With Wu-Tang Clan Or Solo, Masta Killa Seeks 'Balance'

Backstage at Tampa's Amalie Arena, Masta Killa is taking a brief break from rehearsing with the Wu-Tang Clan. Though only a few days into the group's Final Chamber tour, the Brooklyn-born rapper forever enshrined as the ninth original member of the crew already feels fan love from the faithful. "It's beautiful, man," he says over the phone. "The people are coming out, they're loving the experience. Anybody that's near, you should come out and enjoy yourself with the Wu-Tang Clan and get this Final Chamber experience."

Mere days before the tour commenced, he dropped his latest solo album Balance via Nature Sounds, a longtime label partner going back to his critically acclaimed 2004 debut No Said Date. More than three decades into his career, Masta Killa chats with CABBAGES about his new music–which includes tracks with RZA and other core Shaolin swordsmen–and what keeps him inspired creatively.

CABBAGES: Right now you're on this big arena tour, but I want to ask about your solo U.S. tour that wrapped just a few weeks back. What was it like playing these more intimate venues as a soloist?

Masta Killa: I missed that, man. Those are the grassroots of how we started. That was very refreshing for me, to do that and go out and touch the people hand to hand. Tt's nothing like that experience. So from that level to arena level, it's all a blessing. 

Your new album Balance dropped some seven, eight years since the last one, Loyalty Is Royalty. Did you go in planning on making an album or did Balance just sort of happen for you? 

Well, I'm always creating; this is one of the things that I do. I love music. I just felt the need. The musical universe was calling me saying, look, you got to do something. We need something right now. Give us something. And I was like, the perfect thing that the musical universe needs right now is balance. So I just brang it all together and it made sense. Timing is everything. It seems to be well received. It seems like the world really appreciated it.

For someone like you, staying creative and keeping the pen strong for as long as you have, that's a feat in of itself. A lot of emcees of your generation didn't get to that point. How did you stay inspired and further hone your skillset as a rapper for this project? 

I'm always inspired from everything before me. That's why the first song on the album, "Hip-Hop Forever," is a dedication to all hip-hop that I was listening to that came before me. I probably forgot a lot of people as well, but the people that I could remember I wanted to pay homage to. That's what keeps me inspired, for me to know that someone is listening. I want to say something that can be meaningful to the art form of hip-hop. And to those that I was listening to, I want them to also feel good that they passed the torch–or not even passed the torch, that someone was listening that cares, to give something back to the culture that's meaningful.

It's not lost on me that for that track, "Hip-Hop Forever," Easy Mo Bee is involved. So it's like you're not just speaking it into the mic, you're doing it with a legend on there alongside you.

Right, right. It's an honor to work with the legendary Easy Mo Bee. We've been building for years. Finally things reached its connecting point in time and we made some beautiful things happen. 

The album has a lot of familiar faces, lots of Wu-Tang Clan representation beyond yourself, of course. Raekwon and Cappadonna on "Eagle Claw, for instance." There's also cuts like "Trumpets" with N.O.R.E., AZ, and Uncle Murda. You've got to be thinking in advance about how you make a track like that with this group that you assemble. How do these collabs come together?

When I'm listening to music, I can already envision the voices that I hear on the track–even if I wasn't on the track. I can already just hear this artist's chamber. I can hear 'em on it. That's very important for me when it comes to working with different artists that I have a lot of love and respect for. I never just want to do a song for the sake of the name of doing a song with whoever. I want it to be something that the culture can appreciate, from both of us.

To that point, you've got songs here with as many as three other rappers on it. And obviously you grew to prominence in a group setting with the Wu. What is it that you like about putting multiple vocalists on your tracks?

Hip-hop has always been solo artists, and it's always been crews. Now, me being a fan of hip-hop, I always wanted some of my greatest emcees to do songs together. Hip-hop is a sport as well, you know what I mean? Traditionally, if you played for the 76ers, you played for the 76ers until your career was over. I think LeBron came and revolutionized that and said, you know what? I'm going over here with Wade and my people, and I'm coming to get what I came for. In hip-hop, I would've loved for Kane and Rakim to have done a song together. Everybody always wanted to see them battle, but I would've loved for them to have done a song together. So me thinking like that and loving the different varieties of emcees, the caliber of emcees, I would've loved for them to have done more work together.

My mind frame is always first of making good music. When you make and create good music, I think it carries itself, wherever it's going to land or wherever it's going to go. That's going to take care of itself. The foundation of what we do is good music, so that's always my mind frame when I'm creating or bringing together different talents to create something.

One of my favorites on Balance is "Building With The Abbott," just you and RZA trading verses. There's something kind of very pure about just the two of you on that track, that even division almost right down the middle. He's been involved in all your albums in one way or another over the years. How has your creative relationship with RZA changed or evolved over these years?

That's the science. It's never changed. A song like "Building With The Abbott," look how it comes together. We weren't even thinking about making a song. We're just doing what we normally do, because this is what we do when we acknowledge one another. We build as brothers. So that's a game of chess, some righteous food, and, you know what? Put a beat on right now. What you got cooking? He pulls one out and that's how that was created, just one day of just building with The Abbott.

On that same wave of consistency, you've been working with Nature Sounds for more than two decades now. Your first solo project with the label, No Said Date, dropped 21 years ago this month. Has it been meaningful to you, as an artist, to have this sort of consistency, having an outlet where this is where the music is coming out, where people know to find you?

That's been a blessing. It's very important also for an artist to have that freedom of creativity and not having the pressure of creating. Some of my albums have taken longer, some have taken shorter to bring forth to the world, but I've never had the pressure of having to do something by a certain time. It's always been my timing, to bring forth the creativity. Nature Sounds is definitely a credit to that. We've always worked together in understanding that this is the process of how I do things.

Three new tracks to snack on...

Debby Friday, "Lipsync"

pulp Cruz, "gotta"

CLBRKS & Kurt Terese, "Pears"