flickering pictures

I be liking chess

Cuz chess is crazy, right there, that’s the ultimate

It’s like a great hobby right there, playing chess

The board, the pieces, the squares, the movement

You know, war, capturing, thinking, strategy

Planning, music, it’s hip-hop, and sports

It’s life, it’s reality

Those are the last lines in GZA’s “Queen’s Gambit,” a chess-inspired track written by one of the Wu-Tang Clan’s founding members. He and five other chess-loving rappers took part in the Hip Hop Chess Federation’s Kings Invitational Tournament, held last fall in San Francisco, which aimed to use “chess, music and martial arts to promote unity, strategy and nonviolence.”

From the New York Times:

The tournament’s competitors included six hip-hop stars — RZA; GZA, another founder of the Wu-Tang Clan; Monk of the Black Knights, a Wu-Tang affiliate; Casual, of the group Hieroglyphics; Sunspot Jonz, from Living Legends Crew; and Paris. Rounding out the field were Ralek Gracie, a martial arts fighter, and Amir Sulaiman, a poet who has appeared on the HBO program “Def Poetry Jam.”

[…] The Wu-Tang Clan’s connection to martial arts goes back to its beginnings in 1992. RZA and GZA, who are cousins and who grew up together on Staten Island, learned to play chess when they were young, but did not play often.

“Me and RZA would have been playing when we was kids if we had had a board,” GZA said.

The event also hosted two student tournaments with $10,000 prizes, mostly contributed by Montreal-based video game developer Ubisoft.

Call me crazy, but there’s something awesome about these guys competing in a chess tournament. Here are some of GZA’s somewhat less chess-inspired “Queen’s Gambit” lyrics — these come just before that blurb up top:

And I was thinking these girls was saints

But it was first and ten, and there was extra walls to paint

Before you know it, I had all three in a huddle

Buckin’ like a colt, before I released them puddles

They spread eagles like wide receivers

As I ram them in the endzone, and they became true believers

Incidentally, RZA won the tournament, winning all four games he played.

If you’re in the mood for a short but great profile piece, check out the New York Observer’s write-up on Peter M. Frankel, the Clan’s “straight-shooting,” hip-hop-loving lawyer who insists that deceased Clan member Ol’ Dirty Bastard did not, in fact, shoot at the Brooklyn cops who say he did.

Story via the inestimable Cool Things in Random Places.
Image via the even more inestimable New York Times.

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