BLAKROC webisode 4: feat. RZA

Wu Tang Clan- Da Mystery of Chessboxin' Feat. The Black Keys

The RZA & Black Keys : Baddest Man Alive Official Music Video

The Black Keys Names RZA as an Inspiration for their Sound.

Ten years ago, The Black Keys hauled their gear up the steps of Used Kids Records and played their first Columbus concert for a handful of fervent underground music acolytes. It wasn’t the humblest way to debut — the show got local press coverage, and lots of upstart bands play to empty rooms — but it still seems quaint compared with the gig the band will play Sunday, when they headline the Schottenstein Center in the thick of their first arena tour.

The Black Keys seemed like an afterthought, late-comers to a wave of guitar-slinging “The” bands heralding a so-called return of rock. Through perseverance and serendipity, Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney have surpassed and transcended bands like The Strokes (defiled) and The White Stripes (defunct).The Keys have survived and thrived long enough to spawn a whole new wave of think pieces anointing them as rock’s last hope, a mantle Carney more or less accepted in a January Rolling Stone interview. positioning the band’s meat-and-potatoes melodic blues bash-up as an alternative to both hipster-baiting indie and knuckle-dragging modern rock. Though they boast countless imitators, in the top-flight pop stratosphere they are a band alone.“It’s crazy. I mean to have this sort of success — you couldn’t ever bet on it in a million years,” Auerbach said. “But to have had this success without having to have come up with a real shtick, it’s pretty awesome.”The Keys’ shtick is, of course, having no shtick.

Auerbach and Carney began making grimy lo-fi recordings in an attempt to emulate Wu-Tang producer The RZA. They worked off the cuff with as few frills as possible.“You’re talking to somebody who made a record in one afternoon,” Auerbach said. “Nobody made records quicker than we did.”They stuck to that approach until taking a sharp turn with 2008’s “Attack and Release,” which featured production from serial collaborator Danger Mouse.

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The Black Keys sitting on unreleased RZA collaboration

One of the surprise packages of 2009 was Blackroc, the collaboration between The Black Keys and some of the more notable names in the hip-hop community.

The release saw the scuzzy blues-rockers provide backing for hip-hop alumni such as Mos Def, Pharoahe Monch, Ludacris, Q-Tip of A Tribe Called Quest, as well as Wu-Tang Clan members Raekwon, RZA and the late Ol' Dirty Bastard.

Well in a recent interview with TheVine, Black Keys drummer and producer Parick Carney revealed that the band are sitting on a second Blackroc album of nine songs that "were never released that are pretty much done," with no plans to ever be released. But more interestingly, that they recorded an entire album's worth of material solely with RZA, that has also been resigned to the archives.

"We have a lot of hip-hop stuff that we did with other people that is just never gonna come out," Carney told us. "Like, we did basically a full record with RZA in Los Angeles. Then we have these nine songs from this second Blackroc session. But y’know, a lot of it’s just experimenting. Some of it’s really good, I think, and some of it is not so good. But I think there’s just too much of a novelty factor to keep doing it over and over again. Doing it once was enough. I think it might get old if we keep revisiting it. But maybe one day that stuff will see the light of day. I don’t know.

So Wu Disciples, what do you think? is this going to be another case of the classic unreleased Wu-Tang related projects? Ol' Dirty Bastards - "A Son Unique"?, "Achozen Project"? The Black Knights East coast recordings with RZA? what do you think?? some things are meant to stay saved or do you think this should be released?