RAW

by Lamont U-God Hawkins

  Some dudes would do their time and get out and end up going right back in again. Some of my mans did fifteen years and came home and got a job at Home Depot. They’d be like, “Fuck that life, man. I’m good, I got my girl, my little family, I’m cool, I’m good. I’m fucking decent, I’m gonna make my way from here.”

  And I was always like, “Yeah, yeah, you got the right idea, dog. You got the right idea.”

  Even the various neighborhood gangs would chill out at the rec room. We’d have dudes from the Avenue Crew, or the Paris Crew, or FMF or VO5 hanging with the Wreck Posse. Sometimes the Gladiator Posse would show up from Stapleton. Ghost hung out with the GD back then. The Cash Money Brothers (CHB) from the Harbor would drop by.

  It was our part of town, so out-of-towners couldn’t come through too fly or too tough or they’d get hurt, just like with most other housing projects. If you were an out-of-towner you’re a UFO, so you had to be careful. You’d get hurt like that. Dudes would flip and strip you of everything if they got the chance. Even Brooklyn guys had to mind their P’s and Q’s. Can’t just come through in Cazals and sheepskins, someone’s gonna test you for that. Same rules applied when we went to Brooklyn or the Bronx or any other borough. It was just a part of the intricacies of growing up in New York City.

  From 1983 to about 1986, it was all about the rec room. That shit was live enough to keep us enthralled for years. I was hanging out with Cappadonna a lot around then, and we were both in the DND (Dick ’Em Down Posse) together. We used to hang at the rec room parties and take mescaline and dance all night long. We had to go down to Stapleton for that, ’cause it had two things Park Hill didn’t have: angel dust and mescaline. You pop two of them shits, and you’d be sweatin’, dancin’, and laughin’ all fuckin’ night long. And then you were done, you couldn’t go to sleep either. And sometimes you’d get the wiggles, like your arms and legs would just shake for no reason.

  In between those parties, there would also be some jams and house parties. Rachel and Robin were these two sexy little shorties that would throw parties in their basement, and their mom would let us set up the music. They would hook their place up with red lights or purple lights, and everyone would bring a little bit of liquor or whatever and have a good time.

  They had a brother who used to dress like Prince, no lie. He used to dress just like the guy. He used to look like Prince, too, light-skinned, hair, the clothes, all of it, all the time. I bet he was feeling it when Prince died.

  Summertime there would also be block parties; those were fun and pretty chill. Of course there’d be a few fights and maybe a little violence, but overall it was much more peaceful compared to the rec room parties, ’cause girls like Rachel and Robin, along with others, Dayna, Leslie, they were the good girls of the neighborhood, so shit never got too out of hand there. I wouldn’t necessarily call them upper-class girls, but they definitely had more class.

  These parties were the predecessor to the big, historic clubs we would hit later on. Before we would go to Union Square or the Latin Quarter with like a hundred Staten Island dudes. Before we’d see Salt-N-Pepa and fly-ass Spinderella. Before we’d see Scoob and Scrap, Big Daddy Kane’s dancers, and the Fort Greene Posse. Before Red Parrot was popping off. Before any of that went down, we were in the rec room, and hip-hop was our way of life.

  *

  With all that stunting in our fly gear, you still had to be careful. There were a lot of crews and gangs in one place, so if one troublemaker fucked with someone in a gang, the gang is gonna find him. You ain’t jumping one of my crew without a hundred dudes coming at you. This gang mentality started becoming very real at these rec parties and soon became the foundation of the Wu-Tang Clan—especially in our early days, you couldn’t fuck with one of us if you didn’t want to fuck with all of us.

  Ghostface was friends with C Allah, a notorious gangster motherfucker from West Brighton. C Allah was invited to the Hill, and at one of the rec parties, decided to cut my man Sam Bones’s face for no reason. He was too big for any of us to handle solo. And he must’ve thought we were too scared of him for cutting Bones, who was a hundred pounds soaking wet and just a kid.

  So we all waited for him at a transfer junction on the Island, watching for him. As soon as he came off the bus, somebody spotted him. “There go C Allah.”

  Even seeing the hundred dudes waiting to beat his ass, he showed no fear as he came up to us. He had the heart of two hundred motherfuckers. I don’t know what he was thinking, but there was no fear whatsoever on his face as he approached. He was 5 Percent, and I guess maybe he thought that since I was a Godbody, too, and a few others of the Wreck Posse were 5 Percent, that we wouldn’t do anything to him. He walked right up to us like we didn’t have the nerve to do anything.

  No one said another word. We waited for a minute as he reached the crew. He came over to me and gave me dap. He went over to Love God and gave him dap. “That shit wasn’t right, God. It wasn’t right,” C Allah said.

  One of my friends, Looney, started it all by punching C Allah in the face. And just like that, all of us rushed him. To his credit, he fought a few of us off, but he couldn’t fight a hundred of us. Once he realized how many of us were out for blood, he ran. He ran to the ferry and we chased his ass onto the boat. He chilled by the police for the whole ride, so we couldn’t do anything there. We just lurked nearby, salivating, waiting to exact our revenge.

  Police escorted him off the ferry to the subway. Once he went downstairs, the cops went back to the ferry and we caught him downstairs waiting for the 1 train to pull up. He hopped on, but we jumped right on after him. We climbed all over this motherfucker and took him down, just pounding on him, and there were so many of us he couldn’t do much. If we’d wanted to, we could have hurt C Allah really bad, but we just gave him a universal beatdown. That’s where you just use fists and maybe your feet on someone; no knives, no clubs, no guns. You might feel like you wanna die when we got done with you, but you aren’t gonna.

  He took his lumps and never came back to Park Hill again. He spent his whole life in jail except a couple years here and there, and he’s currently in on a thirty-year murder charge. By the time he comes home again, I’ll be an old man with grandchildren.

  Funny enough, seventeen years after his beatdown, I last saw him in the studio with Ghostface Killah when he was making Ironman. Ghost has always liked troublemakers because he’s a troublemaker himself. He’s just not happy unless he’s stirring things up, so he and C Allah fit together like two motherfuckin’ peas in a pod.

  But I left them crazy street dudes alone for the most part, mainly because they were too hardheaded about most things, and I couldn’t keep getting involved in that drama to help keep things cool.

  *

  My hood had its fun parts, but we felt stagnant when we’d just chill around the way for too long, so we’d go out and hit the clubs. We stayed up in Union Square back then. We were some serious party peoples growing up. We used to go to all these clubs in Manhattan. At those parties is how this became solidified as “hip-hop.” We used to get fresh and go to Red Parrot or Red Zone or Latin Quarter, Zanzibar or Sensations, Palladium, and especially Union Square. All the major clubs where anything was popping, Staten Island had to be there. Union Square was my spot—’cause it was so big, it was like the mecca of the music scene at the time.

  The world was ours. We were going all over the city to the hottest clubs, rocking the latest fashion and gold chains. It was like a drug in itself to be able to cop whatever clothes you wanted, roll a hundred deep to the club so that you’re practically invincible, and get attention from the ladies.

  We might beef among each other, project to project, but we still stuck together when we went to Manhattan. We’d all meet at South Ferry, then jump on the train and head straight to Union Square. It’d be Park Hill, Stapleton, West Brighton, New Brighton, everybody.

  Now, keep in mind we were still strapped, ’cause you had to be. We were wearing jewelry
, rope chains, grilles, designer clothes, brand-new shoes, the works, and no one was gonna take any of it from us. But the clubs didn’t want anyone bringing guns inside, so me and Raekwon would stash our nickel-plated .32 caliber pistols in rat holes we found in Union Square Park.

  We’d be in the clubs a hundred deep. We’d be so deep, other dudes would think we were from Brooklyn. It was a mix at times, ’cause you’d have a hundred Staten Island guys going to the Square, and when we got there we would merge with a hundred more from Brooklyn we knew. Now there was two hundred dudes rolling together.

  We’d be up in Union Square doing our thing while Doug E. Fresh would rock the house. Union Square was hip-hop all the way. They usually had a hip-hop artist who was hot at the time performing there, and then Kool DJ Red Alert was on his equipment, known as the wheels of steel. He and Chuck Chillout would be switching back and forth on the turntables.

