RAW

by Lamont U-God Hawkins

  This time we were going to Stapleton to DJ in the park. RZA was also DJing there that day. I knew him from the projects when he lived across the street from my house on Vanderbilt. I also knew his brother Divine from P.S. 57. They had a big family that was always moving around. Actually, RZA ended up in Park Hill for a while, on the top floor of Building 350. Then he moved down the hill by our junior high school, P.S. 49, and was there for another good while. His house was near a path that ran from P.S. 49 through the neighborhood. Everyone used it to go from school back to Park Hill.

  So RZA got on the turntables and started doing his cutting thing. To me, nobody could fuck with Tom, because he was my mentor. I was still impressed by RZA, though. It was a nice summer day, and I just happened to talk to him for a minute, and he was into the same things I was into. Little did I know that a few years later he’d be coming to the Hill to chill, and we’d recognize each other and become close friends.

  In those years, RZA kept kind of popping up in my life; our paths just seemed to keep crossing every so often. It was him, a dude named Dondi, and this guy whose street name was To the Beat, who later died of cancer. He looked like Michael Jackson, with a big old Afro and a big old nose. But those three were like the stars of the hood back then. They’d go around in matching zodiac-sign sweatshirts and all that fly shit. They were always doing something hip-hoppy, and I was always attracted to that scene, and so was RZA.

  He was always a smart motherfucker. What initially drew me to him was his mind. I could care less about what you got, what you doin’, but if you can stimulate my mental, talk about some real shit, if you’re a smart man, that’s what drew me to him. Because I hate ignorance. Even as a kid, I hated ignorant motherfuckers.

  At the time, he called himself Prince Rakeem Allah, and he was in tune with the Mathematics and knowledge of self—like I said, the man is a genius.

  For example, RZA is a master of the 120. He, Genius, and Masta Killa mastered the Lessons back and forth, forth and back. They have that shit down pat. “RZA, what’s the wisdom knowledge degree in the 1-40, the second and third paragraphs?” And he would know it and kick that shit verbatim at you.

  When we first met, he asked me “What’s today’s Mathematics, God?” because my name was U-God Allah. Now, it happened to be the eighth day of the month, so we discussed the eighth degree: “to build, destroy, divine.” We would first take it to the Supreme Mathematics: to build is to add on; build is another word for elevation: when you build, you elevate from the lowest to the highest forms of life. Destroy is to destroy all negativity within your circumference. Divine is another word for greatness—my mind is divine because it cannot be diluted. In other words, a person with knowledge of self cannot be diluted; he cannot be tampered with in any shape, form, or fashion because he knows the truth about himself and his surroundings. When you build with someone, it’s like having a meeting of the minds, and that’s why I was drawn to RZA.

  This was during my cool nerd phase. I wasn’t hanging around hooligans as much anymore. I was hanging out with Pachy, Eric, Foe, Kenny, Tom, Mike, Abdul, Keith, Mark, Howie … a bunch of dudes, and a lot of them grew up to be somebody. One of them grew up to be a correctional officer, another one became a nurse. Abdul, who was a tall dude, at least six foot six or six foot seven, tried to get into the NBA, but couldn’t make it and wound up playing in Italy. They weren’t into street shit. I’m not saying they were exactly nerds, but to me nerds are cool. Nerds are nonthreatening.

  That’s how I viewed RZA at first. He was a nerd, but he wanted to be down with the gangsters. I remember when I gave RZA half a man (a half kilo) of crack to sell one time, I got my money back, but he messed up his cut. I shoulda known he wasn’t built for that kind of hustlin’, but sometimes you gotta let some cats find that out for themselves.

  The truth was that both of us weren’t really into the streets. I mean, we hung out on the streets, but I wasn’t really out there out there, if you know what I mean. But we wanted to chill outside, so we’d hang out on the stoop of the corner bodega. That was our hangout spot. And if we weren’t there, we were hangin’ at Tom’s house. We’d be sittin’ there all day and all night, just laughing, talking about stupid shit, records, just doing what kids did every day back then.

