RAW

by Lamont U-God Hawkins

  As I ran, I thought about the dread who gave me the candy and said I was protected from any evil in front of my building. Did his black magic prevent me from getting murdered? I’ll never know for sure.

  *

  People might think Staten Island is the boonies, but it’s far from it. The amount of traffic we had coming through those buildings back in the eighties was insane. We’d be in the hallways in 160 of course, but also in 141, which was like Grand Central station with the foot traffic. You could make some serious motherfucking money in an hour, I kid you not.

  One forty-one was crazy, because you came into the building though the front, like you would 160. It had long corridors down both sides, at least a hundred yards long. Not sure if that was intended when they designed it, but we used that to our advantage to scope the cops coming. To make it even better, the exits had slam locks and couldn’t be opened from the outside.

  When the cops would blitz 141—which was pretty often, considering most of this drug war shit meant getting low-level drug dealers doing hand-to-hand and direct sales. Since we locked the back doors, they always had to come through that front door all the way at the far end of that corridor. All of them would come running in all funneled together and shit, tripping over each other’s shoes. The only other option was to come in through a door on the side of the building because it didn’t have a lock on it. But because of that, you could still see them coming if you were inside the building, and you had plenty of time to get away.

  I’ll never forget this one fucking time. Me and one of my project homies, we were up early. It was about 7 A.M., and we wanted to catch the morning rush. That was what we used to call it when the functioning addicts would cop a morning fix before they went to work. We had to lock in and be on point for them.

  So you’d go to the store first, and get your bagels or turkey with Swiss or whatever breakfast. You eat that outside, and then you go into the hallway and you post up with your package. We had three different stash houses we’d run to in the building. Once we’re done, you not gonna find us. I probably had about eight thousand dollars’ worth of shit on me. All in a big-ass Ziploc bag like the reckless teenager I was, with a heart as big as New York City.

  We were playing the west side of the building, watching the fiends coming in, make the corner, and then we serve them at the end of that hallway. No one ever left out the fucking back. We made them go right back out the way they came in, so no cops could gain access.

  It was a busy morning as usual, so I didn’t have a chance to keep track of my bread while I was making sales. Me and my homey were in the hallway just getting it, money’s just rolling in hand over fist. Now keep in mind that he’s doing his thing and I’m doing mine—we weren’t partners or business associates or anything like that, we were just two dudes slinging in the same building. But there was so much traffic coming through, we didn’t even have to cut each other’s throats for sales.

  After a bit of a slowdown, I decide to count my money. I got a bag stuffed full of bills. I’m counting the dough, straightening it all out so it’s neat and there’s less chance you’ll drop some money or give someone the wrong change. But every so often, you have to keep looking up to make sure the cops aren’t blitzing the building. You have to keep looking up. You have to. That’s a part of the hustle—you can’t drop your guard for shit. Not for one second.

  Counting. Looking up. Counting. Looking up. Counting. Looking up. I finished counting my money. I looked up. Coast is still clear. I decide to take inventory of the Ziploc with my remaining work. I looked at what’s left, and I was down to my last little bit. I must have had like two vials left out of eight thousand dollars’ worth of shit. When I held it up to estimate how much was left, one of ’em fell to the floor. Just that one vial fell to my feet. I glance down the corridor again before leaning over to scoop it up. Nobody was coming.

  Don’t you know, soon as I dropped my eyes to pick the shit up, I looked back up again and police were flying at us through the gates at high velocity. Running full fucking blast down the corridor toward me and my homey. I got this big fucking bag, I got about eight grand in my hand.

  Everything went in slow motion. I could see their eyes looking at the Ziploc of crack in my hand. They see it clear as day from the look on their faces. There was no stashing on them this time. We had to run. The Chariots of Fire theme song went off in my head, and we were out up the stairs.

  I slid off, I took out the remaining two vials, swallowed them shits in my mouth as I’m running up the stairs, the police on my tail. I come around the corner of the staircase, and BAM!—the eight grand flies out of my hand all over the goddamn stairs. The police, soon as they saw the bills fly everywhere, those motherfuckers stopped dead in their tracks.