  I remember seeing Eric B. & Rakim when they first came out. I also got a chance to see Big Daddy Kane, Biz Markie, and even DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince all rock at the Square when they first came out. Later on, we caught LL Cool J and Run-D. M.C. at Madison Square Garden; that concert in particular was off the fucking chain. I was a part of hip-hop history, even back then as a shorty rocking out at the clubs.

  You know who I didn’t get to see back then? KRS-One! The night he performed “The Bridge Is Over,” during his feud with MC Shan, that was the only legendary night that we didn’t make it into Union Square. We were on the line, waiting not so patiently, when a mob got into a rumble right behind us. A few people got stabbed up in the melee, so they shut the door down right as we got up there and said it was too packed to let anyone else in. Then someone called the cops, and we all got thrown against the wall and searched. Luckily we got out of the area with no arrests added to our rap sheets, but I was mad we missed that night. No one knew it was going to be legendary like how it was, but you just sort of felt it—we all knew we missed something big that night. Even so, Queensbridge gave birth to Mobb Deep and Nas, so they were still representing.

  I saw all the other greats, though. That’s why I can close my eyes and still see Union Square filled beyond capacity and everybody is on the dance floor in Dapper Dans. Peoples in their Polo or Louis Vuitton or their Coca-Cola rugbys. Spot-Bilt was popping, door knockers, slacks, Ballys, big chains, big rings, cameos, Benetton sweaters, gold frames, Gucci links—it was a beautiful era, and I’m grateful I was able to see all that up close.

  I can still see the girls from Queens looking flawless. Queens always had the baddest girls back then. This was during the whole Salt-N-Pepa (and the beautiful Spinderella) era, so that was the flavor, and Queens had it locked, at least to me. Their hair was impeccable, mad feminine, but still mad tough. Everybody I knew wanted a Queens broad.

  Other clubs had different vibes. For example, when we went to the Red Parrot, we had to dress up, put on the dress slacks and silk shirts. It was more elegant there, so you had to dress the part, too. Red Parrot was where the stars often went, too, so some nights we would see Keith Sweat, we’d see Mike Tyson or Wesley Snipes. Red Zone was where they filmed the movie Juice, with Tupac and Omar Epps. Now, I didn’t like Latin Quarter all that much, ’cause of the vibe—it was too hood, too Brooklyn.

  It would get funky in the club. We did a lot of chain snatching, too, but once in a while Staten Island would get caught out there. My man Jahking, who later bodied (killed) somebody, got his chain snatched at Union Square right in the crowd. The funny shit was the Brooklyn dude who took it realized it was fake and threw it right back at him. He caught a murder charge later on, and is jail right now.

  In the clubs was also where I learned how to dance. I’m a dancer, believe it or not. I used to dance when I was a kid. I was one of the best dancers on Staten Island. Not the best, but one of the best. I used to always get beat by the gays. My man Brucie was—I ain’t callin’ him gay, but Brucie was one of the fucking illest dancers on Staten Island, too. But I used to go to all the clubs, all these motherfuckers. And Brooklyn dudes be doin’ dances uptown, Harlem dudes be doin’ that. I learned all the dances. Whenever I’d bust a move on the Island, I’d hear, “You should be a fucking dancer” all the time.

  *

  As we got older, we started wandering farther outside our neighborhood, jumping from one project to another. Fort Greene, Castle Hill, Polo Grounds; we’d always be in the ’jects. Sometimes it was for a party at their community center, or you might go just to chill with some dudes you met.

  If you go to any of these projects, though, you best know someone who was local. That was the only way to keep from gettin’ robbed when you were in a different hood. Because your team wasn’t going to outfight or outgun a whole housing project. You needed those inside homeys. If you didn’t have that secure, then don’t even bother going to a different project. Unless, of course, you knew for a fact that the dudes there were pussies.

  When I started venturing out into different parts of the city, either by myself or with friends, I quickly learned NYC was pretty much rough all over. New York of yesteryear was not safe anywhere. You could be in midtown and get robbed. You could be on the Upper East Side and get assaulted. Muggings, assaults, rape, you name it.

