Classic Cuts Hip Hop News 7/24/12

Although Wu-Tang Clan's Ghostface Killa famously said on the classic track 'Criminology' that he 'revolve around sciences,' it would seem that his fellow swordsman the GZA has literally taken those bars to heart. The Brooklyn native has immersed himself in working alongside MIT professors for research and mixing his potent bars with scientifically-influenced facts. Just a month shy of his 46th birthday, the veteran wordsmith sat down with The Fader and their Captain Morgan Black-sponsored 'Step Into The Black' series, breaking down his interest in science, his new album Dark Matter and plans to work on a graphic novel.

'I was interested in science from a very early age but not to the point where I wanted to go to school and study and be a physicist,' said GZA. 'Just learning things about the stars and the planets, the workings of the atoms and molecules, knowing that we're part of this whole universal structure. It's all fascinating. It's something to write about.'

Along with Dark Matter, GZA hinted that he's working on three albums and also a graphic novel Chlorine - a coming-of-age tale of four youth during summer vacation set at a swimming pool; GZA said that the book will be 12-part anthology series. As if the GZA wasn't busy enough, he's also a travelling lecturer, having graced the halls of Harvard and the aforementioned MIT.

'It's pretty intimidating at times, and challenging,' shared GZA, comparing lecturing to his normal stage setting of Hip-Hop. 'It all relates back to music, my upbringing, my involvement with the Clan.'

The ambitious Dark Matter album, in where GZA uses rhymes inspired by the cosmos and the creation of the universe, is slated for a fall release.

Check the video: http://hiphopwired.com/2012/07/23/wu-tang-clans-gza-speaks-on-new-album-dark-matter-upcoming-graphic-novel/



It looks like G.O.O.D. Music's Common hasn't been checking his mail back in Chicago. TMZ reports that the rapper's Chi-Town condo is under threat of foreclosure after he allegedly fell months behind on his mortgage payments.
Com Sense, who keeps a crib in LA, and his longtime manager Derek Dudley purchased the pad in 2008. But according to Bank of America, they stopped making the $2,285 a month mortgage payments in March and the bank decided to begin foreclosure proceedings. It's not likely the Common is hard up for cash.

Besides a successful recording career (he dropped his latest album, The Dreamer The Believer, late last year, and its 'The Believer,' featuring John Legend, can be heard in a new Jeep ad campaign), the rapper born Lonnie Rashid Lynn is also a successful actor. The 'So Sweet' rapper is reprising his role of Elam, a recently freed slave, in the second season of AMC's Hell On Wheels, which returns August 12th.