  So, I’m going up the stairs. I dropped the eight Gs on the floor. Boom. They thought I was gonna leave it and keep going. Oh, hell, no!

  I turned back around and started scooping up all my money off the floor. The two police officers didn’t do anything—they just sat there and watched me collect eight fucking grand from the floor. To this day, I still don’t know why they didn’t bust a move on me right then and there, but they didn’t. I just took the shit and put it in my pockets and walked upstairs to my other fucking spot. They didn’t do shit. That’s when I got on the radar. But they still really never bothered me, even after that.

  We get to the house we used sometimes to escape and slipped in quietly. After a few moments, we heard mad walkie-talkies from the cops still running around. The crackhead who lived in the apartment came out from the back. When she saw us and heard the cops in the hallway, she knew the deal and just shut her face. We gave her a few cracks, and she got high while we waited for a couple hours.

  We left the crackhead’s apartment and ventured out. Cops were gone. The fiend threw our stash out the window to us, and we went right back to pumping for the never-ending stream of fiends in front of 141.

  Although we made mad stacks at 141, eventually it got too hot for us, and we had to move our operation to 160.

  Deck’s mom was an angel; she used to hold us down like that at 160, too. There was many a time I’d be tearing ass up the stairs with the cops a few flights behind me. I ran to Deck’s crib, knowing he wasn’t home. I’d knock real quick and walk in.

  “Hi, Miss Hunter. Is Jason home?”

  “No, he’s out right now. I actually thought he was with you.”

  “Maybe we missed each other. Listen, the police are chasing me, but I didn’t do anything, though. Can I stay here for a minute?”

  “Stay as long as you’d like.”

  She saved my life a few times that way. In a regular community, harboring a suspect running from the law might seem like the wrong thing to do, but not in most projects. Most of our neighbors were okay with letting us hide out for a while. You had certain doors that you knew was open in the building. In every building, I would have somebody’s apartment to run to. Each building I went past in the projects, I said, “Okay. Mrs. So-and-so is in there. Mrs. So-and-so is in the building.” Why? Because that’s where I grew up at. They knew I’d hit them off with some cash, or they’d known me since I was a kid, and they just loved me.

  Most of them were used to the drama anyway, because there was always something happening on the block. There’s just too many different personalities all crammed into one restricted living space for things to ever be chill for very long. You just had to be on point for whatever the day might bring. Cops might blitz. Stickup kids might try to jack you. A jonesin’ fiend might flip out. You just never knew.

  There was some funny shit that would go down in the midst of all that carnage. Like this one time, this fiend approached me and Meth while we were selling. He didn’t have any cash, but he wanted two dimes of crillz (crack) in exchange for a sheet of acid with a picture of a skull and crossbones. Meth figured it was a good trade, so he did it. I said, “Man, you are fuckin’ crazy!”

  He took a few tabs an
d offered me one. I declined the offer, saying, “I ain’t trying nothing with a poison sign on it!” and continued serving fiends. Pretty soon Meth starts feeling the acid, he starts tripping and crawls into some bushes.

  Meanwhile, the stash was getting low, so I decided to head uptown to get some more. I went all the way uptown to Harlem, which takes about three hours round trip. I saw the connect, got what I needed, and came all the way back to Staten Island. When I got back, Meth was still in the bushes. A three-hour mission, and upon my return he was still in the bushes. I was like, “What the fuck? This dude’s out of his goddamn mind.”

  I went over to him and asked, “You all right?”

  He looked up at me. “Nah … I ain’t all right …” Whatever effect that drug had on him, it had him stuck in the bushes.

  I grabbed him to pull him out of there, but then he took off like a shot down the block. I had to literally chase this motherfucker down, laughing the whole time. We got around the corner, got some water into him, tried to flush that shit out of his system. I told him, “Yo, man, don’t ever take that shit while you’re hustlin’!”

