Artist News Releases

RZA and Interpol’s Paul Banks release first track from new collaboration Banks & Steelz

By Andy Malt | Published on Tuesday 24 May 2016

Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA and Interpol’s Paul Banks have announced a new musical collaboration, calling themselves Banks & Steelz. It might seem like RZA has put a bit more thought into coming up with a name for the new project, though given that he’s gone by the name Bobby Steels in the past, I think they should both be marked down for lack of effort here.

It’s not like they haven’t had time to think of a name, either. They’ve been working on music together for three years. Back in 2013, RZA told Rolling Stone: “My manager came to me and said, ‘Who do you want to do an album with?’ I said, ‘Well, Paul just has an energy about him. I think if we put our sandwich together it will be great’. Me and Paul, we play chess together and just hang out. We went to the studio and we started writing songs and they sound very, very different than what I do, but very unique and very peculiar”.

Those differences meant that the collaborative album took a while to complete, so at least some effort has been put in there. I guess that’s what matters most. And they’ve now released their first track together, ‘Love & War’, of which RZA says: “For love sometimes we find ourselves at war and the combatants may do anything to win. For me love is worth fighting for, as long as love is not lost”.

Here’s the video for the track, which also has Ghostface Killah on it: