For as long as the two leaders of the Wu-Tang Clan have known each other, it still shocks GZA that he never played chess with RZA as a kid.
The pair are busy practicing this week for their Twitch debut on Saturday, where they will play and compete in a chess tournament hosted by Chess.com and Hennessy. It’s to benefit Black, Latinx and Asian small businesses struggling with the pandemic. GZA says he still remembers vividly to this day when his cousin taught his 9-year-old self how to play chess.
“I guess I remember it well because he had a black and red checkerboard, but the pieces were like clear plastic neon,” GZA tells The Washington Post in a video interview, who said he never forgot the lesson. “And they were weird colored, and they were caked in green. And he showed me the names of the pieces and how they moved.”