Dead People Party

The GZA: Walk me through this. I was writing -- it was more like scribbling, at least initially -- about how shitty I feel hitting a dead end while composing stillborn songs. I thought about scrapping it in favor of another gimmick on wordplay in the "Labels," "Publicity," and those two joints on Legend of the Liquid Sword vein, the latter of which -- THE TRUTH IS RARELY SPOKEN AND BARELY HEARD -- fell, like trees in a forest with no one around, on deaf ears. But I persisted, swinging my machete of ingenuity at branches both little and large, forging a path toward what I foolishly perceived as greatness. And, my strenuous task complete, I felt vindicated by my perserverence, my will. I had something, I was confident. Something special.

But it was all for naught. The next morning, in the shower (there's something about showers that jumpstarts the creative process, the same way there's something about getting old that stifles it), I received from on high a message: Nas did that shit four years ago with "Book of Rhymes." Man, Nas -- like ten years my junior -- beat me to the punch; though I take solace and schadenfreude in the fact that "Book of Rhymes" is universally awful.

Anyway, I still thought I had the framework for a pretty good song if I could just rework it to focus on my insecurities as an artist rather than my inability to finish a verse (which was hard; every verse is my baby, and intentionally aborting them felt simultaneously like The Great Leap Forward and The Great Purge). And that's when, upon writing the self-depracating line "I can't even smoke a crack pipe right," I again realized that I had nibbled upon the shoulder of FatLip and his ode to ineffectual cred, "What's Up FatLip?"

Still, I tried. At least, goddam it, I did that.