#2250 - Raekwon
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The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast.

Fucking mob, man.

It's a crazy band, man. Like, no one is, if you think about it, there's been a lot of hip-hop duos. There's been a lot of producers and MCs. There's been a lot of people that get together in, like, small groups. But there's only one Wu-Tang. There's only one group of nine assassins. I tell niggas that all the time, like,

It's kind of crazy. You ain't going to get another one of these. It's crazy that it worked. Yeah. Because it's so hard to keep all those alphas together. It really is crazy. To make it work, the most illest shit, some shit that I never would have thought would ever exist, it was able to exist because we tried it, but it wasn't normal. It wasn't normal. It wasn't normal. You tried it, but it almost seems like it was just instinct. Yeah.

It's not like a business strategy that anybody would ever come up with. Nine dudes. No. And nine of the realest dudes. Like, the rawest, realest dudes. Yeah. And it worked. Yeah, and it worked. And it worked. I tell people all the time, it was like when RZA, you know, he came with this whole philosophy of wanting to do it. It was like hitting the lotto for him. Like, he didn't know what to expect. It was more a reputation thing for us. It was like...

yo, I want to do this. And, you know, he came to block and he talked to some real dudes that was really had other shit planned in their life, you know, but hip hop was always like that backpack that we wore every day. But everybody had different plans. So he really literally came in and started to pick motherfuckers that he felt had potential. So it's like the mob. It's like, you know, you know, Lucky Luciano, prime example.

You know, he knew that motherfuckers had potential, right? He knew dudes had potential in any way. He's from a different part. He's from a different part. He's from a different part. But yo, what we could do right here is we could make money. So put your fucking feelings down or whatever the case may be. And let's talk about some money.

And that right there, kind of like, yo, you start shaking hands across the table. Yo, I know you didn't really fuck with me like that, yo. I never had anything against you like that, though. But it was just something that he felt like at the end of the day, let me try this shit. Well, Riz is a genius. And it's amazing that he was able to coordinate that. Because that's often the case, right, with other killers. Like when

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for new customers only. When a dude's a bad motherfucker, they always assume that everybody else doesn't like them. They always assume that everybody else is the enemy or competition. So to have nine of you guys together like that as one group, you know,

I told you when I sent you a message, I said that we play Protect Your Neck. I know. Whenever we have a police escort, that's what's the most hilarious thing. So we do arena shows. We hire a police escort. So it's like fucking sirens and shit. Protect your neck. Oh my God.

It's like the perfect song to play when you're getting a police escort. Oh, my God. I know. I know. Trust me. These young kids that I have at the club, I was explaining Wu-Tang Clan to them the other night. I go, do you have to understand how wild this band was? I go, when Old Dirty Bastard was in Rikers, they went to Rikers and performed in Rikers. You remember that? Yes. How the fuck you remember?

I told everybody. I was like, do you know how crazy that is? You're talking about the biggest rap band in the fucking world, and they're performing in a penitentiary to one of the members who's one of the biggest fucking hip-hop stars in the world who's in jail, and then you guys go into the crowd. Mm-hmm.

God bless his soul, first and foremost. Oh, my God. Old Dirty Bastard was a classic. Yo, Joe is the funniest shit because when we came in and when we seen him, he was eating a cheeseburger laughing and shit. He reminds you he never was dirty. I don't even think. I never seen him eat.

like that or whatever the case may be, but we came in, he was eating a cheeseburger and shit, laughing. So we was dying laughing. And they kept, you know, the people up in here, they kept telling us like, yo, y'all can't go into the crowd with everybody. You know, we not going to hold no responsibility if something happened. So, you know, be like, all right, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, he ain't going in.

Once we got on that stage, it was like, fuck the stage. We out there touching everybody. Wow. It was love, man. It was a lot of love. Man, it had to be, what? I say, what? 90, what? 90, 98, 97? Wow. 98? No internet. Probably like, yeah, none of that shit. None of that. Is there even a recording of that anywhere? Nah. God. I don't think so. I don't think so. You know how wild that video would be?

I never knew that people seen that. I don't know how the fuck you knew that shit. Oh, I heard about it. Yeah, I heard about it. But they loved that stuff. It was in the news back then that you guys performed in Rikers. Yeah, yeah. The 90s for hip-hop, it was like people need—you have to understand. For young people, you grew up with hip-hop. You're only 20 years old. I get it. But you have to understand from my perspective, in 1980, there was no hip-hop.

In 1992, that was all anybody gave a fuck about. That is crazy. For a new art form. To emerge, right? Right. I mean, there was like Sugar Hill Gang. There was some hip hop, but it wasn't the thing until the 90s. And 90s hip hop. It got big. It got big. Yeah.

It got so big. I remember it's so crazy you said that because I tell people all the time, like, disco to me was hip-hop before hip-hop was. You know, disco, R&B, everything was a mixture. It was a mixture. So really when hip-hop came, like you said, it came like maybe I'm going to say 80s.

It had to be 84 because I was in junior high school. Yeah, yeah. We was young boys, right? So I would definitely say you heard something and it was like, oh, shit. Motherfuckers is rhyming. You know, this shit sound cool, though. You know what I mean? It sound cool. But really, it was a way to bring people together.

You know, that was going through different shit in their life. You know what I mean? Yeah. And you know what? It was earlier than that because in 84, I was in high school. So it had to be 80. 80. Because I was in high school. I was a freshman in high school in 81. So I heard Sugar Hill Gang when I lived in Jamaica Plain, which was in 1980. Yeah. So that was the first time I'd ever heard any kind of hip hop. Yeah. Yeah. So like, yeah, like we said, yeah, 80. Yeah, I was 10 years old. So...

Me, probably really, really gravitating to it. I probably was like 12, like you said.

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Rap is delight. Yeah. Rap is delight. Hip hop. That was the shit. Oh, my God. It was everywhere. Now, look, I had cousins. I had wild cousins and shit. They was wild. They was selling drugs. They was smoking weed and sniffing coke and doing whatever they was doing. And they used to live two floors above me.

And I used to sneak up there and shit and, you know, just be in their business, be in their world. And they would be playing music. They had the record player. You know, you see Coke on the table and weed and everything. And my cousins, they was cool. They was like, yo, come in, man. We don't give a fuck. Like, just don't tell your mother that you was around and shit. You know what I mean? Nah, nah, I ain't going to say nothing. I ain't going to say nothing. And I would just be watching. And, you know, I would see weed on the table.

album covers and you know what I mean just motherfuckers running back and forth in the room and you know they in the shit but they always was playing music and a lot of the music was R&B you know disco

You know, and then next thing you know, I heard this fucking record, Sugar Hill Gang. And I'm like, the groove was dope. I'm like, holy shit. Like, this is what I want to be. You know what I mean? I'm looking at the whole vibe. I'm like, this is who I am right here, you know? It's so crazy how it emerged. I mean, it emerged. Yeah. Nobody expected that, bro. Well, it was a totally new thing. Yeah. And there was a lot of resistance. I mean, for people that don't know, those little warning labels...

on your, when you used to have CDs, that all came from Al Gore's wife. Get the fuck out of here. Al Gore's wife, Tipper Gore, she was a Democrat. She wanted to censor rap music.

Because this is the first time anybody heard like iced tea, you know like that six in the morning everybody's like what the fuck is this? You know and that kind of explicit lyrics they wanted to put a stop to it And that's why they put and these dumbasses they didn't even understand. It's so way more albums. Yeah, because that's what kids are looking for They don't swear Once I got my label on is like I want it

Exactly. Once the floodgates got open and kids got turned on to like real hardcore hip hop, you couldn't sell the... The regular shit. The regular shit. Get out of here with that. Yeah. I mean, there's a few guys who got through with regular shit, but it just didn't last. Nah, it definitely didn't last. But like you said, though, everybody wanted the raw shit. And you got to remember at that time, it was a tough time, man. Too much shit was going on. I mean, it was to the point where it's like, yo...

In our neighborhood, we had crazy people. If they catch you at night, they'll kill you. They'd be dressed up like a fucking drag or whatever, all this makeup on. I remember one time going to the incinerator room. My mom made me go to take out the garbage and shit. I forgot to take it out. She came home later that day, and I was laying down, and she fucking smacked me in the head with a broom. Like, yo, didn't I tell you to take out the fucking garbage?

So now I'm going out to the incinerator room, you know, walking. It's on the same floor. And I remember when I cut the corner, I seen a motherfucker sticking his head out. And he had his hair all wild. His shit was like green and red and all this. And he had lipstick on all crazy. And his eyes was all fucking bugged out looking. And he looked at me. And I got the garbage pail with me. And it's like, yo, once I seen him, I just...

I just dropped the shit and ran. Mom! Mom! You know what I mean? Back then, you yell your mother name and shit. You think that that was something cool back then. You know, she's your hero at that time. Came back, the nigga was gone. But I think if he would have caught me in that incinerator door when it was closed, he was going to probably try to run in there and probably try to fucking kill me or something. And that shit was going on back then because the drugs...

The drugs was crazy back then. Right, that's the big shift is crack. Yeah, crack. That's also in the 80s. Yeah, but see, before crack, you had that dope, that dope, that dope. So motherfuckers was mixing dope and coke together and getting high and shooting it. Yeah, everything. You know what I mean? It was a serious time back then, man. But, you know, that's how far to me...

And music went back, you know, listening to Ladies Night. You know what I mean? I had people on my store that had a candy store right on the same floor, but it wasn't a candy store. They had a bunch of penny candy just to make kids feel cool, but really they were selling Coke in the back. Coke and dope, though. So, you know, all this was going on in the community, man. Wow. It was a serious time. Scary times back then.

But if it's not for those scary times, you don't get the kind of band that Wu-Tang was. That has to emerge from an authentic experience. Absolutely. It has to. And that's part of the appeal of it is that everybody kind of knew that. It was part of the appeal. There's never been like...

a genre of music like that that's so connected to like the grind and poverty and crime and ghettos like the whole genre of music to be authentic you had to come from that you couldn't be like some rich kid from the suburbs that was talking about some shit you never actually experienced nobody wants to hear it which is kind of crazy right that's true I mean you know back then you know hip hop was really an expression for the ghetto

you know, the way that out, you know, being that we was living in fucked up situations and nobody had shit, nobody had no fucking jobs like that. It was like, yo, we needed something to keep us cool, keep us in a vibe mode. You know, back then, gangs was still relevant. You know, um,

we never looked at ourselves as a gang. We might have looked at ourselves as a tribe that, yo, when you from a neighborhood and you stick to your neighborhood, you know what I mean? And that's why even back then it was like a lot of times, you know, you would beef with people that wasn't from your neighborhood just because you wasn't from here. It's like, yo, what the fuck you doing over here? You don't live over here. You know, then it creates this animosity thing. And I remember for us, you know, being...

Being in an area where it was like you go up the block, up the block, stayed up the block, down the block, stayed down the block. So for me, I was in the middle. So, you know, I leaned more towards up the block.

But then we would go down the block just to start trouble. Then they would come up the block and they would start trouble. Next thing you know, before you know it, we all fucking with each other. So that was our way of getting to know each other, is to test each other's heart. Whatever may happen was happening back then, though. But the music, believe it or not, the music was keeping the peace going.

Now, just, you know, the music was keeping the peace because they would do block parties, right? They would do block parties and, you know, everybody knew all these different DJs was coming from different places and going to play some music and shit. So we knew every time they did that, we knew something was going to happen at the end of the night. It was just mandatory. It was just because people from all over, different neighborhoods would come out and

And everything would be nice. And next thing you know, you see a motherfucker riding down the street all crazy, you know, trying to hit motherfuckers and swinging the golf club out the fucking window and shit. And, you know, somebody's mother might have gotten knocked out. You know what I mean? You know, but the music is still playing. You know, so, yeah, that's the type of shit that, to me, that made it fun but made it spooky.

But it still was fun because it was something to remember. Well, it's fun because you survived. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Definitely. The survival. Yeah. You know, but we were young, so we didn't care about whether we lived or died at that time. We didn't give a fuck. It was like whatever's going to happen is going to happen. That's wild. But the music, the music is what kept things in order for us, you know, because we always felt like that was a vessel for

to being calm. You know, when you come from somewhere that's fucked up, Joe, and there's nothing there, you can't get a job because of your community, your zip code don't allow you to be like, yo, he's hired. No, it's too infested over there. So you kind of become relaxed with that mentality of saying, well, fuck it. I'm going to live off the land. I'm going to sell weed. I'm going to do whatever I think that is going to make me

survive, you know? So everything was just survival. You know, when music always kept us calm and you always want to listen to what's next being played. Like, I grew up on R&B music, like disco and, you know, all that fun shit, roller skating,

You know, I knew motherfuckers in the neighborhood that was roller skating. You know, we would get off of Staten Island sometimes and go to these different parks and jams in the city. That was fun, too, though. That was fun times for us. So was it RZA that tried? Was it initially all nine guys? Like, how did it get formed? Well, number one, it was RZA.

his cousin JZA, and his other cousin, Old Dirty Bastard, that they were super close. Now, Old Dirty Bastard and JZA, they were from Brooklyn. RZA was from Staten Island. You know, we all Brooklyn babies, too, majority of us in the clan. We all, you know, resided in Staten Island, but majority of us grew up in Brooklyn. But anyway, it was those three that were close as shit. So RZA, back then, RZA...

he had knowledge of self, which was being involved with the Nation of Islam.

and also GZA and O'Dirty. They were a part of the nation at that time. So they would go to a lot of rallies. This is a place where everybody go when they build. They talking about mathematics and all of this, but it was GZA and O'Dirty who instilled the hip hop into RZA. So RZA was a DJ back then, but he knew how to rhyme too. And he knew how to rhyme because of his cousins.

So they kind of had this gang called, not a gang, but they had this thing called the All In Together Now Crew, which was them three. And they would run around and they would battle, you know, different guys from different cities and move around. So, you know, some of us kind of knew what they were about. You know, a lot of us, you know, found out later who they were. But when JZA and O'Dirty came to Staten Island, they came and they hang out with their cousin.

So, you know, we started to see them a little bit more and know that, you know, yo, I heard about your rhymes and, you know, and Dirty, he was just a crazy motherfucker back then. He was crazy. But, yeah, they had their own little thing going on. And then, you know, next thing you know, Jizzy caught a record deal. He caught a record deal.

Which was rare back then. Like if you had to if you fucking caught a record deal, that mean that you had to have relationships. You had to know where to go. You had to have some some type of connects. So that's what gravitated RZA into wanting to do it because he seen that his cousin was able to, you know, crack the code on making a record.

So when that happened, it was almost like it magnetized RZA to be like, yo, I got to make a record now too. You know, when the next thing you know, they had their movement going on. So us from the outside looking, it was like, oh shit, yo, we know them. We know they super passionate about, you know, being in the game and doing whatever they're going to do. But we wasn't thinking that far. We just loved the music in general.

Wow. So RZA is essentially the mastermind to put all the pieces together and to bring all you killers under one roof. Absolutely. Absolutely. Amazing how he saw that. Because again, that's not something that existed.

It's like Eric B and Rakim. You know, there was a few people. EPMD. There was a few people. You know your shit, dude. You know your shit. Gangstar. There was a few people that were together, but it wasn't like you guys. Nah, nah, because that was... It was kind of scary. It was like, God damn, when you guys had a show. I mean, I heard stories that it was just like you guys would show up like 300 people. Yeah, that was some neighborhood shit. But yeah, like you said, that was so rare to see a group that come out like that. And it was really a mistake.

It wasn't really designed to be that way, but when RZA had a record situation and they tried to make him be something that he wasn't, and then, you know... Always the case. You know what I mean? He was like, yo, fuck that. I don't even care about the shit at this level no more. I want to create this now, and I'm bringing in all my guys, and, you know, he just put that number together. So, believe it or not, I was one of the guys that he called first

Because we used to hang out. Like, I tell people all the time, like, yo, I might have been RZA's first, you know, big fan. So I kind of seen something in him already. I seen something. I'm like, yo, this guy really, you know, him and his cousins. And I'm like, yo, these motherfuckers really got talent. You know, not only the ability to rhyme, but they was clever. Like, I'm talking about clever rhymes. Right, right, right. You know, and they was mixing it with the knowledge and, you know, smart rhymes. Not these fucking...

Humpty Dumpty lines. Like, I'm talking about serious rhymes. Right. I'm like, damn, you know what I mean? Like, yo, so, you know, this is something that I felt like I would want to go chill with them just to be in the mix and be a fly on the wall. Wasn't even thinking about being no fucking rapper. I didn't give a fuck. I just love the music, but I'm watching these motherfuckers, yo. I'm like,

something about these motherfuckers that I love. You know, and next thing you know, when RZA, you know, RZA went out there and he came back to the community, he was like, yo, I caught a record deal. So, you know, I was there. I'm like, let me see this shit, looking at this shit. See what the fuck is... Oh, yeah, I'm looking down here, like you said, the, what's the name? Fine print? Yeah, the fine print and shit. I'm like, yo, this motherfucking man, the record, holy shit, yo.

Wow, Staten Island, that's what's up. We up. You know, but his situation ain't work out the way he wanted it to. And that's when he came back and he started to be like, yo, chef, this is what I'm trying to do. Well, the dangerous thing for young artists in every industry is when you have potential and you're young, you sign a fucking contract and you don't know what's going on. And then you get locked into these people. And then a lot of times you're getting fucked.

And you don't even know you're getting fucked. It's a mandatory. Mandatory. Mandatory, yeah. You're getting fucked, which is how they make their money. They make money by fucking young artists who don't know any better. And by the time someone gets to like a prince's level, he's like, oh, you owe me? I'm a fucking squiggly line. Suck my dick. He performs as a symbol. I mean, that's why he performed as a symbol. Because they owned him. Yeah. It's crazy. You take like the most talented people in the world and they get owned by people who provide no value.

yeah especially today yeah today it's even crazier right because there is no record sales anymore it's all gone sold but it's all gone so for a young artist it's so important that they stay independent as long as they can just like you're hanging off a bridge

Yeah, that's what he could do. Hang on and keep grinding. Don't sell it. Don't sign. If you sign, you're going to be fighting that shit 10 years from now. Yeah. You're going to be in court 10 years from now. Yeah, you're right. And somebody's going to be getting not just 50%, but like some fucking insane, like Bill Burr was explaining this about his first comedy CD. Yeah.

that he got a 60-40 deal. He's like, oh, great, 60-40. But it's not really 60-40 because he has to pay for all the distribution, all the printing of the CDs. Everything came out of his money. Let me ask you a question. Let me ask you a question. Put yourself in an artist situation, right? You have talent, right? You have talent. Here it is. I got everything you want. Yeah.

you're going to have to make some sacrifices. For sure. Because you know that, yeah, you may feel like, yo, I got talent, but I don't have the resources. Right. So those resources come and tell you, yo, look, I'll give you a shot. I'm going to give you a shot, but either you take this shot...

Or you stay in the hood. What are you going to do? You're going to take the shot. You're going to take the shot. You're going to take the shot. And I agree with everybody who takes that shot. I'm just letting them know. Right. I'm just letting them know. You're getting fucked. You're getting fucked. But see, it's the sacrifice that I'm trying to explain to you that every artist takes. They take that sacrifice because at the end of the day, you have to start from somewhere. Right. So even when labels are being them...

In my mind, I'm saying, yo, I get a chance to have a job, Joe. Niggas ain't never had no fucking job in they life. And now we get a chance to do something that you could maybe think that you could change the world with and love.

It's like you're going to go for it. So for us back then, being kids, we didn't give a fuck. We didn't care about signing. Yo, I'll sign because what the fuck I got to lose? I done been through everything. I done been over here. I done been kicked out of everywhere. Fuck it. I just want to be heard. So a lot of times that be the protocol is just to be heard. To be heard. To be able to say, yo, something happened. I don't give a fuck.

A lot of artists got robbed. A lot. A lot of artists, and especially our OGs that did it before us. You know what I mean? Sugar Hill Gangs, all these different guys. They all have been manipulated to do what they had to do, but...

It almost gave them power, too, because they became famous. They became big. They became legendary. There's an argument for that, but I think it should be more fair. Oh, listen. I'm with you. That's all it is. Of course you are. I'm with you on that. Of course you are. But we just talking about the sacrifice. What you got to do. You have to do it. Sacrifice is everything. If you're a young kid and that's step one and now you're on the runway, okay, you got to take it. You got to take it. You got to take it. But it just should be more fair.

