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Fresh Chops: Hanni El Khatib & GZA

• 19th Nov 2014

Have you heard GZA‘s reworking of ‘Moonlight’ by Hanni El Khatib yet? The production has been refreshed slightly, but the main draw is the extra verse GZA has put over it. The fact it sits so well over the top of the beat reflects the fact Hanni is gently moving away from his traditional garage sound on his new album (also called Moonlight), released on 19th Jan on Innovative Leisure.

Hanni takes up the story of how the Wu-Tang Clan MC came to add his distinctive flow to the garage rock track:

“Originally I got linked up with GZA to work on a cover of one of my favorite songs, The Mexican’ by Babe Ruth, for him to rap on. He came into the studio to work on the track and we vibing pretty hard on it. After we got through laying down the music for that song, I started to play him some of the new music i was working on for my new record.

“I played him ‘Moonlight’ and it connected instantly. I asked him if he’d lace me with a verse for it and he was down. After listening to the track a few times he called me over to the sofa that he was chilling on and asked me to sing the lyrics to him a cappella. He then responded with something like “so if you are speaking on the struggle with the moonlight, imma speak on the moonlight’s beauty. I’ll be the yin to your yang.” Everyone in the studio had on a look of disbelief. It was definitely a surreal moment.”

You can grab a free download of the remix here: