You might skip over it. So I think from my perspective—and I’m grateful that I’m able to have the blessing of a beautiful wife, beautiful family—that I actually see peace a lot of places we travel. So I see people are not bad. But bad people… It’s almost like sometimes you ever notice like you want to smell the funky cheese? [Laughs]

It seems to be part of human nature.

It’s something attractive about it. It’s something you got to fight off. You know I mean?

Is it true that your parents named you Robert Fitzgerald after Robert Kennedy?

Yeah. Well, Robert Kennedy middle name is Francis. So he’s Robert Francis Kennedy. But his brother was John Fitzgerald Kennedy. So she took the Robert from Robert Kennedy and the Fitzgerald from John. She was big fans of those gentlemen. She told me how she cried when they died. I was born around the year Robert passed—’68, ’69. Yeah, so that was fresh in my mother’s heart and her and my father, they stamped me with it. I guess those gentlemen really was doin’ something unique at the time. Cause you think it’s a Black family—she didn’t name me Martin. [Laughs] You know what I mean? So they was doin’ something at the time that really touched them, and I guess maybe they wanted me to do something.

Well, you certainly have done many things—music, film, philanthropy. So shout out to mom and dad. That’s the power of a name. In more recent history, your name has been given to a baby born to Rihanna and A$AP Rocky.

Yeah, yeah.

How did you hear about that for the first time?

You know, A$AP had gave me a tip early on. But that’s, they’re family so I never speak on it. But then one of his family members ran into me, and I think I was at a Nobu. He was like, “You know he did it, right?”

I said, “Yeah? He told me he was going to do it.”

“Well he did it.” You know what I’m saying? And so when they announced it, I just was like, “Wow. He did do it!” I ran into him down south, in New Mexico. He was like, “Yo, you know I mean, Zig-Zag? I’m about to do sump’m. I’m gonna show you better than I can tell you.” And what was going on in the media I kind of was like, I kind of figured it out.

But it’s an honor, you know? And I think I said this before, but I’ll say it again to you: The RZA is not just a name. It’s a title. And I think it can invoke strength. And so I pray for the young man and his beautiful family that he grows to be great, healthy, strong, powerful, impactful, and an inspiration to his circle. His circle could be five people, it could be 5,000, it could be 5 million, but be impactful to his circle. I know right now he’s very impactful to his household.

I believe that.

I seen them online. His family, they love him. Sometimes that’s all you need to do.

Back to The Beatles— "All You Need Is Love."

That’s it. You know what I mean? Exactly. [sings] “Love is all you need.” That’s what I’m saying, man.

So you took that Beatles energy on tour in 2023?

I was fortunate—you know, last year the New York State of Mind tour goes out.

That was Wu-Tang and Nas on the road, worldwide.

We are doing very, very great. But I have an album that I’m sittin’ on that I recorded with an orchestra. It’s called A Ballet Through Mud. And I’m like, “I need to mix this album.” So what if I have the bus come on the road with me? And they brought the bus but I didn’t know they was gonna have the Dolby 7.1 stereo in the bus—but they did! And so we mixed the whole album on the bus. We talked about it. We did it. My management almost pulled the plug on it...

Really? Why?

Yeah, just because it’s too much. Cause I also designed the show for the New York State of Mind. I’m directing the tour. I’m doing a lot of stuff, but I’m like, “Nah, don’t worry about it.” Music is second nature. So let me do. And we had a great engineer, and in 10 days we mixed that. And when we finished it, Brian heard it, and he was like, “Wait, I thought you was gonna be on the bus rappin’ with the Wu-Tang and all that.” I said, “Nah, bro.” I want to share somethin’ that took me years to build. Nobody invested into it. It’s self-funded, and I just would love for people to get a chance to hear about it. So it’s a new album composed by me, performed by the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, and it’s called A Ballet Through Mud.

Are there any MCs on the record?

Nope. It’s no MCs. It’s A Ballet Through Mud, because out of the mud grows the Lotus. When I started, it was during Covid and I’m on a plane and I get off and it’s Andre.

Three Stacks!

And we see each other. He’s like, “What you doin’?” I said, “I’ve been writin’ all this orchestra music.” He said, “Word? I’ve been doing all this flute.” You know I mean? And we played each other a piece. And that was like middle of 2020. I know his album came out and me and my wife play it in our house.

So you’re rockin’ with the New Blue Sun?

Yeah, we play it in our house while we cookin’ or…You know, very meditative music right there. But I’m happy to see that he carried it out. Then I’m also happy to see that I carried it out. We didn’t abandon it.

Originally Appeared on GQ