Oh, I agree. It shouldn't lock people in for life. And I'm sure later on things worked out. And, you know, now that you proved yourself. Once they become undeniable. It's like I tell a motherfucker this. I'm like, yo, imagine you were a hustler, right? And you run into the Kinect. And the Kinect say, yo, you talking like you know how to move shit.

I'm going to give you 50 pounds of marijuana back then. You know what I mean? Now, you may feel like at the end of the day you can handle it, but a motherfucker tell you, Joe, I'm giving you these fucking 50 pounds. I need my money back today at this time.

You can either take the 50 because you so fucking confident or take one and say, yeah, I'd rather take my time. You know what I mean? I don't want to be in debt with you. What are you going to do? You got to take the 50. Oh, you. Oh, yeah. He wants to fucking get his head fucking chopped up. You got to take the 50. I don't know. You got to know people and you got to bring everybody in and you got to share the money. You got to know people. You got to share the money. You got to share the money.

You got to know people. If you ain't competent in knowing what the fuck you need to know, I advise you don't take them. You shouldn't be having that conversation if you don't know anybody. But if you know some people and you're generous, that's the thing. You got to make it worth these people's while.

You got to say, listen, we're all going to get something out of this. And see, now look, that philosophy that you said is what we took on. Yes. We took that on. We said, you know what? At the end of the day, we'll take this little bit of money, but we're going to go. We're going to be willing to sell ourselves to get to this level because we know what we believe in. See, it all starts from what you believe. Yes. If you don't have the belief in yourself to make it happen, you're fucked.

It's a rising tides lifts all boats thing, too. Oh, absolutely. And with Wu-Tang Clan, that was for sure a big thing because anybody that was associated with Wu-Tang Clan was automatically respected. Automatically, people wanted to listen. Automatically. Yeah. Automatically. So that just lifts everybody. But it's hard for people to see that. Everybody thinks about themselves, especially when you're struggling. Right.

When you're struggling, then you're scared. And scared money doesn't make money. That's what it is. Everybody gets paranoid. And they think, no, that's when you've got to bond together. That's when you have to find real people and stick together. You said the key word. You've got to sell that 50. You've got to sell that 50. Talk to Carlos.

I said, go down to the bodega. Let's make a deal, man. We got to make some deals. We got 10 hours. I guess that's what RZA did is that he danced with the devil for the right reason. And, you know, we took some scars. We got hit. It was a different world back then, too, in terms of the industry. Because today, all you need is a social media account, Spotify, SoundCloud. You can blow up. You can blow up today. Back then, you needed the radio.

You needed, you know, you could sell mixtapes, but it's hard. You had to be some undeniable talent. Yeah. You know, like we always played the video of Biggie when he was 17 on the street. Remember that video? Yeah, when he was in his neighborhood. Yeah. That's...

Undeniable talent. Like, that's the kind of talent, like, that dude's going to, if he stays alive, you can't stop that train. Absolutely. That train's running everything over. You know what I mean? There was guys like that back then. But, man, to get out there and get your name out there, you had to dance. You had to work, man. You had to dance with that devil. You had to work. Mm-hmm.

And that business was so dirty back then. It still is, but real dirty back then in the record-selling days. Yeah, of course, of course. I mean, but that's what made us learn is that we had to go through those growing pains. We had to get jerked to learn how to say, yo, that was a lesson. So everything is a lesson at the end of the day. It's like if you're willing to sacrifice yourself and your time to learn something...

I would always say go for it. Yes. You know, go for it. Definitely, go for it. It's so much better than not going for it. Yeah, because then you're going to be sitting in the same situation and you're going to realize at the end of the day, damn, I should have took that opportunity. Some people are scared of opportunities when they come. And it's like if a person offers you an opportunity, nine times out of ten it may not work for you the way you want it to work, but it may be an opportunity to help you.

You know, it's all about you trying to help yourself and get out there. It's like watching Scarface, and the nigga told him, he said, yo, give you five grand. And if you fuck this up, Chico, Scarface looked at him and said, man, the fuck is you talking about? We built for this shit, man. You know, when he lost his man in the mix, but he was able to prove to himself that,

I can do it. Yeah. That's how I look at rap. It's like, yo, I don't give a fuck. Yeah, we'll take this...

We'll take this little bit of money, but we're going to prove to y'all later on that we know what the fuck we doing. And for young people listening to this, every chance you take where you fail, that's a lesson learned. That's a lesson, baby. And you just keep taking chances. That's right. Keep going. Pick yourself back up. Figure out where you fucked up and learn from that. Now you're better. That's right. Now you have more experience coming into this next thing.

Just keep going. Just keep going. Just keep going, especially as artists. It's just like so many artists, they don't hit until they do. And then when they do, it's like, oh, and then people want to go back in their past stuff. Like, oh, this guy had fucking three albums before this. Think about it. Think about all our favorite artists out there. You know, Eminem, you know, Eminem been trying to fucking get on, you know, you know,

Rock him, Slick Rick. So many. They went through a lot to get on. You know what I mean? Biz Markie. Nobody wanted to fuck with Biz at first, but he finally figured the code out and was like, yo, this is what I'm going to do. He started rocking shows in different communities, and next thing you know, people start hearing about him. You're like, oh shit, yo, this guy is dope.

But it's that sacrifice, man. I tell people all the time. Got to sacrifice. Yeah, it's time put in. Time put in, energy, effort, determination. And you got to have some talent. Yeah, you got to have some talent. Talent is just...

God just gives you something or doesn't. Some people just got it. Some people, it's also like artistic families like Nas. He grew up in this intellectual artistic family and that's why his rhymes are so good. Yeah, his pops, man. His pops is a musician. Yeah. Like Rewind?

Yeah. That's like one of the greatest songs of any genre anybody's ever written. It's a genius song. So crazy. I was listening to that shit yesterday. Genius song. The bullet goes back in the gun. Yeah.

Genius song. The whole song backwards. They fuck with lyrics hard. Oh, I love Nas, especially for lyrics. His lyrics are incredible. They were so good. They were so good. And unusual, like that. Like, deciding, I mean, the first guy to make a rap backwards and make it work perfectly. You know? I mean, it's just...

Hey, did you ever listen to any of the shit where the Brand New Heavies got together with a bunch of rappers? The Brand New Heavies. I know the name, but I'm trying to think of the music. The Brand New Heavies are like a jazz band. They did a collaboration with Gangstar, Cool G Rap. Oh, yeah, yeah, of course. A bunch of guys back there. Some of my favorite shit of all time. Yeah, they was more musical, though. Yeah. They was more musical, yeah. Have you ever heard Cool G Rap's Death Threat?

Oh, my God. Jamie, play that. Play that. Find that. We've got to put on the headphones for this. This is in my, along with a bunch of Wu-Tang. This is in my Spotify playlist. This is Cool G rapping like, I want to say 92. Yeah, 92. Listen to this. I'm a flake, but I'm no fake nigga. Make them the Witcher burners. My Mac is so simple. Permanent dimples. Ease it up on a fast flow.

I never heard this shit before. How good is this? One of my favorites right there. Turnin' his chicks with small dicks. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Nice. So good. Nice. So good. So this was on the Brand New Heavies album. Yes. The Brand New Heavies did one with Gangstar. They did a bunch of different artists. Nice. What year was this? 92. Phenomenal. Yeah, so this is the beginning. Yeah. I was on a road trip. I was doing a gig in Connecticut with a buddy of mine who's a comedian. Right. And he turned me on to this. Like, you got to listen to this shit. And I was like, oh my God. And then I had a CD and I lost it.

And I couldn't find it forever. And then someone brought it up like a few years back, like six or seven years back. And I was like, you got to be able to find it. And that's the beautiful thing about today with like YouTube and, you know, some of these platforms, people upload shit that you totally forgot about. Like Tim Dogg. People forgot about Tim. Like Fuck Compton. Remember that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was a wildcat, but he was real. He was good, though. He was good. Yeah.

He was wildin' back then, yeah. Great shit, man. Yeah, he was wildin' back then. But Coogee Rap, that to me was like, that defined like road gigs for me in the 1990s when we would drive. That was when Cockblockin' came out. I remember that.

that? Oh my God, that song is amazing. Yeah, man. Damn. So you really pay attention to this fucking hip hop shit like that, man. Yeah, hip hop was a big part of my childhood or my young adulthood. You know, when I was driving around a lot doing comedy gigs, like a lot of Ghetto Boy.

I was a huge Ghetto Boys fan. Yeah, me too. Ghetto Boys. I was playing the other day in the green room. I was playing Fuck a War for these young kids. I was like, listen, this is a song from the 1980s about the Iraq War. This is about George Bush in the late 1980s.

And it applies today. You remember Fuck A War? Fuck A War. Nah, you fucking... Come on, headphones are coming back on. Let's go. You fucking schooling me on shit. Like, what the fuck? I talked to Willie D. Willie D told me he wrote this song in 40 minutes. Wow. Yeah, just angry. Wrote this song in 40 minutes. And this is Ghetto Boys in their prime. You know that album. Bushwick Bill. That was my guy right there, man. This is Bushwick motherfucking Bill. ...been drafted into the United States military...

91. 91. Look at that big phone he's got. Yeah, yeah, I had one of those before, too. Yeah. Fuck a war. Fuck a war. Fuck a war.

Talk it crazy.

Holy shit. Holy shit. Yeah. Oh, my God. Hmm.

Yeah. He was in the N.W.A. chamber. Dude. He was in the N.W.A. chamber right there. That shit was good. And that applies today. That applies today. We were all talking about what's going on right now with Gaza and Palestine. I know. Iran. I was like, listen to this. And see, this is why we love hip-hop so much is because...

It was educational too. It was giving us jewels. It was talking about things that were going on in the world and that became the television for us. The music, the music. It became the news too.

