When I wasn’t hustlin’, most of my attention was on caring for Meth. The first time I went away, I left him with about five grand, and he could hit up my peoples anytime he wanted. Even when I was incarcerated, my peoples were still hitting him up with money just to keep him from dealing. I told them, “Yo, make sure he doesn’t have to be in the streets.”
When I came back home, he was still struggling to stay afloat with all of that shit, but he was still getting money from my peoples. All he had to do was go to my peoples’ house like, “Yo, I need some bread and nicotine.” They hit him up with the bread, hit him with this, hit him with that. That’s how it was.
I said, “You know what? Fuck it. My man who’s focusing on this, I’m gonna push him further.” Meth was more focused than me, so I made sure his life was comfortable while I was hittin’ it hard on the streets. That was basically my responsibility. You might not think it was, but it was my responsibility to keep him out of trouble and keep him on a good path.
I’m proud of that, even though it meant I didn’t get a chance to really get my feet wet. I said, “I’m up here taking care of my man so he can succeed.” And all that stuff going down was why I couldn’t focus on my own music at that time.
*
During those years that I was bouncing in and out of jail, RZA sat me down and said he wanted to have a talk with me. That talk probably saved my life.
“Uey, what are you doing, man? You keep getting locked up like this, you keep fuckin’ around, and they gonna hit you with some real time.”
“I gotta get my money. I still gotta be in these streets scrambling.”
“Well, we getting ready to really walk this Wu shit. You gotta leave that drug dealing alone. You have to decide, God. Are you going to keep fucking around and getting locked up and doing bids, or are you going to come do this fly shit over here with us? The streets ain’t goin’ nowhere. Just give me nine months of your life, God. In nine months, if it doesn’t work out, you can always go back to the street and do whatever the fuck you want. The street’s always gonna be there. This opportunity you have right now, though, if you take it for granted, you’re gonna lose out on it.”
What he said made perfect sense. The block and the fiends in front of 160 weren’t going anywhere. Selling drugs would always be an option if I really needed the money. But this rap shit was so much more promising. Of course, I’d rather be traveling the globe with my brothers, meeting the finest women, copping cars and clothes, smoking and drinking the best of the best, all the while getting paid and living out my dreams.
“You know what? Why not? Why the fuck not?” I had about forty or fifty grand left over in my stash. “I’m gonna live off this right here for a couple of months, and I’m not gonna call the connect no more.” I threw all my burner phones and beepers away.
God pulled me away from certain things and situations to save me, and this was one of them. My time in jail did make me much more appreciative of things, too. In hindsight, going to prison probably saved my life, because the building we were hustling in front of got shot up that first summer while I was locked up. I would’ve been out on the block when that shit happened. Two good dudes got killed right in front of the building. I would’ve been there, too, and who knows if I’d have made it out alive.
That was all my prison time really got me; like I said earlier, if I could have avoided it, I would have in a heartbeat, because it didn’t do shit for me. You don’t need a rap sheet to rap. Prison time has nothing to do with making music—in fact, it wound up hurting my career.
So when the blessing came, I didn’t take it for granted. I was down to work.
13.
WHEN YOU COME HOME
By 1993, we were all ready to go all out to make the Wu-Tang happen for real. All the Clan members had that hustler’s mentality, because that’s where we came from. Oli “Power” Grant, the executive producer of every Wu-Tang album and CEO of Wu Wear, hustled. John “Mook” Gibbons, our road manager, hustled. Even RZA hustled in Ohio at a certain point. Some of us might have been deeper in the game than others, but we were all going through rough times, scrapping and scraping for a meal. We were out there with grumbling bellies and worn-out sneakers, our clothes smelling like mildew.
All that negative shit we were going hard with in the streets? We put that same energy into something positive. Times were changing on the streets; the drug game was over, at least the heyday was. There wasn’t much out there for street dudes like me and my clan. Luckily the seeds had been planted years and years earlier, and now they started coming to fruition.
That’s another reason why it was easy for the Wu-Tang members to stick together at first: We had a gang mentality, or at least we did in those early days. We knew each other and all had a common cause, so it was easy for us to bond over that.
We had to work harder than ever, though. No free rides, no free money. I had to stop making five thousand dollars a day hustling and do something for far less. We sacrificed fast cash and the street life for the security of a career that we weren’t even sure was gonna pay off, but we went for it anyway. We believed in what we were doing, so it was pretty easy to stop calling the connect for the re-up.
Besides, I was still making a little bit of bread during this time. We had shows here and there and got paid per diems from the record label, forty to sixty dollars a day. The label also took care of our recording expenses. So I just ate off my lil’ stacks I’d saved, the per diem, and the little bit of show money we were getting here and there. We didn’t have to do nothing but get on the road and go. So why not go somewhere farther than I’ve ever been and help make a name for me and my team?
We were young as hell: twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four years old. Our first road experience wasn’t even on a tour bus. Mook would come get us in his car, an old, two-door Mitsubishi Scorpion, and we’d all pile in and drive for hundreds of miles to do college promos. We’d go from college to college. Sometimes it was just me, Deck, Meth, and Raekwon. The Four Horsemen. We would drive two hours to Philadelphia. We’d drive three hours this way. We’d do little showcases that led to more shows and more promo. It was all leading up to that album release. Eventually all that initial work paid off in more ways than just record sales.
