Still not convinced that Hip Hop is the universal music language?  Well tell that to CNN who recently sat down with producer-extraordinaire and brain behind the The Wu-Tang Clan. In promotion of his new book, The Tao of Wu which drops this Thursday (October 15th), RZA chops it up with Eliott McLaughlin about how the WU almost didn’t happen.

According to the RZA a chance encounter saved the life of his friend Method Man who would be gunned down in a drive-by.  RZA recalls Meth was walking down a block in Staten Island to buy some weed, and he spotted him and called him over.

“Come over here, yo!” RZA beckoned, according to “The Tao of Wu”. “He stopped and came running over. A few seconds later — pow-pow-pow-pow-pow! — a guy started shooting up the front of 160. A buddy of ours, Poppy, an innocent, school-going, nice guy — he was shot and killed right there.”

Additionally, RZA says his book details a 1992 turning point in his ownl ife when we was facing an 8 year prison sentence one year before the WU was formed, however the rapper was acquitted.

“Either one of those incidents could definitely have derailed it. Of course, myself being the abbot, the one who came with the idea, if I wouldn’t have made it out of that tumultuous time — it seemed like I wasn’t going to make it out of it; there was a lot of odds against me — but we stood strong, and self-defense made sense to the jury. We beat that,” he told CNN.com.

RZA goes on to explain that fate wasn’t always on their side adding that he wish he could have done more to help address Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s (born Robert Diggs) drug problems.

In an attempt to somehow explain all of the RZA breaks down the science the only way the RZA can.

Like it says in the Bible, “In the beginning was the word, and the word became flesh” — if we go to the root of the word, we will find that, yeah, everything is similar. Everything is teaching us all the same path.

It’s just that one religion was good for these people because of their living conditions. In the Quran, they mention paradise being filled with wells, wells of water, and if you’re in the desert and you’ve got a chance to get water and gardens — as they describe paradise in the holy Quran — if you’re going to get gardens, that’s the paradise that fits your situation. … Everything they’re saying relates to the people they’re talking to. …

You remove the messenger and take the message.

What?!   He’s always been on another plane from me but entertaining none the less and that’s all that counts.  For more anectdotes and mind bending Wu Science cop The Tao of Wu available this Thursday in book stores.