In the second part of our exclusive interview with RZA from Wu-Tang Clan, the hip-hop production legend reveals how meeting George Harrison’s song spawned “My People Gently Weep” an provides other details about the group’s upcoming album, 8 Diagrams.

LWMB: It’s been six years since the Clan released an album. Do you worry how fitting in with all of the young bucks?

RZA: Hey, they need to figure out how they fit in. Wu-Tang is like a cornerstone of hip-hop. One difference between us and new artists is that a lot of them have learned him-hop from watching TV and videos. Wu-tang lived hip-hop, and we’re the ones who helped pioneer it; we’re not the bottled water—we’re the source they get the water from.

The first single is “My People Gently Weep,” which features George Harrison’s son, Dahni. How did that track come about?

That’s a take on "My Guitar Gently Weeps" and it’s a metaphor. I’ve been studying about rock ‘n’ roll lately. I’ve been hanging around my buddy Shavo [Odadjian] from System of A Down, and he’s turned me onto a lot of classic rock and metal. I’ve learned that a lot of guitar players were stuck on heroin and a lot of needles were involved in the music. To me, the vein is like a guitar string, and I wanted to say how the pain of drugs causes so much pain inside: the user, the family and the dealer because of the sins he’s making and the lives he’s destroying. I wanted to capture that idea and went to the Clan and said I wanted to write a song about dope.

So how did you meet Dhani?

A mutual friend is a great music executive, Mo Austin. His son, Mike, is the president of Dreamworks. I’ve been friends with Mike for about ten years. I was at his house one day talking about that song [“My Guitar Gently Weeps “] and how I wanted to record it and make it a song. He said it was one of his favorite Beatles songs and George Harrison actually wrote it. He told me the back story about the song and how Eric Clapton played lead guitar…now I was fascinated by the history of the song!

Mike is a friend of the Harrison family and it turned out he was a fan of mine. I was like, “Get outta here!” He put us on the phone together and hit it off. We wound up having a few dinners in California, and I asked him to play on the record. I got a 1961 Gretsch and that was the weapon on that song. I think a piece of history was captured.

I heard 9 snippets from 8 Diagrams. What else is on the album?

“The Gun Will Go” has a unique vibe that has a haunting guitar vibe with Raekown and Method Man with some of their most menacing voices. “No Matter How Hard the Time May Seem” is a flashback to the classic Raekwon/Ghostface collaborations and has a great sample from Michael Jackson featuring Inspectach Deck tearing it up. It almost sounds like it could be a Cuban Linx track. There’s “Campfire” where Method Man and Ghostface goes back-to-back with Cappadonna with an old Persuassions vocal sample.

Do you get to Staten Island much these days?

Not much. I have good friends and family there. I don’t go back often—maybe five or five times a year. It’s a crazy place.

What’s your greatest hope for the album?

I have hope that Wu-Tang will help bring back some kind of balance to hip-hop. I know there’s a lot of cookie-cutter music out there and lots of angles, but we’re the difference between brown weed and green weed. Our job is to add some balance to hip-hop and continue our legacy.