Published: Thursday - June 1, 2006
Words by Joe "JayRich" Robinson
Bronze Nazareth (Photo: Babygrande)
Do you love the Wu-Tang sound? If so, you can't do nothing but show love to Bronze Nazareth. He helped with that stellar production. Now it's his turn to shine. While gold and platinum is for the flossing, bronze is hard and darker. Bronze Nazareth performs like his name. He produced every track on his album, not bending and holding his ground. He spits meticulous rhymes and underlines his pain in his music.
After four 15-hour trips on a bus from Detroit to New York, Bronze finally got five minutes of RZA's listening time. That's all it took. RZA, thoroughly impressed, recruited Bronze for the Wu Elements production team. Soon after, RZA used that unique production for his album, Birth of a Prince, on "A Day To God Is A Thousand Years." The following year, Bronze worked with GZA, Ras Kass, Hieroglyphics, and others to cement his name as a producer. Now known for his production skills, Bronze wants to rekindle the ambitions of the 16-year-old who fell in love with hip-hop.
BallerStatus.com: Explain the process inside the Wu Element.
Bronze: It's a group of guys who produce and we just get work.
BallerStatus.com: Do you sample a lot?
Bronze: Definitely. When I sample, I like to make it into something different. I like to chop sh-- up and stuff like that.
BallerStatus.com: How would you describe your style?
Bronze: Emotions, things I feel. It may be some real sad sh-- I feel, whether it's grinding or political.
BallerStatus.com: What do you listen to outside of hip-hop?
Bronze: I do a lot of soul music; I'm from Detroit. Teddy Pendergrass, Sam Cooke...I like a lot of underground R&B. It's like back in the day, soul music was the hip-hop. You had the Fourtops and everything.
BallerStatus.com: What producers and rappers influenced your style the most?
Bronze: I would have to say the RZA and [4th] Disciple as far as production. Rappers: Big Daddy Kane, Kool G.Rap, RZA, and AZ, he my mans too.
BallerStatus.com: You must like the storytelling; or is it the wordplay?
Bronze: I like the wordplay, but you can play with words all day and not be saying anything.
BallerStatus.com: Your album, what emotions will it bring out?
Bronze: You know how they say you got your whole life to make your first album? It's like everything I went through, it's on there. Like, I got this one song called "The Pain." I'm just running through all the sh-- I've been through. Another one called "Rare Breed," its just on some street sh--, you can feel it in my music. Of course, you got the wordplay like "The Poem," where I just tried to rhyme everything. It's just a good mixture of my feeling on any given day.
BallerStatus.com: Why call the album The Great Migration?
Bronze: You know when our ancestors got out of slavery, a lot of them went to Chicago, Detroit, and different places to look for work. I just used that parallel in my life and journey.
BallerStatus.com: What song did you enjoy the most on your album?
Bronze: "The Pain," "Black Royalty," that one has my favorite verse I ever wrote. Those and "Rare Breed," it just makes you put on a mean face [laughs].
BallerStatus.com: Production wise, what's your favorite?
Bronze: That's a hard one. It might be "Royalty." It sounds royal; it's got a lot of sh-- going on in it.
BallerStatus.com: Do you write to a beat or do you make a beat then write to it?
Bronze: It all depends man, I like to write in silence and just go off emotion.
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