  Just another day in the projects.

  9.

  ENTER THE WU-TANG

  Through the peak years of hustling and partying and getting fresh, we never lost focus. Most people don’t realize that the Wu-Tang Clan was eight years in the making. We were hungry to be creating, focusing on our art, while other Escobar-emulating motherfuckers were running ten keys.

  My friends all felt the same way I did. RZA, Raekwon, Ghost, Meth, we all had one thing in common: we wanted to be stars. We wanted to be fucking rappers, to get our music out, make money and be rich and famous, and we wanted out of the fucking ghetto immediately.

  Didn’t know how we were gonna do it. Didn’t know how it was gonna happen, but for some reason, we just always knew it was gonna happen. I just always knew, and Meth knew, and Rae knew. We were all certain, we just knew. That’s why we were able to do what we had to do, ’cause we were all going in the same direction toward the same goal.

  Besides, by this time I was nineteen and tired of the game. It didn’t help that dudes were falling like flies in the drug game, either. I was trying to get off the streets entirely. I was still in school, but looking for something more than even what college had to offer as a way off the block. Music turned out to be the vessel that took me and my cohorts away from the ghetto violence we grew up around.

  Ever since the Baby Crash Crew, we were always rhyming and making up little songs together. That didn’t change when we started hustling in front of the buildings of Park Hill.

  At the time, I wasn’t really rhyming seriously yet, but I was the beatbox guy in the hallway for other dudes to get their own shit off. It was nothing for me to beatbox for people, because that got me my rhythm, which gave me certain things, like beat coordination as well as improved physical coordination, that other motherfuckers didn’t have.

  I’d beatbox for Cappadonna and Raekwon while they caught wreck. When RZA came along, we started taking our beats and rhymes more seriously. I already knew him as the DJ from the Stapleton block party. By 1989, he’d moved out of his mother’s place and got his own apartment, which was actually his family’s old apartment that he sublet from his mother (in the city, once you get an apartment, you never let it go). He’d also moved away from DJing and started making his own beats. He was getting serious about the rap game, and so were we.

  The nights I got tired of ducking the cops and dealing with junkies and stashing guns around where we were posted up and keeping an eye out for any potential drama that might pop up—those were the nights I’d go to RZA’s place. Even though it was in Stapleton, another project just like ours, when we were at his crib, we didn’t have to worry about all the shit going on back in Park Hill. We could concentrate on what really mattered: our music.

  I’d walk into his building and take the elevator up to his floor. You could hear the beats and smell the weed before you even stepped into the hallway. The door was never locked at RZA’s joint. Stapleton apartments were like that. First off, there’s not much to steal, but also, who’s gonna try anything up in RZA’s pad with an endless cycle of hood-ass, slanging-ass, gun-toting individuals coming in and out all day?

  Now, I was still hustlin’, so I’d walk in wearing all fly shit, new sneakers. I was strapped back then, so I’d take out my gun and put it on the glass table near where Ghost would usually be sitting. RZA, on the other hand, wasn’t hustlin’ like that, so when I came on looking fresh, he’d be smelling like a goddamn onion. We used to call him “RZA Radish” back then, ’cause he never wore deodorant.

  We’d bring our forties and weed and whatever else and just write and rap and listen to beats and build for hours and hours. RZA’s brew back then was Brass Monkey, a premixed cocktail of dark rum, vodka, and orange juice. Ghostface and RZA were living together at the time, so they’d be eating ramen noodles and watching kung fu flicks. For a while, those two were like me and Meth, on some Dynamic Duo shit. RZA and Ghost would just be in that crib all day long, eatin’ Oodles of Noodles, watching kung fu movies, and making beats on a little four-track recorder.

  I’d walk in and the beats would be blasting. Dudes would bring the mic cord out onto the terrace and be rhyming. Sounds fancy, but it’s far from it. Like I said, the Stapleton ’jects looked like jail facilities. The terraces looked like the tiers in prison. But we’d have the mike out there, and weed be blowin’, and the Brass Monkey be flowin’, and everybody was just getting high and throwing darts (rapping). It was a getaway from the drama, a way to transcend our surroundings and the day-to-day grind.