Like you need to know what was actually going on. Like fuck a war tells you what's really going on. What's going on. Yeah. So when I think about those Compton boys, those NWA cats and all of that, that was expressing themselves. It was like, that's what we all were facing and living amongst. And, you know, like I said, I never heard that song before. So I could tell that was made around the time when NWA was doing a thing and

And, you know, you're hearing about all these riots and shit going on and things happening. You know, us living all the way on the other side of the world is like, yo, we not. What the fuck was that? Right. You know, but you heard it in a song and you knew it was real. Right. You respected it. Yeah. And to me, those perspectives and music were important for us because we were learning as we were growing.

getting older about society. Right. You know, you don't think about society when you poor and living in fucked up positions. You just think about survival. Right. You see what I'm saying? Survival is the only thing on your mind. And you're dealing with things that's in front of you that at the end of the day, you're like, damn,

the fuck was that that just happened? Or what was this shit? But then when you heard it in rap and motherfuckers like Deez was talking about it and all that, it's like now you was like, oh, okay, I see what the fuck is going on. It's not just here. It's all over. It's in everywhere, every ghetto or whatever the case may be. That's what was happening. So I never heard that before, though. You just put me on some real shit. And that's one of my favorite groups right there, Ghetto Boys. I love Ghetto Boys. Ghetto Boys is real shit right there.

the 1990s ghetto boy era. Oof. Oof. Crazy. And that, like...

I remember the day I found out about NWA. I was teaching Taekwondo in Revere, Massachusetts. And I was at the gym riding on the stair climber. And I had just picked up this cassette. And I was like, NWA, I keep hearing about this. And Fuck the Police was the first song I listened to. And I remember I was on the stair climber going, this is wild. You see what I'm saying? You see what I'm saying? This is wild. Yeah. You're hearing people talk about the police, like they're getting harassed by the police in a way you never...

I've never heard them say it. Yeah, exactly. Fuck the police coming straight from the underground. I was like, wow. Coming straight from the fucking underground. It was a totally different kind of music. It was...

It was like they were rapping and no one was listening. It was like they were rapping for themselves, right? Yeah. Like they didn't give a fuck who was listening. They were rapping like they were doing it for their friends, but they were doing it to the whole world. And the whole world was like, whoa. 100 miles and running. The whole world was like, whoa. This is crazy. So look, you had them. You had Public Enemy. Oh, yeah. All of them type of guys were giving us information that...

was relatable in our community that they became K.R.S. One. K.R.S. One, the teacher, you know. That's the sound of the police. All that shit right there to me was knowledgeable, knowledgeable rap, hip hop,

I ain't even gonna call it fucking rap. Hip-hop. Informational. Especially KRS-One and Public Enemy. They were saying something. But it wasn't contrived. Right, exactly. It wasn't like, you see people say shit today, like, ah, you're just doing that for claps. They were saying shit to let people know about some information that you're not aware of, and this is why you're getting fucked. Fucked.

Period. This is why we're all getting fucked. Absolutely. Come on. Come on. Even when fucking Spike Lee may do the right thing. Yes. One of my favorite movies right there. That's a classic right there. Classic. Classic. Classic shit. Classic. But like you said, we was getting information and, you know, you got to remember, you know, at the end of the day...

You know, a lot of people that coming out of the hood and just being like, I know you. You come from the hood. Well, I was born in Newark. Yeah, he was born in Newark. Shout out to Newark. So you seen it firsthand. I wouldn't exactly say I come from the hood because I went to high school in the suburbs.

Yeah, but you, yeah, that's true. I lived in Newark. I was telling you, I lived in Newark when I was 23 for about six or seven months. And I told you my next door neighbor, he was selling dope and the police raided his house while I was there. They battering rammed his door and everything. He had a nice Audi. I looked at him like, how does this dude have a nice car? Right, right.

Selling dope. He was selling dope. And they got him. But he was around it, though, so he was able to, you know. Well, that was also the time when I was the most into hip-hop, too. I mean, that was 1991, I guess. 1991, that was a wild era because that's when hip-hop was just exploding.

Exploding. Yeah, yeah. Exploding. Yeah, I would say definitely 91. You had Naughty by Nature. Oh, yeah. They had emerged on the scene, like you said, Rakim and Big Daddy Canes. Oh, yeah. Easy Ease and Ice Cubes. To this day, I go to work because one of my favorite workout songs.

Big Daddy King, I go to work. Oh, my God. I go to work. Oh, he was so smooth and so fast, too. You know, Big Daddy Kane had like a very particular style. It was energetic. You know, you heard his style. Like, God, you like your blood started pumping. You know, you started getting moving. And see, those are the type of guys that paved the way for us.

To be so outspoken on the mic, when I sit here and when I think about the Klan, the Wu, on how we formed Voltron, each one of us had a superpower that related back to those guys. All these guys that we talking about today, they was the light bulb in the house.

screw that shit on you this is what I see right now I see Slick Rick I see Rakim I see Cube I see fucking you know all these guys that paid the way for us so the clan at that time we were so you know inclined on knowing about all these guys knowing majority of them we kept a piece of them in us

That helped us become who we are. Like, I tell motherfuckers all the time, I say, yo, let me tell you something. When we came out, Naughty by Nature was the shit. They was fucking shit up on the East Coast side of things, you know? And at that time, you had them, you had EPMD, you had Queen Latifah, Roxanne Chante, all of these, you know, artists back then were blowing up. LL, can't front on LL, LL. Oh, yeah. That guy.

LL was huge. Coogee Rap, one of my favorites. I know that's one of your favorites. You know, the Fat Boys, all these guys were just... That's right, Fat Boys. You know, these guys was giving us so much food for thought that...

we knew that if we didn't come on that level, we wasn't built to be in a game at that time. Well, there was so much high quality. Yeah. High quality. That's the word. The level was very high. Absolutely. The lyrics were so good. Like, you would hear lyrics and just go, oh. Oh, shit. Yeah. Oh. That was the thing. That was the thing about hip hop. Listening to the lyrics, I love that. Oh, man.

I love lyrics. That's right. Lyrics is everything. That's right. Lyrics is everything. That's what I wanted. That was the style back then. It was like the most clever guy, the most clever lyrics. It was so important, you know? Come on. There's so many guys...

Everybody was battling. So it was like more and more cleverness and more and more intricacies and more and more twists of what they were saying. Yeah. And it was just a vibrant art form, man. How many people cheated on their significant other because of OPP? Right.

How many? Exactly. How many relationships? You know OPP? Yeah, you know me. People were cheering. Yeah. It was like a license to fuck. People were cheering. Exactly. I mean, hip hop had so much influence on the culture, and it emerged out of nowhere. Oh,

That's what's so crazy. Like 10 years ago, it doesn't exist. Boom. I mean, even rock and roll. I mean, rock and roll, you had the 50s. It starts to emerge. Then the 60s really takes off. And, you know, it had been around for a while. Right. Absolutely. To have something like hip hop just explode and make a lot of other things look lame. Right.

You know, especially for young kids, because when you hear guys like you and, you know, Ghostface and, you know, Method Man, and like, you're dealing with real dudes who are talking about real shit, and everybody else just look kind of lame. You know?

You know, it was like, they didn't even swear. You know, it was like, you guys were wild. It was fun and it was clever. And I think RZA did a genius thing by naming it Wu-Tang Clan because it connected it to like this Kung Fu mindset.

And I know that you big on... I know you big on kung fu shit, because I'm coming through your shrine and shit. You got all kind of fucking shogun warriors and assassins. Oh, I have a real samurai outfit out there. But nah, but you know what's so crazy? I tell people it's like, when RZA, when they was on their Wu-Tang shit, we wasn't on that. I grew up watching more like...

Scarface and Mafia movies. Once Upon a Time in America. Oh, yeah. One of my favorite movies. Oh, that's a great one. People forget about Once Upon a Time in America. That's my fucking movie right there. That's my movie. So we were living around a lot of hustlers. A lot of drugs was being sold in my community at that time, right? So when Rizat came with the whole Wu-Tang philosophy...

It was almost like, yeah, we love karate flicks. We would watch them. You know about the karate flicks. Sure. Three o'clock, three o'clock. Yeah. We'd come over to school, them shits is on, Channel 5, all of that shit. But if you notice and you look at those karate movies, it was about a place that, you know, was filled with a lot of crime and...

aggressive people that were doing things that bothered other people and you either had to protect your people or you had to make a name for yourself. Now, when you think about Wu-Tang, I'm going to just give you a quick lesson on what Wu-Tang was. Wu-Tang was a school that was in Shaolin. This particular school, these niggas was crazy. They was fucked up. They got kicked the fuck out of Shaolin. Really? They got kicked out.

Yo, y'all bugged out. Y'all wildin', y'all. But these guys were very good, but they just couldn't sit in Shaolin because they had a different way of looking at shit and doing shit. So when RZA came with the whole philosophy of it, it's this movie that's called Shaolin vs. Wu-Tang, right? Check it out whenever you get a chance. So whatever was going on in that movie, he made a reality of it because really at the end of the day, that's how we were living, right?

Back in Staten Island. You know, so we wound up changing the name and calling it Shaolin because we were the forgotten barrel. You know, when you think about Brooklyn, Bronx, Queens, Manhattan, we don't really talk too much about fucking Staten Island. That bothered us. So we didn't, we felt rebellious. Like, yo, you come out here, you ain't from here. You better know somebody.

You're not fucking coming into projects thinking you're going to fucking act like you're going over to your friends. I remember we used to see UFOs come through. We called them UFOs, unidentified flying objects. The fuck he doing here? Yo, follow him. Yo, where you came to see? You know what I mean? Because we had so much to prove, but it was the same thing that was going on in the karate flicks. Like, yo, you go to a new neighbor. Who is this guy? Either he's coming to play you, he's coming to play you, or...

Or you going to play him? This is all the shit that's going on in the karate movies. You know, the brotherhood. Yo, oh shit, my brother got hurt. What happened? Oh, hold up. Let's go. We got to go get back to that. We got to go figure that out. All this shit that RZA was thinking about at that time was a reality check for us in Staten Island. So even when he came with the name,

it was almost like yo wow that is interesting you know wu-tang clan yo you know and back then he was hanging in ghost's community which was stapleton so stapleton was a place that was maybe like 10 15 miles away from park hill where i'm from i'm from the hill i'm from up there they were selling drugs and getting crazy with it and jamaicans and westerners and nineties and

You know, it was a melting pot. You know, it was a melting pot of different nationalities of motherfuckers. You had the Spanish motherfuckers over here selling dope. You know what I mean? You had the white boys over here fucking doing what they doing. You know, all these things was going on. But in Stapleton, it was nothing but criminals and motherfuckers that want to fight and rob and steal and, you know, and...

