Devendra Banhart and GZA Possibly Team Up For Album

Wouldn’t it be great if one of today’s most mystical indie artists teamed up with one of today’s greatest rhyme machines? Well, folks. There may be something in the works for that fantasy.

Devendra Banhart tells Paste Magazine, that he and Wu-Tang Clan‘s infamous member, GZA, are going back and forth on some collaborations. Although the album hasn’t come to a full fruition yet, Banhart is hopeful and excited as anyone else can be.

Known mostly for re-birthing the freak folk side of psychedelic rock for the indie scene, Banhart, is also a great fan of rap. He spills his secret on how he used to be into skateboarding before his music and how a big part of skateboarding back then was hip-hop music. He was and still is a huge Wu-Tang fan having home-made stickers of the “W” and slapping them onto his skateboard.

Although it’s obvious that the soft-spoken folk artist probably isn’t the best rapper, himself, he praises GZA by labels the great master of rhyme as one of his favorite lyricists: “He’s a legend. He’s untouchable. He’s an avatar, an iconoclast. It’s the GZA… And you can’t fuck with the GZA.”

Their friendship started way back when Banhart spun at the same event as Wu-Tang’s RZA. Shortly after, words buzzed around and GZA gave him one of the best surprises of his life when he was saw the hip-hop legend waiting for him after a Coachella set.

“I played Coachella, and, lo and behold, I looked on the sidelines and there was GZA. I was stunned. So we hung out and talked—we talked about atomic energy and how the sun is powered. We talked about dark matter. Then I sent him my catalog. And he said ‘Hey man, will you write some stuff? Let’s write together.”

So far, Banhart and GZA have only sketched out songs by sending ideas back and forth. The partnership on an album hasn’t been officially green-lighted yet, but we’re hoping that it will become a reality for us to hold in our hands. A combination of powerful words and lush gentleness between the two artists could only sound magnificent.