  One thing that corner store had that I still remember was some fuckin’ great heroes. They made great big sandwiches for five bucks. You could get turkey or roast beef and a quart of grape drink. That was the shit back in the day.

  *

  I also started running into Method Man around this time. I first met him at the P.S. 49 Center, the youth center. It was located between Stapleton and Park Hill, and we used to all go down to the center at about five o’clock at night, when it would open. We would be down there playing basketball, hanging out, and you get to mingle with all the kids from the projects.

  That was when we were break-dancing, doing windmills and all that shit. So you had your Pumas on, and we had these suits called windbreakers, real slippery jackets and pants that you’d break-dance in, ’cause they gave you extra spin on the cardboard. Some days they would play music, songs like “Planet Rock” by Afrika Bambaataa & the Soulsonic Force, and “Candy Girl” and other New Edition songs that were really hot at the time.

  Meth had one of them shag cuts in the back of his head back then, and he could dance motherfuckin’ New Edition routines like it was nothing. He was doing them dance steps like he’d rehearsed it. That was the first time I met him, when we were both around eleven years old at the 49 Center. This was even before he became known as Shaquan. He was fresh from Long Island, trying to find his way over here, trying to fit in. I saw him bustin’ his New Edition moves and went over and started talking to him.

  Meth’s always been an upbeat character; his whole personality was always positive. Even when things were the roughest for us on the streets, he never was down on himself or life—unless he’s high as a motherfucker, but other than that, that dude’s energy is always goin’. To this day, he’s still an upbeat dude.

  Meth was in the same projects as me. He used to live upstairs on the floor with Sargee, another neighborhood DJ. So it was inevitable that we’d run into each other and laugh it up. You know, what’s up, what’s up, yadda, yadda, yadda.

  Later on, after the Center, Meth threw out a couple of hood jams. Like, “My House, My House” and “Panty Raider” and all that fly shit. We were all like, “Wow, dude got talent.”

  And, you know, I ran into him again and we started talking. But it wasn’t until we got our jobs at the Statue of Liberty later on, when we were like fifteen, that we really got close.

  That’s also about the time when his name became Shaquan; he became 5 Percent because everybody else was 5 Percent. He got his 5 Percent name from his mentor Rashawn. Rashawn was down with the Avenue Crew back in the day, same old shit, just another bully chasing us little kids when we were young. But he took Meth under his wing first.

  So Meth started coming out of the house a little bit more by then. And I don’t wanna throw dirt on him, but he was just a dirt bomb back then. The fuckin’ dude never washed his clothes, he was just always raggedy. I mean, he was going through some shit. He was going through whatever he was going through, just like we all were at the time. We were all raggedy at some point. One time I had one pair of shoes, I was leanin’ because my shoes were worn out on one side, I was trying to get my shit together, and my girl left me. It’s the same shit. We all went through the same shit at the same time.

  *

  About this time, my mom took up with a man named Charles for several years, who was the father of my half brother, Issa.

  Charles would babysit us. He raised me, too; between Uncle Matt and him, those two really put the “have no fear” type of shit in me. I can’t even front on Charles, God bless the dead. He was no joke. He also made me into a fighter. He made me into a tough little boy, more aggressive, because I was the only child with my mother at the time—this was
before my brother was born.

  He was a Quran-reading man who jogged ten miles a day and played tennis. A real athletic dude, but he and my mother fought a lot, and sometimes he would put his hands on her. I remember trying to stand up for her one time. “Motherfucker! Don’t hit my mother!” I tried to defend her, but I was only ten or eleven years old. I was a little frail thing back then, I probably weighed about seventy or eighty pounds.

  One day, he met me after school. He dragged me behind the school building and put a knife to my neck. He did that because I was starting to become a little man. I think back on it now, he was trying to put fear in me. He wanted me to fear him. It worked for the first few seconds, but as soon as he let me go, I ran off and yelled back, “Fuck you, motherfucker! When I get older I’m gonna kill you!”

