RZA and Interpol's Paul Banks Making Collaborative Album

BY Alex HudsonPublished Oct 8, 2013

Interpol's Paul Banks ventured into hip-hop with his mixtape Everybody on My Dick Like They Supposed to Be earlier this year, and the singer-guitarist's next brush with the genre will find him joined by a high-profile collaborator: RZA.

Speaking with Rolling Stone, RZA revealed that he is recording an album with Banks. They've apparently been working on it for six months, with Banks recently spending a couple of weeks living in the guesthouse attached to the rapper's studio.

The Wu-Tang rhymer explained, "My manager came to me and said, 'Who do you want to do an album with?' I said, 'Well, Paul just has an energy about him. I think if we put our sandwich together it will be great.' Me and Paul, we play chess together and just hang out. We went to the studio and we started writing songs and they sound very, very different than what I do, but very unique and very peculiar."

We may have to wait some time before learning exactly what this "peculiar" style sounds like, since RZA speculated that it might take them a year to finish the album. When the record arrives, it will apparently be through Warner Bros.

Meanwhile, RZA is working on more film projects. He has written a racism-themed movie called One Spoon of Chocolate and a follow-up to The Man with the Iron Firsts called Sting of the Scorpion. He's also co-starring in the Fox TV series Gang Related, which is due to wrap up filming by January. RZA plays a cop on the show.

Oh, and if you were wondering how RZA feels about Drake's song "Wu-Tang Forever" from Nothing Was the Same, he had this to say: "I appreciate it. He sent me song because they couldn't clear the sample. So I did it myself, personally, for free. Free of charge. Because to me, that's what we meant when we said Wu-Tang is forever. We didn't think we were going to live forever. We meant that the energy of what we do would spread on in culture, generation by generation. And by Drake absorbing it and having that influence in his life and having it be a part of him, it proves what I'm saying. And I'm really proud that he chose that rap."

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