RAW

by Lamont U-God Hawkins

  On Wu-Tang Forever I had something to prove, whether motherfuckers wanted to acknowledge it or not. I had a score to settle, a personal vendetta, so I didn’t care for acknowledgment. You could be crazy nice, and no one is gonna acknowledge you. You need marketing for that recognition, for the most part. I’m being a bit facetious, but it’s true.

  Making Forever was a great experience. Aside from me coming into my own, we had a steady parade of well-wishers coming through the mansion. Aaliyah, Heather Hunter, Ray J, Brandy, Kurupt, Daz, Snoop, Brett Ratner, Busta Rhymes—we had a good old fuckin’ time. It was inspiring to be around all of that on a daily basis. It was another one of those moments that I had to stop and just inhale to get the full effect of, like the last time I left prison. Almost every morning on the patio before going into the studio, I would remind myself to really be present and be in the moment so I can really appreciate everything. As a result, all kinds of shit was inspiring me.

  One day as I was sitting in the tub with some girls, I started reading the ingredients on the back of the body scrub they were using to soap me up. It got me thinking. There’s also a blaxploitation film called Black Shampoo. We were always watching blaxploitation films back then. So I mixed all those components together, and when I went into the studio later that night, I went in the booth with “Black Shampoo” in mind. I’d already been sitting with the beat for a good while, as per my usual ritual, so once I had the rhyme together and stepped in the booth, I told RZA to cue up that beat. Inspiration comes from everywhere when you open your mind.

  Like my verse for “Impossible,” for instance. That was inspired by Silk, my girl at the time. She was very rebellious, a revolutionary type. We were reading a lot of books. She would pass me things that she felt would add to my perspective on the world. The Art of War, the I Ching, Strategies of Leadership. She taught me about chi and spirituality, how to take my mind to a different place. She taught me the power to get into that creative zone. That brought a different style out in my writing, and it’s evident on “Impossible.” That verse was a reflection of that creative zone, and wanting more mature things for myself, like eating better and getting my shit all the way together. I didn’t know anything about that before. I was coming straight out of the staircase. Before that album, it was all just beer and weed, and the outcome was drunken word architecture.

  All kinds of things were opening my mind up. Like shrooms. I did mushrooms for the first time while we were recording Wu-Tang Forever. RZA and I were in the studio one night, and one of the disciples comes through with a big bag of shrooms. RZA had done them before, so he suggested we boil it and make a tea from it.

  Like I said, we were straight out them project staircases, so after boiling the shrooms in a pot, we strained ’em through a stocking cap to keep it hood. We drank the tea, lit some weed up, and waited for it to take effect.

  I don’t remember exactly when it hit. I just remember smoking a blunt while freestyling shirtless in my socks. We were freestyling for hours and hours and hours and hours. Looking back, I was still trying to get over my shyness of rapping, so I was just flowing.

  At one point, I remember RZA trying to snap on me, I think, and coming up with the hook for “Domestic Violence.”

  You ain’t shit.

  Yo momma ain’t shit.

  Yo daddy ain’t shit.

  Yo money ain’t shit …

  We just kept rhyming. That was the best time for us, I think. We were all still close then, before each of us started developing our own individual visions about what we thought our careers—and Wu-Tang as a whole—should be.

  We were able to work through it all on Wu-Tang Forever because we still weren’t that far removed from each other. We had all grown up, but not apart yet.

  *

  I couldn’t wait to showcase what I’d been honing for the past few months. The other guys couldn’t believe I came with it like that. That’s what I mean about learning about yourself. Dudes told me “no” fifteen times in a row. And on the sixteenth time you shut motherfuckers up because your bars are finally up to par. Their eyes said it all when I stepped out the booth.

  That was the best feeling ever. Now the same dudes who had laughed me out of the booth months ago were talking about me having the hardest verses on Forever. I just never gave up, though. It all has to do with your resolve. It’s bigger than talent. It’s bigger than ego.

  I remember Scotty Wotty, the illest rapper in our hood back in the day, who we all were influenced by when we were growing up, and who was sort of my mentor, came around for a few sessions. This is why I knew I was a tough motherfucker for coming back all those times after I got laughed at and shot down and kicked out of the booth.