RZA was hanging out there a lot, you know, so they came up with this whole, you know, Wu-Tang mentality thing that they brought up the block to us. So when RZA came with it, it was like, oh shit, we like that. That's kind of dope. You know, we see the vision of that, you know?

But it was never for us to look at it at any given time like, yo, you trying to portray us as some fucking ninjas or some shit. You know, a lot of times people thought, yo, your niggas know karate and all that shit? I don't know fucking karate, motherfucker. We don't do that. But we grew up, our older brothers...

And sisters, they grew up on that. That was some early 70s shit right there. Yeah. So, you know, back then you might have had a cousin that was a martial art. He knew the arts and shit. You know, you looked up to him like, yo, this motherfucker's ill right here. He know the arts and shit. He know how to fight. You know, your motherfucker would be in back of the building with two Doberman pinches and shit. You know what I mean? Beating him with fucking laundromat hoses and shit and, you know, grabbing him and hanging him on shit and...

You know, back then that was, you know, that was dope to see your cousins and all of them do it. But RZA, when he came with this philosophy, it kind of like fucked us all up in it. But we agreed with it right away because Wu-Tang was to them was always something like an expression, right?

So if you drinking, this is Wu-Tang drinking. You over here, yo, this is some Wu-Tang shit or whatever because he was trying to say that we were just like them in the flicks. It's crazy. Want to hear something crazy? Whenever I kill an elk, you know, I go bow hunting every year. Whenever I kill an elk, when I text my friend Cam, I text Wu-Tang. Like,

Like, whenever I kill something, I'll show you. Oh, my God. I'll show you that that's true. I've seen some of the pictures today. I know, but I want to show you that that's true. I'm not making this up. Holy shit. It goes back years. It goes back years. This is like our tradition. Whenever I kill an elk, well, I'm going to find this. I'm going to find the last time I said Wu-Tang. I text him every day, so it's going to take a second to get back into some pictures. But whenever I get one, I say Wu-Tang, and then I send him a picture. Oh, shit. Crazy. Crazy.

It's gonna take a while because I do scroll, but this is important to show you. This is real. Come on, motherfucker. Go back and search Wu-Tang and it'll show you. Oh, it'll show you? Yeah. Oh, okay. Oh, look at Jamie. Under Cam Haines or just Wu-Tang? Then when you find Cam Haines, it'll show you. Oh, look at Jamie telling me how to do it. Sorry. Here we go. See all. Here it is. Right there. Wu-Tang. Holy shit. Holy shit. And then the elders down.

That was from October. But I go back like five years of doing that. Like every time I shoot an elk, I text Wu-Tang. Wow. When you started hunting, since you came out here? No, I started hunting in 2012. I shot that deer, that deer, that head that's right there. That was the first animal I hunted. And then I was like, okay, that's what I'm doing. Wow.

It was either for me, it was that or become a vegetarian. I watched too many of those PETA films. Oh, yeah. You know, those animal factory farming films and torture films. I was like, fuck this. Like, either I'm going to be a vegan or I'm going to learn how to hunt. And my friend Steve Rinella took me hunting. I shot that deer. I'm like, all right, that's what I do now. Oh, shit. And I've been doing it ever since. So I've been hunting for 12 years. 12 years? Yeah. So you consider yourself a marksman then? Well...

It's like I'm not really good compared to real marksmen. That's like saying you're a black belt when you're not really a black belt. You gotta go through the courses. Yeah, like how good are you? I mean, I'm good for regular people. Yeah, if you didn't know, you'd think I'm really good. Except for regular people. Yeah, but for people that are really good, no, I'm not.

Right. Not nearly at their level. Gotcha. But, you know, there's like professional archers that are like super accurate out to 100 yards. They can shoot like a softball-sized group at 100 yards consistently. I got a couple of homeboys who can shoot like that, though. It's a lot of discipline. Yeah. A lot of discipline. Yeah, but they come from, they live on this side of town, too, though. Yeah. Well, there's a lot of bow hunting in Texas. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. A lot of bow hunting in Texas. Yeah. It's fun. Yeah. I like it. I gotta get out there one day, man. I gotta.

I told you. Like, we were talking before the show. Like, you want to learn. I could put you on some people that'll 100% teach you how to do it. Because you're fairly close. Like, that's an easy thing to do. We'll hook it up. Definitely. You would enjoy it. It's also a nice discipline to clear your mind. Yeah. You set a target up in the backyard and just shoot the target. It just clears your mind. Because you have to really concentrate on it. And while you're doing it, you don't think about nothing else. Yeah.

For a guy like you, busy, so much shit going on. Like, it's good to have a thing like that to just. It's like a sport to me. Yeah. It's like something to learn and kind of master. Yeah. That's important. But it's one of those things like shooting a free throw. Like, at that moment, you can't think of anything else other than what you're doing.

If other shit gets in your head, it's like you don't have any room for it. You gotta push it all out. And that kind of stuff cleans your mind. It flushes your mind out. That's what it's all about at the end of the day, man. Just kind of like get a peace of mind and vibe to something different. Yeah.

I always say that for artists, too. You should find some other thing you like to do just to give you a little break mentally from whatever you're trying to do. Exactly. You could get too close to something and lose sight of the big picture if you're all wrapped up in it too tight. Because you're so stuck into one. Sometimes you need something else that you also enjoy outside of it, and then you can look at what you're doing. Oh, okay, what am I doing different? Exactly. Maybe I should put a new wrinkle in this. Maybe I should take a new turn, you know? That's true.

Mix it up. That's important, man. That's important, man. Yeah. You know what's another cool thing about today is that it used to be thought at one point in time, I think it was like the early 2000s, that rap had, that hip hop had a shelf life.

and that there wouldn't be classics. You know what I mean? Like, the Rolling Stones were still touring. You know, they were 58 years old back then. Like, this is crazy. The Rolling Stones are back on the road. But that was, like, a new thing. It was like old rock and roll guys out touring was a new thing. But with hip-hop artists, like, if you weren't in now, if you weren't new now, it kind of... People weren't in to go and to see you. Right, yeah. Well, when I see guys like LL and...

Kane and them perform and Slick Rick and Ice Cube. It kind of... It gives me more leverage and more strength to want to do it because I see some of my legends still doing it today. But, yeah, man, like you said, just to...

See a lot of guys like the Rolling Stones and Mick Jagger and them still performing. It's like, why not? Why not? Why not? Why give up on it, you know? But with hip-hop, it wasn't really a thing for a long time. Like, older hip-hop. You didn't think that it would last. Right. You know what I mean? So you felt like you would get a five-year run. They say any artist that was coming out back in the 90s, they was already putting a cap on hip-hop.

how long or how far they felt she was going to go. So even for us, we was like, yo, hey, we do this shit for like three or four years. We good. Yo, we'll be cool with that. So they always put us in a, what's the word I want to say? What's that? A box? Put us in a box. Yeah. To make us feel like at the end of the day, yo, this shit is going to be here for a minute, then it's over. But seeing guys still doing it,

You know, I don't give a fuck. Like, I listen to Billy Joel. I'm a Billy Joel fan. That's my fucking guy right there. That's hilarious. You know, people, I know people would be like, get the fuck out of here. That's hilarious. I love his old shit. Until he had that supermodel wife, then everything got real soft. You got two-edged good pussy. Yeah.

Too much good pussy. He got supermodel pussy, and it's like, uptown girl, she's been living in her uptown world. Before that, you go back to his other shit, you know, Owen the Good Die Young. Oh, that's a great jam. He's got some great stuff, man. Scenes from an Italian restaurant. That's a great song, man.

Captain Jack. Ooh, Captain Jack's a great song. Billy Joel, man. But when he got older, it just became, you know, hey, he's changing as a human. He in New York too, right? Yeah. New York to the heart right there, right? That guy sold out Madison Square Garden like 300 times. See what I'm saying? Kind of crazy. Still going. Yeah, still going. So those are our heroes. Those are guys that we look up to that, you know,

They still doing anything, man. Yeah. It's just beautiful that hip-hop is like that now. Yeah. Because I feel like in the 2000s, only it was more overseas was showing you guys love. Yeah. Like a lot of Europe. Like a lot of my friends that were like maybe bigger in the 90s, they had to go over to Europe. To come check out. Yeah. Come check out hip-hop. Yeah. And I tell people all the time, like being from the States, being where we from, I'm

I think they appreciate it more because they never really got a chance to grasp it as much as we did. Right. So they come out more. Right. Right now, today. They're more enthusiastic. They more, they love it more. Right. They can't believe you're there. Yeah, they can't believe it. Yeah. But for me, I think I love performing a lot more when I go out there because they come out and they never, ever...

Make you feel like they don't appreciate you. You know what I mean? And even to this day, it's like the Klan still goes out there and makes a ton of cash. We see a lot of people...

we see young generations of kids now too. It's like, yo, you look in the crowd, you're like, fuck, how old is that fucking kid that we just put him on stage and he knew the fucking words. Like, yo, he might have been like 17, 16 years old. Like, yo, he wasn't even fucking born. Well, there's classic hip hop now. You know what I'm saying? Like, when I was a kid, there was classic rock. You listen to Led Zeppelin, it was classic rock. Now there's classic hip hop.

Which is amazing. Yeah, you're right. Well, it just shows that the culture has completely accepted it as an art form. And so now young kids that get into hip-hop, maybe one of their friends will be like, hey, you ever heard of this? And then they turn them on to new stuff. Exactly. And they're like, wow, yeah, yeah. And this is 1992, you know? That shit, you know. And I think that that's how we were. We always were infatuated with the music before our time, you know? Like how you just said, like, yo...