Truth be told, it was awesome. I didn’t have to worry about being hassled by the police anymore. I didn’t have to worry about my product or stickup kids or junkies trying to hold me up anymore. I didn’t have to go around strapped with a vest on anymore. I didn’t have to constantly check my rearview mirror to see if the police were following us. Later on, we had the van, with a driver supplied by the record company to take us anywhere we wanted to go. I just got to sit in the back, smoke a little weed, drink a little, and chill with my brothers. I didn’t have to watch my back all the time anymore, and while I would never trade that learning experience for nothing, touring was great because the pressure of the streets was finally off me.
In 1993, I made the choice to leave all that negative shit behind me. I got caught out there doing some shit, yeah. I went to jail, did my fucking time, came home, and changed my fucking life. I had come to a realization: Yo, you know what, man? I’m going back to the old UG man, who was just doing for himself, staying to himself, staying out of trouble, but this time I know how to live. I know how to enjoy myself. I know what matters.
I made that transition. The Wu-Tang Clan all made that transition. We’re all just some street-hustlin’ dudes who put in that work, and we made it.
*
When Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) came out, it took us out of the hood and into mainstream America. It felt like it all happened overnight, but, of course, we’d already been grinding for years. A lot of folks also don’t realize we dropped a double-A-sided single (“Protect Ya Neck”/“After the Laughter Comes Tears”) independently on vinyl via Wu-Tang Records, and that we hit the road and developed our own fan base long before we signed to Loud/RCA.
We’d always had
an indie mentality from the beginning. Since we didn’t pay for play on the radio, we hit the streets, tore clubs up, and blazed our own path like rock stars. Our stage show was what put us on the map—we were a spectacle. No one had ever seen anything like it before, a big crew of characters hitting the stage, spitting so lyrical with so much energy, bringing the ruckus raw and uncut, leaving crowds soaked and always wanting more! A Wu-Tang concert was a mind-blowing experience; it wasn’t till much later that radio started showing us love because we were undeniable, and soon thereafter labels started signing solo one-off deals with various crew members.
And all the while, we constantly stayed on the road. It seemed like if the Clan as a whole wasn’t touring, one of the members would drop something; guys were rotating on and off; two members would come home, the next guy would take off; it was nonstop. Money was moving so fast back then that when mistakes were made they weren’t so hard to swallow, but unfortunately deals were put in motion without proper oversight. CASH RULED EVERYTHING AROUND ME! In our later years, this would bite us in the ass and cause conflict among my brothers.
Along the way, we definitely had some characters around us. Like Mook, RZA’s cousin and our first road manager. He was around prior to our first album and was instrumental early on in our careers. The dude quit his city job as an MTA bus driver to tour with us, and he deserves all credit. He was with us every step of the way in those early years, every show, every mile. He didn’t hinder, he didn’t fall, he didn’t say no. When it was time to hit the road, he would drive us for hours to those early gigs. He was also instrumental in our early promotion efforts and getting the word out about the Wu.
Mook was a one hell of a character. He didn’t hesitate to get tough with promoters, he’d only take cash (it was C.R.E.A.M. 24/7 with this dude) at our shows, and he carried all the money in an old-school Crown Royal bag along with a .22 Special. If things got hairy, he would get us up and out of the situation. He didn’t have a problem beating people up, either.
Quite a stand-up guy, and we loved him … until we found out he sometimes charged a little more than the standard 10 percent management fee to promoters. He’d have us perform at 9 P.M. on one side of town, then take us to the other side of the same town for another show three hours later. Mook didn’t play by anyone’s rules but his own—if he could make some money, he was all in. He’d split the door with the promoters, then break us off what he deemed was reasonable at the time, depending on the situation. It’s not that he was a crook, just that he was a definite hustler, and at that stage of the game we appreciated having someone like that with us on the road. Mook still pops up here and there, and has worked for RZA off and on over the years.
Anyway, we were putting that work in, with everybody now on the road for several months at a time, traveling all over the country, staying in cheap hotels, getting paid little bits of money. Those hotels in the early days were shitty. I’m talking two or three rooms for nine motherfuckers. Some of us slept on the floor, some of us slept in the bed. But even that was better than hustlin’ on the streets, and I wouldn’t trade any of that experience for nothing.
But the early days were just crazy. There were times we got shot at on the road. Sometimes we’d go through all this drama just to make a hundred dollars for all of us. I went from making several thousand dollars a day to having to settle for a hundred dollars split nine ways.
Sometimes we wouldn’t even make that much. We got chased out of certain towns. One situation happened when we were in Houston, Texas, where we almost got our asses handed to us. It was a Scarface (from the Geto Boys) town; he was real popular down there. The crowd wasn’t really feeling us too much that night. We’d faced that type of shit before, though, so we just tried to thug through it.
