Wu Tang’s RZA releases ballet album

A ballet written by the Wu Tang Clan’s RZA was released as an album. A Ballet Through Mud was inspired by a journal of lyrics the rapper wrote as a schoolboy, some fantastical, some about “first experiences with love, alcohol, drugs.”

The ballet’s characters are named after different musical scales, and the score, like Wu Tang’s music, is inspired by Eastern philosophy: “Mud is known to be dirty,” RZA told NPR, “but out of the mud grows the lotus.” He eventually abandoned his teenage lyrics, but used them to inspire new music, which became the ballet first performed with the Colorado Symphony in 2023.