  He came in to record and possibly get on the album with us, but he got kicked off the mic because he wasn’t fitting right on the song. But instead of reworking his rhyme to better suit the track RZA made, he copped an attitude with RZA. I tried to talk to him about it, but his ego was bruised. “RZA ain’t respecting me, he ain’t respecting the art and my seniority …”

  “Yo, dog, you have to come back, though, until you get it right,” I told him. “You have to try it a few times to find what works.”

  But he never came back. His ego couldn’t take it. Mentally, he wasn’t strong enough to put aside the doubt and pride and just get in the booth and do what RZA said. If he had come back again, RZA would have found something for him to get on eventually. He would’ve been on right now with us, doing better for himself. Scotty has no idea where that one little verse might’ve taken him. It wasn’t all his fault, though. It’s hard to let someone coach you when it comes to your art, especially when you’ve been doing it your way for so long; it can be difficult to follow someone else’s lead.

  Scotty Wotty is the last of the street rhymers. After him (I put him on “Heads Up” on Keynote Speaker), I didn’t deal with any more street dudes. They’re just too rough around the edges. They don’t have common sense, they just ignorant. They don’t really know about the business and how things run. You have to constantly remind them. They blow up, they get mad, they get frustrated real easy off some stupid shit that doesn’t even matter. You can’t be uncoachable if you want to work with real producers, not just beat makers.

  The main thing I learned while going through my hardships was that you’re always supposed to keep working. Some dudes experience some hardship and get back in the zone. Others fall off, and let the tribulations and troubles take them off their square. You have to work through that shit until you find that gem again. You have to find yourself, or find the new you. That’s how it goes. That’s the pain of an artist especially—always trying to find a new self. How do you stay new?

  When you create, you have to be in that mode. It’s weird how inspiration comes to motherfuckers. You have to be in your zone. It could be a talking-shit zone, it could be a deep-concentration zone, or it could be a bouncy, happy zone. There’s several types of modes you could be in. It’s about just quieting all the extra shit in your head and listening to that creative voice—that’s what that zone is.

  And when you’re a professional musician, there’s so many other factors that have to be calculated that take away from the creativity—mainly the money and the politics of the music industry. I had to see past all of that though to get fully back in my mode.

  I realized something else when I was writing and working on my craft that helped me as well. Though I drew inspiration from Rakim and other great MCs, I wasn’t trying to be in the Top Five of any list. That’s a dangerous place to be, ’cause once you fall from there, it’s a long, long way down.

  That’s why I’m just happy being in the arena and competing. I don’t need to rush for hundreds of yards every game. I’m good just getting a few first downs, rushing for some yards, putting my little stats on the board consistently and boom, I’m good.

  17.

  TOUR LIFE

  Now that I was getting ill in the booth and the album
was dropping, we had to hit the road again. With the release of Wu-Tang Forever in ’97, we were practically a household name. This round of promotions and touring was gonna be a much bigger deal. Before, when we were doing shows promoting the first album, the venues were up close and personal—which sometime made things crazier. Things were haphazard, security was shaky, and promoters were shady.

  Regardless of the unprofessionalism that went on in those early days when we were learning the industry, the tours were still a lot of fun. Even when shit got thick, we had each other to hold it down. Sometimes we fought to protect ourselves against a mob at a venue with inadequate security. Sometimes we were the aggressors. We stomped a few dudes out on some rah-rah shit, for no real reason other than angst. That was just the era. Rolling deep with a crew in fatigues, skullies, and hoodies was just the aesthetic, but we had a head start on everybody. Why do you think people always make metaphors and similes about being deep like the Wu?

  We had so many other soldiers and cousins and producers and offshoots of the Clan and MCs in training on the road with us at times that we’d wind up sixty deep on a regular day, omnipresent forties and blunts getting passed around, etc. It was like we brought the hood with us everywhere we went. Rolling with a mob might get you sweated by the punk-ass cops, but it could save your life, too. These were the days when hip-hop clubs were still grimy. A shootout with a few fights sprinkled throughout the night was almost a given.