  RZA’s crib was our first studio, and that four-track was our first real equipment. That was our lab. When you have a whole bunch of possessions you don’t do anything with, you don’t have anything. When you got that one piece of machinery that you really master, though, that enhances your art. A lot of motherfuckers don’t know how or don’t have the discipline to just stay right there, in that chamber, until you’ve mastered it. They move on too soon, and lose that potential mastery and end up losing themselves altogether. That’s the struggle of being an artist. You can’t keep coming out with the same shit, but you can’t lose yourself, either.

  With RZA’s four-track, we kept making bangers. At the end of the night we’d leave his place with a tape of what we’d done. We’d go back to Park Hill, listen to our songs, and critique our shit more. We’d compare ourselves to other people and their verses and just sharpen one another’s steel. Then we’d write even more rhymes to improve our lyrics, some of us working harder on it than others. Meth was really working on it harder than other dudes.

  One night, while working on one of our first original Wreck Posse cuts, “I Get Down for My Crown,” Meth wrote a verse from which a portion would later be used by Ghost on one of his biggest hits, “Cherchez La Ghost.”

  Once Meth laid this verse down, I went into my rhyme books and put down my verse, and Deck came behind us and laid down the last verse. RZA even sampled the flushing toilet and added the sound effect to the joint as well. It was the first song that we laid down and felt good about as a group.

  Back then we would dub tapes and pass them off to other brothers in the hood. That’s how you used to do it back in the day, you’d make a bunch of tapes and pass ’em around the project, and it would spread through word of mouth.

  Next thing you know, everybody in our fucking neighborhood had the shit. Then that person would take it to another project, and someone there would take the shit and listen to it and they’d dub it and take it to another project. Next thing you know, everyone in the ’jects was jamming “I Get Down for My Crown.”

  That song right there was an epiphany. We noticed when we did our first couple of songs together, they came out kinda hot. Meth, Deck, and me did a couple of other songs during the early days of fucking around with RZA, like “Let Me Put My Two Cents In.” We were EPMD babies and Public Enemy
babies, Big Daddy Kane babies and Rakim babies. We just incorporated all that into our early little sounds. We would record ’em on tapes and listen to them and critique ourselves.

  Once we got on those beats, when I first heard my voice over the music on tape, it seemed like the dream was even closer to being real, like it was something tangible that we could touch. ’Cause we weren’t just rhyming and beatboxing in the project hallways anymore, we were actually laying down vocals now. And even though we were still wildin’ in the streets, that dream of music saved us from getting too far gone.

  Once we got a taste of hood success, RZA kept recording more joints. Deck put down a solo joint called “This Ain’t Your Average Flow.” That joint was crazy good, and it became a hood anthem.

  When we started going to RZA’s on the regular, we started seeing who the MCs really were. Here comes Rae getting on a song. Then Genius is up there. And here’s Ol’ Dirty, who RZA said was his cousin. ODB and GZA were both RZA’s family, and they’d come through our hood fairly often. In fact, GZA lived in Park Hill for a little while with his family before they dipped to Brooklyn. They’d come see RZA in Stapleton, then they’d all come up to the Hill to smoke and drink and rhyme. Every so often we’d take a break from hustling to join them. RZA’s place was a sanctuary.

  It was there that a whole team of dudes, some I knew well, some I’d only met once or twice, came together to form something that would never be duplicated in rap history. A crew with similar upbringings and perspectives, but radically different ways of conveying their individual viewpoints. That was the genesis of the Wu-Tang Clan.

  *

  Around this time, some of us were already attracting attention from New York record labels. Warner Bros. signed Genius under their Cold Chillin’ label and released Words from the Genius in 1991. RZA also did a joint, as Prince Rakeem, with Warners under their Tommy Boy imprint and released the Ooh I Love You Rakeem EP in ’91.