You know, listening to Sugar Hill Gang, you know. I actually had them in one of my videos before. Really? Wow. You know how that... And I brought them to my hood, too. So you know how that felt for me. Oh, wow. To have fucking Sugar Hill Gang come out to my community. That's amazing. That was dope, though, right there, man. But yeah, man, you know, that's why I always feel like, yo, I tell people all the time, you have to respect the people that did it before you, man, because they...

gave you something to dream about. Yes. To be able to instill in yourself. Like, if you don't have that...

then you're not moving the way you're supposed to be moving. You know, I remember old man would tell us, if you don't know where you came from, you'll never know where you're going. So having that history, that history is an experience that sticks with you forever. You have to have that. Don't try to front on that. You know, and I think a lot of times people, you know, they look at hip-hop and they think certain things is hip-hop. It's like history...

of hip-hop is something that you gotta know man you gotta know it you gotta know it you gotta know it you should know it like the history of the United States exactly it's something if you're an artist like that's what lit the fire somebody had to light the fire

And if these young guys don't know, like, hey, this shit didn't even exist in 1979. Yeah. Didn't even exist. That's not that long ago. And then all of a sudden, now it's everywhere? Like, what happened? Somebody lit the fire. And if they didn't light that fire, you wouldn't have it. Exactly. You wouldn't have the embers. Absolutely. You wouldn't have this desire to try this thing. Exactly. Now, look what it's doing. Look what it did. Yeah. It's like, yo, one of the biggest genres of music is like...

You know, and there's a lot of times people take shots at it. Like, you know, y'all ain't talking negative. Y'all ain't talking this. They talking that. It's like my thing to that is always like, yo,

It's no different from going to see a scary movie. Exactly. Jason. Exactly. This motherfucker's killing motherfuckers in the woods. I hated camp. You know what I mean? Based on that. Heat is one of my favorite movies. Great fucking movie. I love Heat. You know, De Niro. But why is it okay to do that in a movie, but it's not okay to do that in a song? Right. I don't understand it. I don't, you know. It's hypocritical. You know, it's hypocritical. It is. It's hypocritical because they say it encourages violence. And that's the same thing they'll say about video games. Like, yeah.

Doesn't it, everybody? Yeah. So what's going on really? What's going on really is you have a bunch of disenfranchised people that don't have any hope, and if they are around a lot of violence, maybe something will get them excited about violence. If they're not disenfranchised and they have hope, they're not inclined towards violence. It's a societal problem. It has nothing to do with the art itself. The art itself is representative of real experiences. So if you're telling people that they can't express themselves about real experiences, you're just going like this. La.

I'm not listening. That's all you're doing. That's how you feel at the end of the day. This is these people's lived expression, which is why Wu-Tang was so good. The reason why it was so good is because it was real. No one was questioning the authenticity of anybody that was in the Wu-Tang Clan. So it's like that, the message that you guys were putting out, the way you were putting things out, like Wu-Tang Clan ain't nothing to fuck with. Like that is, it was like from you to the world.

You know, and if someone doesn't like that, you don't have to listen. Exactly. You don't have to listen. Right. But if you slap a warning sticker on it, you're just going to sell more albums. You're going to listen to it anyway. Right. You're going to get caught up in it anyway. Yeah. It's like, look, prime example. When we made the record Cream, right? Cream was a record that didn't have nothing to do with anything but the realness of

of what we were looking at. It wasn't really a song to rap to or have fun with. It was a reality. It was a picture we was trying to paint. Cash rules everything around me. Cash rules, like, around me, not me. Should never fucking rule you, but around me. You know, and a friend from the neighborhood, he actually came up with that acronym. But I tell people all the time, my cousin, I had a cousin from Brooklyn that he used to come to Staten Island and

He used to sell drugs for us, and he came up with that word, cream, because he was like, yo, as long as I can make my cream, I'm good. I'm like, what the fuck is cream? You know what I mean? He's like, yo, cream, yo, you ever see Tom and Jerry, the movie? And, you know, he make those big fucking sandwiches and all of that, and he splash all that cream on it. And, you know, I'm like, oh, the Tom and Jerry, the sandwiches, right? Yeah, when he made the big sandwiches and stuff them in your mouth and all that.

Nah, real shit, real shit. So the cream that was splashing all over the place, he was looking at that as that's his money. Like, I just want my cream. I just want my cream. You know what I mean? So we like, yeah, you want to get your cream. You sit up in the fucking spot all day. You want to make your cream. You want to get it. So who came up with the acronym?

A good friend of ours from the neighborhood, his name is Raid, right? And him and Meth and man is like, they was like real close, like brothers. So when we was in the studio, right into it, he was there and he just sat back and he just came up with cash rules, everything around me and him and Meth, they put it together. And next thing you know, that was a hook. You know, at that time for me, I was still writing a lot of stories, right?

You know, so I wrote, believe it or not, I wrote two verses for Cream. I didn't write... My rhyme never started off as I grew up on the crime side. I was writing about drug dealers in the neighborhood. Like, yo, I know this kid by the name of Gigante. Gigante a Teflon Don with a Diamante. You know, the Diamantes back in the days was like the, you know, the five-series Benz's for us back then. And, um...

a good friend of mine was like oh that rhyme is cool i think it's i like why you don't like the rhyme everybody else like it he was like it's cool i like it so he made me go back and change it and when i changed it i started to think before i wrote it i'm like damn he said yo you need to run about that's something that we could relate to that we're dealing with around

What the fuck we wake up to every day? And that's when I came with... I grew up on the crime side. You know, the New York Times side. So he...

He just told you harder. Yeah, he just told me to think harder. Harder, yeah. He said, yo, chef, you could be a little bit more creative. Well, Cream is crazy because it became viral. Saying dollar, dollar bills, y'all, became viral. But you know where that come from, the dollar, dollar bill, y'all. Dollar bill, y'all. Dollar, dollar, dollar. Tee La Rock. That's what he did. Oh.

You remember that record? Yeah. Money. It takes money. Yeah. Whatever he was saying back then. I haven't heard that before. That was a serious record right there. Yeah, that's an old school record right there. Fly shit. But yeah, Meff and my man Ray, they sat down and they came up with Cash Hool, everything around me. And it was a perfect symbol of what we were trying to express. That we were always trying to get money, but we was dealing with...

things in our community that, you know, that we were trying to get past first to try to make some money. And it was a sacrifice. It was like, yo, you do this shit, you might be able to get out of it alive or you might not. You know, so that record, you know, wound up blowing up so big, it wound up being one of our biggest records. And it didn't have nothing to do with it. I guess to me, it didn't feel hip hop. It just felt like real realization, like,

Real shit is we need to start listening, like how you just played the Ghetto Boyz shit. You know what I mean? We trying to give off a message, a message. And that's what I think that people love about Wu-Tang is that we give out messages. We give out. We like an emotional rollercoaster group. We can give you the Wu-Tang Clan ain't nothing to fuck with.

And then we can give you the tears where it's like, oh, shit. Yeah. The fuck? He's right. You know what I mean? Yo, we got to be careful. We got to look at things for real. So all that had a lot to do with being around smart guys. You know what I mean? The smartness allowed us to write the way we wanted to write. Right. It's contagious. It was contagious back then. Yeah. It was contagious.

Well, that's what I'm saying about really good lyrics and high-quality rap. It's contagious. Yeah, yeah. Because then everybody else's shit has to be tight, too. Yeah. And you know when you're coming with a group of guys that, yo, he kill it, you better come in. Right. You have to come in and say some shit that makes sense. Like, I give a lot of credit to our first record, right, Protect Your Neck, and I know that's one of your favorite shits.

When Inspector Deck said, I smoke on a mic like smoking Joe Frazier, the hell raiser. Raising hell with the flavor? Yeah. That right there opened up something with all of us. Yeah. You know, and I always tell Deck, I'm like, yo, Deck, you are like a Scotty Pippen.

You always gonna hit if you get the ball in your hand. You know, and he did that. He created that first verse that, you notice me, I jump right in behind him. Yeah. Rhymes running, it built like Schwarzenegger. Yeah. Then meth came, and you know what I mean? Everybody kind of like... That's what's so amazing about all these killers, all these different voices, all these amazing lyrics, all on one song. Yeah, yeah. But we wanted to show the world that

Each one of us had a style that was unreckoned. Each one of us can paint a picture within our own way that you will love all of us. So it's better to get us all now. You know, we'll sacrifice the little...

the little look for the bigger look later. Right. You know, and that was one of the situations where we had to dance a certain way to be like, okay, yeah, we'll take a little bit of money, but we know we're going to be able to sell. Like you said, yeah, give us those 50. We'll sell them. Now, we know you telling me you don't got the money, but you got the relationships. Okay, cool. As long as you got the relationship, as long as you got the money. Yeah. We're going to go out there and we're going to work to make it happen. But...

This is what's got to happen. And, you know, I give all the credit to Steve Rifkin. You know, Steve was the guy that owned Loud Records back then. He was a part of RCA back then. And he believed in us. He was like, yo, I'll give y'all that deal.

I'll give y'all that deal. And next thing you know, when everybody started taking off, now you got Method Man over here. You got Jizz over here. You got Old Baby Bastard over here. So we did something that was so new to the world that...

It's like, oh, shit. From the outside, it felt different because it felt like a movement. Right. It's like Wu-Tang was like a movement. Exactly. It was different. But everybody tried the boxes as a group. Yeah. So even though we knew we were a group, in our minds, we looked at it, like you said, as a movement being created that would eventually spread out.

and hit all corners of everything and that was the plan all the time. That was a premeditated plan because they wanted us to still be a group. It was like, nah, we, look, we sacrificing this and that but we not going to box ourselves. Right. You know, so by us doing that,

it kind of like really paid the way for other groups and other artists and everybody to kind of, you know, follow this blueprint. So now you have, you know, these other guys coming out and creating their own labels and bringing in artists that they wanted to do. So to me, this kind of made hip-hop a little bit more interesting because it showed that artists were starting to get more smarter, which is important.