We got onstage and immediately started getting booed and shit. Then we got into a confrontation with some dude who was shouting at us to get off the stage and bring out Scarface. Then he splashed RZA in the face with some water or something. RZA went “what the fuck” and splashed him back. That’s when bottles started flying. One crashed by my feet. Next bottle hit RZA, but didn’t break. RZA threw that shit back in the general direction it came from.
Two seconds later, the whole crowd bombarded us with bottles. Glass was crashing and smashing all around us. We had to run to the van. When we got there, motherfuckers started rushing it. I guess a lot of the dudes that had come to the show were members of a gang, and they surrounded our van. Shots were fired into the air and all that crazy shit. We damn near ran dudes over gettin’ out of there. It wasn’t the first time a show went south, and it damn sure wouldn’t be the last time.
Us getting run out of town was only half of the story. The promoter only gave us one hundred dollars. It turned out it was a fake hundred-dollar bill. We nearly got the shit beat out of us, we got chased out of town, and we didn’t even make a dollar. Remember, we had to split this hundred dollars between nine motherfuckers now. In the beginning, we couldn’t get no money to split among each other. We had to wing all of that.
Chicago also didn’t show us a lotta love in the early days. When we first came to town, motherfuckers were popping caps outside the venue at us. Then, when we went on, we were told to get off the stage. They were like, “Fuck y’all.”
Funny thing, though—we didn’t have those kinds of problems on the East Coast. That sort of shit went down primarily in the Midwest. To be fair, we hadn’t broken those markets yet, but we had to step into them to see where our footing was at. Back in ’93, rap was still fairly underground in the Midwest, so we wound up doing a lot of college radio, select nightclubs, record stores, anywhere that would have us.
And often there would be local artists that would make it difficult to break in—not directly, but because the audience was used to a different kind of sound. When we toured the South, we had to do “southern” remixes of our songs. It’s much different now, with everything being global, but at the time, every state seemed like a completely different situation.
That was all fine, though, because we saw the bigger picture, just like when we used to hustle back on the street. We knew this was just like giving out some free samples to get the fiends to try it. And for every hundred places we performed at, maybe only twenty liked us, but we’d take it and move on to the next stop. Every day we’d link up and talk about what steps we were taking that day to carry out the master plan. And our trailblazing pushed down the walls for more New York and East Coast rap—Biggie Smalls, Jay-Z, all of them—to spread across the country.
*
RZA was smart when he was assembling the team in the early days. He needed responsible hustlers that he knew could do the job. That’s just my thing. That’s why I have a tattoo of sergeant’s stripes on my arm, ’cause if you give me a job to do, I’m gonna do it to the best of my ability. And keeping nine guys moving in one direction took a bit of organization. But we all had the same goal: get out of the streets. RZA knew that, and that’s why I give him credit for picking not only the best rappers on Staten Island, but the hardest workers from there to make up the Clan.
For example, in the beginning, when we had to do promotional tours, I was one of only five of the members riding out every day. At this time, other Clan members were working on their solo albums.RZA was working on his Gravediggaz project, Meth was putting Tical together, and GZA was working on Liquid Swords. They were also getting Dirty’s record (Return to the 36 Chambers: The Dirty Version) together too, so the rest of us were on the road.
It was Rae, Ghost, Deck, Meth, and me. We called ourselves the Five Horsemen, and we walked that Wu shit every single day. We went from town to town, doing our thing. Just all that promo shit, a lot of shaking hands and kissing babies. We did hundreds of radio interviews. That’s why I’m not the most famous in the group, but I’m still recognizable. My name may not be like Rae, Ghost, or Meth, but people see me and they know. Because I’ve put in that fucking work.
Besides solidifying our fan base
worldwide, another plus side of touring so heavy in our early days was that we became known as a touring band. A lot dudes in the nineties didn’t want to tour, because it’s hard work. They just wanted to chill while their songs were on heavy rotation on the radio and do the glamorous things. Not us. We’d be twelve deep in a van sometimes, a bunch of funky motherfuckers stinking like armpits, but we laid that groundwork, and now we can always tour the world. That all started because we didn’t take the blessing for granted after going through the rough shit on the streets and in jail. None of us did. We were willing to put in the work. And we’re still touring to this day, still on the road getting paid.
That first go-round, though, we were still learning about life on the road and performing. We had already put out “Protect Ya Neck,” and I had come home in time to do a lil’ verse and be in the video. We toured on that for a while, then came back to NYC and put out “Da Mystery of Chessboxin’.” Those two records sold a combined 150,000 copies, giving us our first wind. Then, after RZA, Power, and Divine secured our deal with Loud Records/RCA, we filmed the videos for “C.R.E.A.M.,” “Da Mystery of Chessboxin’,” and “Wu-Tang Clan Ain’t Nuthing ta Fuck Wit.” Those three were in the clip ready to be let off while we ran around the globe promoting.
RZA hadn’t put those videos out yet, though, because “Method Man” was still doing its thing. That song was a lot of fans’ first real introduction to the Wu-Tang Clan because “Protect Ya Neck” was so underground, even though it was selling well. Video Music Box played it. That was about it. We had to stay on the road to really keep the movement flowing. Meth’s song helped usher in new fans while we were on the road. Loud also dropped a hundred thousand dollars of marketing money on us. They pushed our record hard.
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