  That was about the time when I started losing my fear of a lot of things. When you lose your fear of something or somebody, they have no authority over you. When he beat on my mother, he saw it in my eyes without me having to say, “Motherfucker, I’m gonna kill you.” I still was a little guy. But I was still trying to find my little way in the world.

  As I got older, I realized you don’t have to worry about the old guys doing you harm. Adults put more thought and reason into their plans and actions. It’s the youth, the kids, that you’ve got to worry about doing you harm. Not all of them, of course, but the ones that have lost their fear of everything, including death. The ones living on the street day to day, hand to mouth, falling into crime just to survive. Those little motherfuckers have heart, and they’re fearless. When the kids start not caring and losing their fear, given the right situation, they would blow your fucking head off your shoulders.

  After the knife incident, I ran back to my mother’s house, and she put a restraining order on him. Even with that, he was still in and out of our lives. As I got older, I’d see him time and time again when he would come see my brother Issa.

  Time moved on and things changed, and I grew into that little man, and then grew some more. It’s funny—when you’re young, you think you’re grown, but really I was still a little snot-nose.

  When I was sixteen or seventeen, I ran into Charles again. By this time I was making grown-man moves on the street, with plenty of people selling drugs for me. Charles saw how strong I had become, and I saw straight panic on his face. He knew I’d never forgotten what he’d done to my mother and me. So he moved out of the Stapleton projects on the Island to Marcy Projects in Brooklyn. Even though I could have done him dirty, I didn’t—he was still my brother’s father.

  I also realized there was an upside to Charles being in my life at that time. He had family in the Stapleton projects, and we used to hang there all the time. Stapleton always reminded me of a maximum-security prison; the buildings all have balconies that look like jail tiers. In Stapleton, I ran into RZA more, and Ghostface Killah, too—if it wasn’t for Charles, I probably never would have gotten to know those two.

  I was going to school at P.S. 49 when I was fourteen or fifteen years old. It was right in the middle of Park Hill and Stapleton, and I became an ambassador between the projects. I was cool with everybody. That was a major thing, because at that time Park Hill peoples couldn’t go to Stapleton, and vice versa. I overcame all that by being in Stapleton when I was a little kid, and I played with those kids. I had passes, and never had any beef with dudes from that project.

  I was in and out of Stapleton all day. I’d go to Ghost’s crib. I’d go see Den at his crib. I’d stop by Juice’s crib and say what up to Dorian on the way. I’d even be up in Guy’s house, and he’s the one that shot my son by accident years later.

  Eventually, this extended into New Brighton and West Brighton, the other projects on the Island, too. Because I went to high school with kids from both places, I was always interwoven into all the neighborhoods. Later on, that gave me the pass to sell big drugs in all those ’jects.

  That played a huge part when I started hustling. People don’t even know how much hustling I was doing, because I knew dudes in every project in Staten Island. I was the first one to conquer all those projects, put work in each one simultaneously, and have ’em all cooking at the same time.

  *

  Around this time, I was also starting to get with some of the girls in my neighborhoods. Like my first girlfriend. Well, she wasn’t my first girlfriend, but she was the first bad one that I got with. She lived in a house close to Stapleton. She was smoking hot. She broke my virginity and turned me into a fucking animal.

  I had met her while out one night, and I just went up to her. I just banged her. I wasn’t her first, though. She was fucking already. By the time she got to me, I was probably the third or fourth on the list. She got around, and just by her putting me on the list, that was kind of cool, because that was a confidence booster for me.

  But then she started fucking a drug dealer who had more money than me. I didn’t have any money at the time; I was just a regular, good-looking young guy. And she liked me for who I was at first, but then drugs started coming into the hood, and the lure of that lifestyle pulled her in, going for the dudes with the gold chains and the cars, all that shit. She left me and started fucking around with this other dude. That was my first taste of C.R.E.A.M.—that cash rules everything around me.