You know, we didn't want to be just, like you said, yo, just coming in and you sell your soul and you just stay there. Nah, we can't just stay there. Is one of the hardest parts getting the right beat? Oh, yeah.

the beat is everything bro because it seems like all you guys are very prolific everybody can write but if you don't have a great beat and how many great beats can you make right if you got an album then another album's coming out next year like whoa you gotta have 16 20 great beats yeah and then you gotta pick from those beats what what you know what goes what song and try different ways out and you gotta make sure everybody shows up at the studio

How hard was that? That shit was real, bro. I mean, I tell people all the time, like, number one for us, like, you know, being around so many different lyricists, lyricist guys, beats are important. You know, I remember one time a fan asked me, he said, yo, what's the most important thing to you, the rhyme or the beat? He fucked me up the whole day with that. I was fucked up. And I answered him, I gave him an answer like, probably like,

Three or four minutes later, and I was like, you know what? Nobody never asked me that. I said, the beat. I said, you know why the beat? Because the beat makes you think about what you want to say and what you want to get across. You know, anybody could make rhymes. I can have you sit with me for fucking a month, and you could be an ill fucking rapper. You. I can take you there. But to be able to have that combination factor of making rhymes

a body of work or that sound that you want, you need to have the right production. So a lot of times Wu-Tang wrote to whatever they felt. It's like how you can listen to Protect Your Neck and you get that energy from us. Yes. You know, you get a certain energy because of that production. Then you get this energy when you get

You get a cream, you get that. Right. So for me, I always tell people the beat is everything. And us just sitting down and waiting for RZA to come up with something. One thing about RZA, he was so clever. He had a team of guys that was around him that was assisting him.

to helping him come with different sounds and, you know, he played with different things. And, of course, you know, just having his ear for music and listening to other people's stuff, he was able to isolate himself away from everything and start brainstorming for us. So it's like he was like the Steelers back in the fucking 80s, you know what I mean, when they won four Super Bowls in a row.

He was like that when Terry Bradshaw and all was playing. Lin Swan. He was in a zone. He was really in his own way. Especially because it became successful. Yeah. And then there was a lot of motivation behind it, a lot of energy behind it. Yeah. I hear what you're saying, but without the lyrics...

The beat is not the same. I see from your perspective as a lyricist and as an MC that you would think that the beat is more important because it's important to you to get started. To get started. But damn, as a fan, you have to have those lyrics to it. Just the beats by themselves, that's not enough. Look. No, no, no, no, no. You know how many times me and Rizzy would argue about that? And I would tell him like, yo, listen, bro.

It took all of us. Yeah, you had that. You had this. We had that. That's what... It's a 50-50 proposition. It's always like that. I think it's more 60-40. I think it's more 60 lyrics because the thing is the lyrics are the thing that make you go...

Oh shit. Like a great beat makes you move your head and gets you going, but lyrics make you go, oh shit. Like rewind that. Well, you know, me is 50-50 all the time because-

If I don't have nothing to give me that energy to write, then how can I give it to you if I don't have nothing? It's a collaboration for sure. It's a collaboration for sure. But it's interesting that people would think, like, what's more important? Like, what's more important, breathing or having a heartbeat? Shut the fuck up. Like, you need both. You need both. Yeah, you got to balance it. You have to have both.

But that's where the collaboration comes in. I had Scott Storch in here the other day. Oh, yeah, I love that dude. He's so fucking talented. So out there, you know? His glasses on, his fucking... Like, you see him feeling the music. It's like a rare savant. There's dudes like that that are like beat machines.

You know? Like, he just feels it. It comes into his head, and he feels it, and it's just coming out of his fingers, you know? Yeah, yeah. He's a super talented. Oh, so talented. I love him. But, like, that kind of guy is so special. And, you know, to team the kind of guy like that up with Dre or, you know, with, you know, 50 or any of these people that he collaborated with, it's like, that's special. And that's why, like I said, you know what I mean? You can't never...

front on the maestro. You know what I mean? Right. You gotta remember that, you know, DJing started it all. Let's be honest. Yes. You know what I mean? The DJ game. Scratching records. That was so important. Scratching, you know, they created a...

a synergy to the artist to be like, yo, let me try this. Even if you go back to, like I said, look at Quincy Jones, man. Look what the fuck he did, man. Right, right. You know, look at Frank Sinatra. Like, who the fuck was handling his fucking music, man? Right. He was so clever. He needed a vibe, though. He needed something to... Who was that guy? You ever hear of Frank Sinatra when he was young? Oh, he was fucking... Before he was smoking all those cigarettes? Yeah.

It's a super high-pitched voice. It's crazy. It's crazy, right? It's crazy. You listen to the difference, like, wow, it had so much range. Who was the production, though? I don't know. He never really got famous, I guess. Well, I think the whole thing back then was Elvis or whoever it was. Whoever was the person that was in front. Everybody behind the scenes didn't really get that much respect. Right, right. But he was a talent. Yeah. Yeah.

Who was that crazy dude that wore the wigs that shot that lady in LA? He produced all the Beatles shit. He got tried for murder and every day in the courtroom he'd wear a different wild wig. He created the wall of sound. Fuck, what's his name? He was really insane.

Phil Spector. Phil Spector. Phil Spector, back in the day, he was known for pulling guns on people. He'd pull guns on people, stick them in their mouths and shit. He was a complete psychopath. White guy? Yeah. Oh, shit. Phil Spector. Jewish guy, I think. Right. And he shot this lady in the mouth. Oh, shit. Was he Jewish? I don't want any Jewish people mad at me. Jewish people get mad when you say someone's not Jewish and they did something terrible. Yeah.

Hey, look, guys, we not here to fuck with nobody. Talented, successful Jewish people in the entertainment business. Be clear, man. But that dude, he was responsible for the wall of sound, the Beatles. That was a big thing with him. He was known for being a guy that would change people's music.

Russian-Jewish, boom, nailed it. And he was from the Bronx, right? From the Bronx, yeah. Holy shit. Wild, wild boy. And shot some lady, picked up some lady at a bar, took her back to his place and shot her in the mouth. Holy shit. Yeah, he would put guns in people's mouths. He was known for threatening people. Like, you want to get out of this fucking contract? You just shove a gun in your mouth. What's that? He pulled a gun on Cher.

He pulled the gun out on Shay? Shay recalls stopping Phil Spector in his tracks when he pulled the gun on her. He couldn't pull that shit with me. Right, right, right, right. We had this really strange relationship. You don't say. You don't say. Well, it's like the music business at one point in time was run entirely by gangsters. Of course. That's the story about Hendrix. The story about Hendrix is that his manager killed him. That's the conspiracy, was that his manager killed him because it's more valuable for Hendrix to be dead. His music, he's a...

maestro, like a one in a billion year talent. And they knew that they had all these recordings of him and they could kill him. And so that's why his girlfriend jumped off the top of a building. To own his shit. Because he was going to leave his management. His bodyguard wrote a book about it years later. And it just came out like, I want to say like

10 years ago? Wasn't that long ago. Whereas the bodyguard said, yeah, the manager killed him. Killed Hendrix and threw the girlfriend off a roof. Did they do a movie of him too? Oh yeah, they did a bunch of movies on Hendrix. They need to do a real Wu-Tang movie. I know Hulu had a series, but they need a real like Quentin Tarantino needs to do a Wu-Tang. That's me, man. I know Quentin Tarantino. That's what I think. I think we talk Quentin Tarantino because he wants to do one more movie. How about he does a fucking Wu-Tang movie? Okay.

The real Wu-Tang movie. It's like Hulu is great, but it has to be on Hulu. You can only get that so wild on Hulu. You know, like for it to be real, real, it has to be a movie. Let me tell you something. I wrote a book, right? And inside my book, I talked about how Q-Tip, a good friend of mine, Q-Tip, he had me and Leonardo sit down. Leonardo DiCaprio? Huh? Leonardo DiCaprio? Leonardo DiCaprio, right? Yeah.

And I remember Q-Tip was like, yo, set up a meeting for you and Leonardo to meet in Brooklyn at this small pizza shop, one of Leonardo's favorite spots, and he want to talk to you. I said, yeah, that's what's up. So me and Leonardo, we started talking, and he was like, yo, Q-Tip was telling me that you was thinking about trying to, you know, get guys together to create a movie. I was like, yeah, this is what I was thinking. So to make a long story short, I set up a meeting with RZA,

myself, Leonardo's peoples in L.A. And I told RZA, I said, listen, before we do this Hulu thing, which at the end of the day was a RZA's production thing or whatever he was doing, I said, I think we need to make a realistic, real-life movie of us. I said, it shouldn't be nothing that we should play with because people need to know our real story. So RZA entertained the conversation, but...

I don't know, for some reason, I guess he felt like he was committed to doing whatever he wanted to do with Hulu. He might have already had a deal. Yeah, yeah. And you know, like I said, at the end of the day, the clan, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. Jamie fast with him. Jamie's the best. It was that night, and I remember that. Wow. I wish we could have been able to sit down with him because the way I had him looking at it, it was almost like I told him, I said, this would be like a smash, like a slash of,

of Goodfellas and Menace's Society. Yeah. Mixed in one. Yeah. You know, to kind of talk about our story and whatever. And he was super open. He was like, yo, Chef, what we got to do? Yo, who do we need to talk to? But at that time, RZA was already in pocket on what he wanted to do. So I said, you know what? One day...

You know, maybe I might get a chance to show my version of it. Because, come on, how many Pablo Escobar movies we looked at? Right, right, right, right. You know what I mean? You got these guys telling it. Oh, for sure. It can still be made, for sure. So it can still be made. 100%. Just because there's a Hulu suit, that doesn't mean shit. Right. But I think that at the end of the day, you know, God willing, we will really give you guys another...

Taste of really how how we really see it. You know, I think it would be hugely successful I think for music from a movie rather perspective Would you have to see it as a movie or would you a movie a movie? Oh

Or you do it on Netflix where you can get wild. Netflix has shit like Ozark. They get wild on Netflix. You can get wild. That's how it has to be. It has to be grimy. It has to be... That's how you want it, right? It can't be in any way ABC After School specialified. You know what I'm saying? It can't be cleaned up through a filter. It has to be good, too. It has to be good narrative.

It has to be set up. The scenes have to be set up. Because it's very hard to take an insane career of nine of the best MCs to get together under one mastermind with all these genius talents, and they form this movement. And you're going to condense that to two hours? Man. See, that was one of his beats right there. He was like, yo, Ray, yo, yo, blah, blah, blah, blah, yo. But I think it could be done. That's what I said. I said, yo, look, come on now. I said...