  As for the subway? Man, the trains weren’t anywhere near safe. You had to be careful every time you got on. You couldn’t ride in the last car, or you were almost good as robbed. You had to sit in the first car with the conductor, or in the middle car. Not that they could really do much but call the cops if something jumped off, but it was better than a nonstop beatdown in one of the other train cars, with a grand finale of getting stripped of whatever your assailants deemed valuable. And even if you sat in the “safer” cars, you still couldn’t sit too close to the doors because someone would yap your purse, chain, hat, or whatever and hop off the train as the doors were closing, leaving you robbed and moving in the wrong direction—away from your assailant.

  Some kids would get robbed or beat up and become too afraid to step outside. That was weak. You had to take your lumps and come right back outside. You had to show them you weren’t soft, and that a little beatdown didn’t faze you at all. No one was going to keep me from going all over my projects, all over Staten Island, or all over any other part of the city. Especially with all the bad-ass girls New York has. How you gonna be hiding up in your house on a beautiful summer day with all them fine things out there?

  I remember we used to troop to Jones Beach a lot in the summer. That was my first little taste of walking up to girls and trying to bag numbers. I would come back with like ten phone numbers, all girls from Queens, Long Island, the Bronx, and other places I rarely got to go to. Eventually, when I got my first car, a Volvo 740, we’d stay in Jones Beach just chilling and trying to kick game to females all day.

  Even before my Volvo, we would always be on the hunt for fly shorties and parties and just good times. Sometimes the shit ran smooth and we’d get in and out of a party in a strange neighborhood without any incidents. Most of the time, though, there was going to be some drama.

  One time we were out in Coney Island at least twenty, thirty deep. I had the best of the best of the Wreck Posse with me that night: Psycho, Budda, Chaz, Real, Herb—we went out there with fighters. And since we were coming out to see one of our people, Shawnee, who’d just moved from Staten Island to Coney Island, we weren’t scared to come into their ’jects. Man, these dudes got mad as hell because we went out there fly as fuck. Sheepskins, gold teeth, Pumas, and all that fly shit.

  When we got up in the buildings, these dudes tried to formulate on us. We weren’t suckas by any means, plus we knew they were scheming on us because we did the same thing when UFOs were in our buildings. Now, if they had just taken the time to get to know us, it all would have been cool. But they got all twisted about our group coming in and possibly takin’ what they thought was theirs.

  I didn’t go out there empty-handed, mind you. I didn’t have a hammer on me
, but I was carrying two big-ass shanks. And when those motherfuckers started swarmin’, I pulled those two big motherfucking knives out of my coat. I was like, “Yo, all you dudes ain’t gonna just stomp on me like that. I’m gonna take at least two or three a you with me.”

  Suckas or not, we couldn’t win against the whole project. We were only there for a little while before we literally got chased out of Coney Island with what looked like a hundred dudes on our heels. It felt like The Warriors in reverse, because we had to get back home from Mermaid Boulevard with this mob of goons after us.

  Sometimes, though, the people we would go see in different hoods had so much pull we didn’t have to bring guns or knuckle up or anything. One time we were visiting my man Fresh up in Castle Hill. Him and his man Boo and the rest of them dudes were maniacs. So we up in the projects, and I had a lot of jewelry on, and not even one motherfucker tried us. Not one. It was because Fresh and Boo had them projects locked down. The other criminals in those projects wouldn’t even look at us wrong or look at us to scheme. Fresh and Boo had so much pull, just being with them was protection enough. The hierarchy was strictly enforced, so no one got out of line.

  I could go up in Lafayette Gardens in Bed-Stuy and be good, too, because of my man Jamal. Or I could be around St. James Place, and my uncle Matt and them would make sure no one fucked with me. The more land we conquered, the more people we met that could plug us into new things and more people.

  And knowing the right people could potentially save your life. Once, Raekwon and me went to downtown Brooklyn after we got our Summer Youth checks to buy back-to-school gear and new kicks.

  Summer Youth was a city program where they put kids from the neighborhood into jobs for six weeks during the summer. It was a good program because I didn’t have to rely on my mother for money for the summer.