  I remember one night I was with one of my peoples, my best friend, Choice. It was raining, and I was thinking about everything I was going through, with this drug dealer taking my girl, and how I was flat broke. I was a real downer, on some damn “I don’t have any bread, my money is wack” kick. I said right then and there that I was never gonna be broke ever again. Years later, Choice said, “After U-God said that shit, the man transformed himself. Sure enough, he’s never been broke again in his whole fucking life. From that day on.”

  On Saturdays, we would have rec room parties. The rec room was at the bottom of the building, where everybody would just come on in and get down. These particular parties attracted the hardest motherfuckers from every project on Staten Island. It’d be at capacity, about a hundred people, but everyone would be trying to cram in there. They were like our own private little parties, packed with nothing but hood dudes smoking weed and hood broads, and we’d be in there doing our thing.

  Funky G Grandville would DJ, and Scotty Watty—one of the illest street rhymers ever—would be on the mic as the Discotyzers. Or Schoolly D would be playing “PSK.” You might see that cute girl from West Brighton or Stapleton that you saw on the bus earlier that week. You might see one of your crushes from school. You might see some of your partners from school or from another project. There might be a fight outside, there’d be sightings of people you might have beef with, but overall it’d just be a bangin’ party.

  I’d be in there with my man Jahmel, we’d be hanging with Bones, Love God, Kane, Hersch, Chaz, Marcus, the whole Wreck Posse crew, the whole Hill. Of course, you couldn’t show up at a rec room party without looking your best. Park Hill was known for fly dudes who were always on some fly shit: Gucci down, Polo down, you name it. If it was high end, we were sporting it: gold teeth, ropes, cars.

  The fashion of the day was Double Goose V leather bombers mostly, or sheepskin coats, all worn with Pumas and Kangols. You always took a kind of a risk wearing sheepskins, ’cause some dude might be trying to take your shit, even though that would have been suicide doing it on our turf. Besides, at the time I was carrying a sawed-off deer shotgun under my sheepskin, and usually just flashing that would shut any trouble down before it ever got started.

  I guess it’s like the young boys in their new Jordans and Kobes now. Except back then we sweated Ballys. Shit don’t change, just new material to lust for, that’s all.

  *

  Of course, since we had everyone from all over the Island coming over, every rec room party was a mix of all the neighborhoods.

  Staten Island had five or six neighborhoods, and each one was close-knit. And out of all of them, Stapleton and the Harbor were both full of tr
oublemakers—like Ghost. Stapleton dudes like the Gladiator Posse weren’t about gear or money, they always came around to make trouble. Instead of getting money, they wanted to shoot shit up or snatch a chain. That’s why Stapleton always had beef with everybody on the Island. That hood was also the capital of angel dust (PCP), and in my opinion, that’s probably why they were so crazy. When I was hustlin’ in Stapleton, I had three good workers over there. That’s because I kept my shit organized, unlike everyone else there.

  Guys from the New Brighton projects were getting money, but they were more about fighting and being known as good fighters. New Brighton was a gold mine for me when I started hustling, because the typical New Brighton dudes wasn’t getting money like that.

  Then we had notorious troublemakers throughout Staten Island that were just wild for nothing. Dudes like Corky, Cash, and others would just come through and shoot the Hill up just for reputation.

  Mariner’s Harbor dudes were also known as troublemakers. They didn’t play over there. Mal Gibbs from the Harbor was the worst. He was known for all kinds of wild shit. If he was coming at you, you better keep your heat on you, not stashed off somewhere. He was known for shooting, robbing, and kidnapping drug dealers. He’d find out where you lived, run up in your house, tie you up, and rob you.

  Mal pulled shit all over the Island—except Park Hill. He never came to the Hill. I think he was kinda scared of us because dudes on the Hill were always ready. Motherfuckers would have their gats stashed in the bushes, in the motherfucking grass. They’d be ready for these dudes to come along and try something.

  Mal got locked up, but he’s home now. He might still be fucking around, he might get his life together, who knows? It’s not the same on the streets anymore. He was a straight maniac. Certain dudes reached that maniac level in the street. And when they got locked up, sometimes it just made them even worse.