It was thirteen years ago that I met The RZA in a message of scratched plastic, street theology and a code of honor you rarely dig up in contemporary music culture, apart from the dizzifying amount of material that’s put out by the Wu-Tang Clan. I was all-encompassed in the industrial subculture by that time, if it wasn’t about Funker Vogt, yelworC or Leaether Strip, it was hard to handle. I don’t love happy stuff and I’m really not up for Ice-T, even though he was sampled for Wedlock’s The Tower and all the pimps in Dutch gabber culture were just instant gratification, so give something real hardcore to me, says young me to a body-building brother of an ex-girlfriend. Then enters Liquid Swords, an album from 1995, credited on the cassette side as GZA/RZA, ominous, gritty, well-versed, leaving a young kid with the thought of Oh. You can always rework anything you haven’t liked into something you can just fall for. Thirteen years later, RZA releases his second book (the first being The Wu-Tang Manual) called The Tao of Wu. And I’m so buying it. (via @boingboing, also check a little interview with RZA in The Colbert Report.) Back to another lengthy vigil into Cilvaringz and Moongod Allah.