Producer and member of the hip-hop collective Wu-Tang Clan RZA (Robert Diggs) will be presented with the TEC Innovation Award at The NAMM Show’s 2024 TEC Awards on Saturday, January 27 in Anaheim, CA.
The award honors individuals who have set high standards of excellence in the creative application of recording technology. “RZA’s formidable body of work and talent is unquestionable,” says John Mlynczak, NAMM president and CEO. “His legacy of accomplishments and lasting power on music inspires many music makers beyond hip-hop and he deserves this high recognition.”
The Staten Island group entered the music scene in 1993 with “Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers),” an album Rolling Stone dubbed one of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time (#27). The debut album included “C.R.E.A.M.,” a track the magazine also placed in the number 1 slot in its list of The 100 Best East Coast Hip-Hop Songs of All Time. Since then, the collective has sold more than 40 million albums globally.
Diggs’ renaissance career has also reached beyond recording with ventures into the world of television and films, earning him acting, directing, scoring, and producing credits on several notable projects. He scored Jim Jarmusch’s “Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai” and soundtracks for “Kill Bill Volume 1” and “Kill Bill: Volume 2.” He stars in the comedy film “Problemista,” which premiered at SXSW. He is also an executive producer for, and directed several episodes of, the original Hulu series honoring his group called “Wu-Tang: An American Saga.”
TEC Awards finalists in Outstanding Technical Achievement across 23 categories can be found at here, while Studio Design finalists are here. Find out more about the TEC Awards here.