  You had to have some dudes that were experienced in throwdowns and were gonna hold it down if shit got hairy. Every man in the Clan was already just that on his own, so together? We were definitely a problem when we wanted to be. Dudes were always testing back then, out of boredom maybe, or looking for a rep. Maybe some of ’em had that crab-in-the-barrel mentality, just didn’t like seeing other brothers getting successful. Whatever the reasoning, we were gonna get tested at some point.

  If I saw a problem comin’ at us, I didn’t let it fester and always addressed it right away. As I got older, though, I learned how everything was a test. When you’re young, the answer is violence, or at least being abrasive—either you pop off or you knuckle up. Over time, you learn how to handle those tests differently. Then maybe, as a last resort, if you absolutely have to wash somebody up in the streets, you do it. Took my whole life to get to that level of maturity. We were wildin’ for years before I outgrew that nonsense.

  Sometimes dudes would try to rush the back door so they wouldn’t have to pay and try to fuck some people up in the process. Some dude and his crew tried to come through the back door at one show. I knocked him down with a two-piece (two punches), and Masta Killa stomped his face. The rest of the Clan was right behind us, so his boys backed down real quick.

  It’s awesome when you have your mob behind you; it’s like having a weapon you can’t get frisked for. But sometimes that Clan mentality gets out of hand, too. Like one night after a show in Europe, we thought someone had stolen Ghostface’s jacket. At the time, there was a dude on the bus with us. I don’t know if he was a fan or something, but he was the only outside dude that wasn’t down with us. We were conducting our own little investigation, and we were like, “Yo, dawg.” We brought him up into a fucking hotel room and started beating his motherfucking ass, trying to find out if he’d stolen the fucking jacket. I mean, I’m jumping off the bed onto his head, smashing him with chairs, all this shit. We were tearing this motherfucker up. We whupped his ass so fucking bad, I thought we was gonna kill this guy.

  Then it turns out we did all that fucking sucker shit for nothing. Popa Wu had taken Ghost’s jacket and hidden it downstairs behind a goddamn vending machine. So we just let the poor, fucked-up guy go. Live and learn, I guess. It was unfortunate, but the violence we inflicted was born from a place of loyalty. That’s not an excuse, it’s just the way things went down.

  And sometimes shit goes down and you don’t even know what the fuck’s goin’ on. We got shot at in Chicago once. That was a crazy night. Some dudes shot at us over there. We were just coming out of the venue when somebody started shooting. Fucking bullets flyin’, so we hit the floor and shit. To this day, I don’t even know what the fuck it was about. It was just more drama.

  Another time, we were touring in Florida. Me and Meth are sitting in a room, smoking, drinking, playing video games, whatever. We were invited to go to this little gathering Luke Skyywalker from 2 Live Crew was having. But Me and Meth were like, “Man, we ain’t gonna do that shit.” We’re just keeping to ourselves.

  Then one of my peoples, General Wah, calls up. “Yo, son, you gotta get down here. There’s fucking mad bitches everywhere. This dude Luke is off the chain.”

  At first, we were like, “Ah, fuck this, man.” But he called so many times, we finally said, “Fuck it. Let’s go.”

  So me and Meth skate off to the motherfucking party with our crew. We get to the spot, and there’s a long corridor. This dude named Born was also with us at the time. Raekwon and his cousin Rico were there. We had these dudes who had just came out of prison, you know? Part of the entourage. All these motherfucking gangstas was already there.

  We get there, Wah’s already coming out of the party like, “Yo, son. You ain’t gonna believe. Your man’s in there bugging the fuck out.”

  We were like, “Who you talking about?” This dude Born was Busta Rhymes’s man. He just came home from doing eight or nine years. He was having a fucking good time. But I didn’t know the extent of the good time he was having yet.

  We walk up in the door. And General Wah was like, “Yo.” He was on his way out.

  I said, “Hey, man, how you gonna tell us to come to the spot and you leavin’ when we come here, motherfucker? Fuck is wrong with you?”

  “Yo, son, you gotta go inside,” he said.

