RZA’s debut studio album, “RZA As Bobby Digital in Stereo,” was executive produced by music mogul turned hotelier Jon Baker. Released on his Gee Street label 25 years ago on November 24, 1998, it’s a superhero experimental concept album based on a story featuring RZA rhyming as an alter-ego named ‘Bobby Digital’: which incidentally is the name of a Jamaican dancehall and reggae producer most famous for making the “Dem Bow” beat that is the subject of lawsuit claiming 1800 Reggaeton songs.
“Working with RZA was a creative roller coaster—to this day we maintain a friendship. Two Gravediggaz albums then his first solo record ‘Bobby Digital’,” Jon said in an exclusive interview with WMV at his Panorama Villa in Portland Jamaica, adding that he had shipped 700,000 units of the album upon release.
The cultural and artistic significance of “Bobby Digital In Stereo” extends to its cover, drawing inspiration from the iconic design by photographer Frank Gauna for Galt McDermott’s “Cotton Comes To Harlem – Original Soundtrack,” a film from the 1970s.
Illustrated by famous comic book artist Bill Sienkiewicz, known for his work on Daredevil, Batman, and more, Marvel later adapted the same album cover in 2017, reworking it for the inaugural issue of their Nick Fury Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. comic book miniseries.
“RZA laid out his concept, and it was absolutely amazing. We even went as far as finding the original artist who did all the Blaxploitation movies in the 70s. Creative Designer, David Calderley of GraphicTherapy, did all the research, and we ultimately used the Marvel Comic illustrator Bill to put together that incredible cover,” Jon said.
Calderly recalled, “we could not get the original illustrator at the time but Bill knew the vibe and got it first time with a faxed line drawing.”
The creative synergy between Jon and RZA started with the Gravediggaz where Jon would fund some of the most ground breaking ideas in rap music.
Jon Baker, RZA (Photo contributed by Gee Street Media)
“From a creative standpoint and what we had done on the first two Gravediggaz albums, he (RZA) felt comfortable with Gee Street.” Gee Street Records was a British hip hop record label that Jon started in 1985. “As a label founder, I like to sign people with their own concepts and own creativity. If they wanted a third ear, I would be there for them, but the whole of ‘Bobby Digital’ was perceived by RZA himself,” Jon added.
The Gravediggaz, a horrorcore rap group known for using metaphors with dark themes that painted a grim picture of inner-city realities in the 1990s, had members Prince Paul as The Undertaker, Frukwan as The Gatekeeper, Too Poetic as The Grym Reaper, and RZA as The RZArector. The two albums Jon executive produced with them via Gee Street before RZA went solo were 1994’s “6 Feet Deep” and then in 1997, “The Pick, the Sickle, and the Shovel.”
It was a time when storytelling played an important role in hip hop’s development, with mainstream songs like “Renee” from the Lost Boys, DMX’s “How It’s Going Down,” and Jay-Z‘s “Hard Knock Life” from the album Vol 2.
Baker, the son of a World War 2 seamstress came up in the ranks of the music business as an executive with a penchant and the budget for risk-taking, complementing artists like The RZA’s imaginative thoughts and creativity. At Baker’s musical career peak, he sold his record label to the Chris Blackwell-founded Island Records. He then regained it, only to sell it again to the Richard Bronson-owned V2 Records in 1996.
Upon selling, Baker gave the Wu-Tang founder the opportunity to own his masters. “I structured the deal that way,” Jon said.
With a penchant for making deals, the now 63-year-old music impresario had to use his Jamaican music contacts to secure the rights to the name of the album, he said. “The late Bobby Digital I knew quite well, and I contacted him when we were gonna name this album, and we made a deal with him to use the name because his name and brand were out there. I was President of Island Jamaica for Chris Blackwell, so I had a keen engagement with the Jamaican producers,” Jon explained.
‘RZA As Bobby Digital In Stereo’ is certified Gold on February 5, 1999, by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for selling 500,000 units, and it is also certified Gold in Canada on December 16, 1998, for selling more than 40,000 units in that country. The album peaked at No. 54 on the Australian albums chart, No. 16 on the Billboard 200 albums chart, and No. 3 on the US Billboard R&B Hip Hop albums chart. On the Year-End US Billboard Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums in 1999, it landed at No. 77.
The project was ahead of its time introducing hip hop to digital orchestra chords and themes of love and family relationships on songs like “Domestic Violence,” a track that has been copied in both delivery, audio format, and music video treatment by the likes of Eminem as he ranted against the mother of his child on the track “Kim.”
Kendrick Lamar’s “We Cry Together” from his 2023 Grammy winning Best Rap Album “Mr. Morale And Big Steppers,” released in May 2022, took on the subject of domestic violence reflecting the same back-and-forth salacious arguments as RZA did in 1998.
RZA, real name Robert Fitzgerald Diggs didn’t just make good music as a solo act, but he made important music. “He is undoubtedly one of the most creative visionaries I have ever had the privilege to work with,” Jon reflects.
25 years later, Bobby Digital stands out as RZA’s most intricate and captivating alter ego, and he followed up with three albums under the anti-hero moniker in 2001 “Digital Bullet” his sophomore solo effort, and then his fourth solo album “Digi Snacks” in 2008. RZA resurrected the name for 2022s “RZA Presents: Bobby Digital and the Pit of Snakes,” a soundtrack album for a Bobby Digital‘s first graphic novel.
On how the character Bobby Digital came into being, RZA explains it was a mix between his real name and getting high:
“It came from a really good bag of weed one day, right? I was in my studio. My birth name is Bobby Diggs. So at the time, creatively, I felt like I was in a digital frame. I felt like I was in high-speed, where everything was digital, in numbers, mathematics. I said to myself at the same time that as Bobby Digital, I could use a character to describe some of the earlier days of my own life. Partying, bullshitting, going crazy, chasing women, taking drugs. At the same time, I would mix in my love for comic books. It was a mixture of fiction and reality together to make a character I thought would be entertaining, and I could utilize that character to get fans into me as an MC, as a lyricist, and also following the path of my life. It’s like pre-RZA. It’s what The RZA struggles not to be, in a way, you know what I mean?” he said.
To make the character real, RZA recalled the process of naturalism -having to adopt a life as Bobby Digital‘s which includes his womanizing ways like a method actor, he said took some time to get out of the character.
“I had to live in a way that I don’t really live…I got to dip my weed in honey, and I had mad bitches around me. I probably fucked with 50 bitches this year…women are queens. But if they don’t know that themselves, Bobby will prey on them. He’ll treat them like bitches if they don’t realize that they’re queens. I had to get Bobby out of me, or else I’d be emotionally unbalanced. Bobby Digital is just me feeling my nuts. RZA is my heart,” RZA explained.
Between “Digital Bullet” and “Digi Snacks,” RZA released “Birth of a Prince,” although distinct from his Bobby Digital persona, he consistently referred to himself as Bobby, aligning his rhymes more with his titular alter ego than his pre-1998 work.
Watch the full interview with Jon Baker on the making of “Rza As Bobby Digital In Stereo” below:
