As the primary architect and de facto producer of the Wu-Tang Clan, RZA knows hip-hop heroics. The 42-year-old Brooklyn-based rapper will forever be legend to a generation of fans whose introduction to rap came via Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), the group’s epic debut. The chart-topping act was the first to inject a sense of otherworldliness and mysticism into the genre, and by projecting a collective of roughneck rappers as a cultish supergroup of sinophile MCs—drawing heavy inspiration from martial arts flicks and reimagining their Staten Island projects as a Shaolin monastery—RZA and company captured the imaginations of young men and women from the hood to the sleepy suburbs. That Enter The Wu-Tang so thoroughly defined a moment in time and launched the larger-than-life careers of its members—Ghostface Killah, Raekwon, Method Man, Ol’ Dirty Bastard, GZA—only underscores the clarity of RZA’s early creative direction. On his own, RZA has continued his ascension: writing two books; acting in and scoring films by Quentin Tarantino, Jim Jarmusch, and Ridley Scott; offering his sage advice on Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy; and completing his directorial debut with the kung-fu epic The Man with the Iron Fist. The man otherwise known as the RZA, the Rzarector, Prince Rakeem, the Scientist, the Abbott, Ruler Zig-Zag-Zig Allah, and Bobby Digital (a mad scientist-cum-superhero alter ego he created, complete with accompanying unreleased feature film) has built a career unparalleled in the culture.

RZA believes his heroic path was predestined. “My mother named me after two brothers,” says the man born Robert Fitzgerald Diggs. “Two American heroes you might expect a black man to be named for.” While he cites Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, and Willie Mitchell as inspirational figures, RZA holds GZA nearest to his heart. “He was the first person to inspire me when he took me to my first block party, where I saw my first break-dance move,” RZA remembers. “It was 1976.”

As teens, RZA and GZA worked together on early group projects, as well as later solo efforts, all of which failed to find momentum on the ’80s New York rap scene. “We were kids just doin’ it,” says RZA. “I was rapping over anything…Dr. Seuss, Mother Goose, anything.” All the while, however, the two remained close and connected over not just beats and rhymes but life in general. It was the constant pursuit of spiritual knowledge, under GZA’s guidance, that kept RZA grounded after the Wu-Tang’s heady success in the mid ’90s. “When I came into the biz, I wanted to fuck up the game,” he explains. “I thought that other than some music from the ’60s and ’70s, everything was bullshit. Rappers had nothing to say. R&B made me carsick. I never strived for dollar, but my ego was super-duper.”

With time, the rapper says he came back down to Earth. “We thought we had the secret,” he says, “But we were incorrect in that. Knowledge doesn’t belong to us. We’re not ’masons!” In that revelation, RZA found freedom. “It lifted off layers of bricks that had built upon me, and I was no longer against the world, but with the world.”

RZA in Los Angeles, June 2011