RZA being the namesake of Rihanna and A$AP Rocky‘s baby might have been a surprise to many people, but for the man himself, he considers it a “great honor.”
The Wu-Tang Clan leader sat down with CNN on Thursday (July 6) to reflect on his long and storied career, and he almost immediately brought up the younger RZA, who is the firstborn son of the Bajan beauty and the Harlem native.
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“[It’s a] great honor to know that there’s another generation that’s not even of my own household that feels the strength and the inspiration of that name,” he explained. “RZA is only a name, it’s a title. So it’s an honor and I salute her and A$AP and their family. All the blessings in the world from me.”
Back in May, when the younger RZA was celebrating his first birthday, his proud papa took to Instagram to celebrate the occasion — which also marked the first time that A$AP Rocky officially confirmed his son’s name.
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“WU TANG IZ 4 DA CHUREN.” HAPPY 1st BIRTHDAY TO MY 1st BORN. RZA,” he wrote in the Instagram caption of the May 13 birthday post.
Rumors of the baby’s name originally surfaced when The Daily Mail reportedly got its hands on the child’s birth certificate, revealing his name to be RZA Athelston Mayers. It also said he was born May 13 at 10:58 a.m. at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.
Naming babies after famous Hip Hop icons appears to be a family trait for A$AP Rocky, as he revealed back in 2012 that he was named after the legendary Rakim.
As for RZA (real name Robert Fitzgerald Diggs), the father-of-seven has also served as a father figure to other up-and-coming rappers — including Weather Park, the son of the late Ol’ Dirty Bastard, who passed away nearly two decades ago.
“I would call RZA and just ask him questions about anything like meditation, thinking, breathing skills, just things to keep the mental health in order,” Weather Park said in an interview with AllHipHop.
“As we both know, I lost my dad. So without my dad, I would say that I had to figure out a lot of things on my own. But having a great mind like RZA just available to speak to me is super helpful to my life. Just keeping my head on the swivel, even though I was maybe facing things that an average person from New York City is facing.”
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He continued: “I applaud him for even being in my life, even if it was at its littlest degree. I applaud him for it because the time that he took just to talk to me was enough to let me go back and read a book, you know what I mean? And not just because I’m around the Abbot. It’s more about I have to continuously be teaching myself something.
“So I don’t know, I guess that’s the perfect way to word it. Yeah, just very impactful. I would say his relationship in my life is very impactful.”