  We get inside. Mad commotion goin’ on. Women are doing their little strip-dancing shit. As we got closer, the shit started opening up. In the middle of this fucking parted sea of people, this dude Born’s in there eating this girl out right in front of everybody.

  Luke is looking at us like, “You! You with this dude? Is he with you?” I don’t know this motherfucker from a hole in the ground. I just met him that night, so I didn’t really know him all that well. He’s a 5 Percenter and had just come home after doing eight years, that was about all I knew. But we felt his pain, so we accepted him into our crew that night.

  Now, one of our entourage was Reef, a straight-up gangsta who’d been with me since Sacramento, just a motherfuckin’ magnet for trouble who’d spent more than half his life behind bars. And this dude was still prone to violence. Every time I was around him, I had to wear my vest, ’cause we’d either end up in fistfights or shootouts. The really crazy thing is that nothing would ever happen to him directly—other dudes would get fucked up, but somehow he’d always manage to skate through.

  He walked past me. “Yo, we gonna fuck your man up,” he whispers in my ear.

  Now, everybody in the hood would say, “That’s your man.” That’s project slang. Like, if I introduce you to someone and I say, “Yo, that’s my man over there. Domingo’s my man.” If I didn’t know someone, maybe I’d just met them once before, I’d just say, “Yo, that’s your man.” To clarify that he wasn’t one of my peoples. They’d also say, “Your man Domingo.” Saying “your man” indicates that you’re connected with the person they’re referring to. And if I’m saying that, I gotta really know you down deep. Saying someone is one of “my peoples” isn’t done casually.

  Reef came past me and said, “Yo, your man Born’s up in there. Look what he doing.” He was having a grand old time. I turn to my left, I see Kid from Kid ’n Play there. I’m like, “What the fuck?” He in the back room over there. I turn around the other way and I see Father MC. I’m like, “What the fuck? This whole shit is crazy right now.” But this dude is still going down on this girl. I was like, “What the fuck is going on?”

  We were just sittin’ there in astonishment. Reef and all the rest of thes
e gangstas were all staring at this dude like he’s a piece of meat they’re about to tear apart. Because he’s embarrassing the entire crew. We’re sitting there in the establishment, and Reef and all the rest of the gangstas are like, “Oh, shit. He’s embarrassing us all right now in front of Luke.” ’Cause he came in with us. Now Luke’s already thinking we little gangsta motherfuckers, so this is out of pocket for us.

  All of a sudden, it gets weirder. Motherfuckers start cheering him on, “Go! Go! Go! Go!” He was tearing it up, eating her out faster, faster, and faster, and she was coming everywhere. Squirting all in his face. He got to the point where he pulled his fucking drawers down. He’s about to fuck her right in front of all these dudes.

  Anyway, underneath his pants, he’s wearing a G-string with palm trees on it. We done lost our goddamn minds. We couldn’t believe this shit. I came from the streets, I ain’t never seen this shit before. I mean, I came from the can; we had dudes in their boxers and briefs and everything runnin’ around there, but I ain’t never seen some dude wearing a palm tree G-string before in my life, especially this up close and personal.

  Reef’s ready now; all swoll up, getting hyped. He was getting ready to throw down. He walks past me again, sayin’, “I’m gonna fuck this dude up.”

  I was like, “Aw, shit!” We were gettin’ ready to leave. This guy’s whole collar was wet. He didn’t fuck her, but the shit definitely got out of hand.

  We finally pulled him off the girl, and we leave the party. He gets in the other car with all the fucking gangsta criminals. Now there’s levels of criminals. Me, I’m an ex-con, I did my little three years, don’t get it twisted. But these guys were hard-core criminal criminals—they’ve done a dime, twelve, thirteen years. Serious dudes.

  Me and Meth and our dudes get in the other car, the light car. We were jetting around in little minivans with the sliding doors. We’re on the highway moving; Meth and me are in the first van, with the other dudes following us. We must be doing eighty going back to the hotel. On the way, I turn around to see the other van swerving all over the road. Then I see the sliding door open, and shit is rumbling in the back. I said, “Yo, they fuckin’ that dude up in the back of the van.”