People do it all the time. I say, yo, look at Prime Example, look at NWA. I thought NWA movie was dope. You know what I mean? Straight out of Compton. I thought they did a good job, but that was Dre and Cube and, you know, I'm sure you're always going to have somebody around that be like, yo, nah, that ain't it. But it was so realistic that when I seen ours, it was like, all right, I get it. You know, RZA even said to y'all, you know, this is more for the younger generation to...

kind of gravitate to and once everybody loved it they loved it so it was like okay y'all love it we love y'all for loving it it's great it's great but hear me out opening of the movie Rikers opening of the movie you guys show up at Rikers to do the concert where old daddy bastard's inside

That's the opening of the movie. That's the opening of the movie. You want all the real gritty. You want the gritty. But that just get everybody on the hook right away. And then you bring them back to the beginning.

Right after that. You know, you put the year, whatever it was. And that's how you make movies. You pick all the greatest moments. Yes. And then you start showing and threading. Yes. That's a no-brainer for a Wu-Tang movie. You start with Rikers. You start with Rikers, which is what year was that? 95? What year was that? When did...

What year was the Old Dirty Bastard and Rikers concert with Wu-Tang? Yeah, I was about to say, look up that. And what year did you guys start? What was the very first year? We started in late 92. So you start the movie with Rikers, and then you bring it back to 92. Back to 92. That's what it is. That's what it is. I mean, just think about the incredible...

amount of talent not just not just rap Billy jizz is like a world champion caliber chess player 99 2000 I got an interview talking about it and doesn't jizz have some degree in physics

Smart motherfucker, man. Doesn't he have some crazy degree? Smart. He's like a... Look that up, please. Yeah. So you just, that alone in the movie is like, come on, this is real? Yeah, this is something people was looking forward to looking at. Yeah, think of a movie like that. Think of a movie that starts up with the gates opening and you guys going in, put all your belongings in the basket, the whole shit, getting frisked.

Checking everybody down the guy reading you the rules the warden telling you do not go into the crowd do not do that Yeah, okay. Cool. Yeah, we got you. Yeah. Yeah think about it. Yeah, that's the beginning of the movie Yeah, that's an incredible opening for a movie and it really happened. This isn't bullshit This is a bunch of dorks sitting around a table coming up with some nonsense. This is some shit that you lived through and

That would be an incredible opening for a movie. And it's just so incredible even more on how we connected because, like I said, everybody come from almost the same poverty bullshit, but everybody had different philosophies on how they felt their lives was going. I tell people all the time, my neighborhood was about making money.

Ghost Neighborhood was about taking money, you know what I mean? Taking shit from you. JZA being one of the MCs that could have been down with the Juice crew.

You know what I mean? You know who the fuck the Juice Crew is. He turned it down. Really? It's like they was the hottest shit back then. Master Ace, Biz, Kane, Coogee Rap. All these dope MCs, they ask him, yo, we want you to come and get down with us. He's like, nah, no one, nah. All these things I remember like yesterday, like, yo, you turned down the Juice Crew? He was like, I love the Juice Crew, but I just was in this chamber right here.

You know, us with Old Dirty, like, yo, you know, Old Dirty always wanted to be like Biz, Biz Markie. He had that personality, that charisma, that energy. So like you said, these are the things that I wanted to see. Each individual, like, you know, and like I said, you know, shout out Hulu, man, for doing a great job. But I do agree like you, we need another movie where it really defines who we are. Yeah. You know?

RZA, you know, RZA, you know, that was his side of how he wanted to tell it. You know, um... It's a great story. It's fine. It's fine. The Hulu thing's fine. But I think there's something missing. And I think the something missing is a movie. It's gotta be a movie. It's gotta be a big screen, big thing.

And it could be done, man. Y'all heard it first, man. Y'all heard it first. I ain't have to argue with my brothers about it. I mean, just imagine when ODB does Baby, I Got Your Money. Oh, my God. Come on. Imagine that, and that becomes this massive hit. Come on.

Massive hit. You know he had the most hits on Out of All of Us, right? He was so fucking talented, man. And so real. Remember when he was on MTV and they started talking about, like, what are you going to give? Where are you going to give your money? He's like, I give my money to nobody. He's like,

He was like, yo, you gonna give back? He was like, no. Yo, yeah, I remember that shit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And everybody was crying. Everybody loved him though, man. Because it was so real. It wasn't like, well, I think it's really important that we establish some sort of a community fund. Shut the fuck up. He was just having fun. You can make nothing. You know what I mean? But, you know, we always gave back in our own ways. Of course. Well, by existing, you give back. By existing, you inspire others. By existing, how many...

rap careers, how many hip hop careers were inspired by Wu-Tang Clan and all the members? Countless. Countless. Yeah. So many. I say that we definitely had a piece of watching the new generation grow and, you know, kind of

build their arc the way we built ours. That's important to reflect on that. Back then, like you said, nobody wasn't giving motherfuckers this kind of money. We was the first group that ever had a million dollar video. I remember that day me and RZA was coming up with the

With the storyboard. What video was that? Triumph. Wow. We did the Triumph shit. It was like, we came up with all this shit. It was like, yo, this shit's going to cost a million dollars. You're like, what the fuck? It's a million dollars. Like, do it. You know, and at that time, you know. Is this it? Oh, let me hear this. Yeah, yeah. This is with my guy, Brett Ratner. One of the first Jones. They've been seen approaching from Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens, and Staten Island. See the bees coming through and shit? Yeah.

bringing you up to the minute information. Police are reporting that there's a man on top of a skyscraper ready to jump. I'm told that he is possibly a member of the Wu-Tang Clan. The police suspect that there could be some connection between this and the killer beast. I form atomically Socrates philosophies and hypotheses Can't define how I be dropping these mockeries Lyrically perform armed robbery Flee with the lottery Pop

All right. We jump. We jump. All right.

Is it weird looking back now? Does it feel almost surreal that you guys did it?

A little bit to me, yeah. It has to. Yeah, to me for sure. I mean, you know, I always believed in my group, man. I mean, these guys is, like you said, very talented, very talented. Sometimes we don't know our power when we come together, but we might be the only group that stuck together so long, you know, because we all feed off each other every time. So to be able to reflect back when we was in our prime, it was like,

we still ain't even give our best. It was almost like, okay, yeah, we're going to do it because we have to. Not do it because we're all in a happy vibe, a happy moment. A lot of times we make great things happen out of nothing. You know, under pressure. Might have been turbulence in the room. Might have been an argument that happened that day. But we still managed to come out with something great out of that whole time of that moment.

You know, but... That's what's incredible is that through all the disputes, you guys still stay together. Yeah, yeah. Because there's no way you're going to have nine dudes and not have disputes. Exactly. Especially nine alphas, nine killers. It's hard, man. It's hard because, you know, everybody has an opinion. And you want to respect everybody's opinion, you know. But it made me think about sports and it made me think about how coaches and...

you know, outside of the group was so important. See, how we were designed, we huddled up, but we never really had people around us kind of like push the narrative more to show us our true power. So we made a lot of mistakes, you know, of being great but still handling the business a little bit different from if we would have had some...

Some coaches. Some guidance. Some guidance. The problem was back then, no one knew what was going on. Nobody knew. Because it was so fresh. It was so new. The whole genre had only existed for six or seven years. Right. So it was emerging and it was chaotic and it was so exciting, but there wasn't a lot of experts in how to manage it. Yeah. You know, it's like today, you know, a young artist could come to a guy like you and

and say, "Hey, what should I do? Help me out. What's the path that you think that I should take?" And you could give them real advice, where back then, who knew? Who knew Wu-Tang was gonna work? They would've told you that's not gonna work. They would've said, "You can't get nine dudes in a... That's crazy. How you doing that?" But it worked.

But it worked. It didn't just work. It accelerated everybody. It amplified all the voices. That's what was so crazy about it. It didn't just work. It worked better than being by yourself. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. I tell people all the time, the Klan, I think we all got better based on us as a collective. 100%. You know, nobody couldn't have did it by themselves and be great. Iron sharpens iron. That's right. And that's what it is. Steel sharpens steel. Yeah. You guys had so many killers together, there's no way it couldn't be great. That's what's incredible. It's like, it's so hard for people to do that. Yeah.

That's why it's never been done before, which is amazing. If you think about the history of hip-hop, how many artists have come up and not one group has come together and made like a, oh, they're just like Wu-Tang. Not one. Not one. Yeah, even when it comes to sales and each one of us was blessed to be able to go platinum and gold. But we talk about that. Sometimes when we all are together, we laugh and we say, damn, no other group's

Did what we did like come with guys that? Everybody in the group went gold and platinum and this and that and I can't I couldn't name one person He was like don't name one person name one group that did what we did at that level back then I couldn't name it you know what I mean because I

Well, the Kettle Boys branched out. Scarface obviously went on to have a massive career. Did you see his little tiny desk performance? Oh, yeah. Fucking incredible. Fucking incredible. Incredible. That's one of my greatest friends, too, man. And so different than anything else. The way he did it, he adapted the lyrics to the environment. Yeah. Oh, it was incredible. Incredible. Scarface is a real guy, too, man.

One of the all-timers. One of the all-time greats. All-time greats. Adam Coney, you show yet? I haven't yet. No, I'd love to have him on. I love that dude. I've had Willie on. I think that there's so many amazing talents that came out of that 90s hip-hop era that for a young guy coming up...

Someone who's interested in a career and now it's imperative that you go back. Go back. You have to. You've got to explore the classics. You've got to see what started this whole thing. And you've got to put yourself in this mindset. It's hard to imagine my experience of it because you're not going to be able to have it. It's always been around. But for me, when it came around, it was this totally new thing. This totally new sound. Totally new...

of music that existed and everybody was like, wow, and all the young people were excited. Everybody was excited, like, this is crazy. This is so different than everything else. Yeah.

And so for the people that are making a career in it now, like, ooh, I know there's a tendency to think you're the fucking man and everything else sucks. I'm telling you, you've got to abandon that. Abandon that thinking. Go back and educate yourself because it's free. It's free. Go get on YouTube. Get on Spotify. Educate yourself.

There's so much classic shit from the 90s that you're missing. And all we were doing really was just, like you said, just expression. Yeah. Being in the studio, smoking a lot of weed, you know, and a lot of times when we were smoking and just vibing, it's like we were mentioning things that,

You know, like today, like prime example, you know, I own a cannabis business in Newark called Hash Story. You know what I mean? See you representing us. You know, we said in rhymes like, can it be all so simple? Yo, I want to have me a fat yacht and enough land to go and plant my own sass crops. But for now, it was just a big dream. You know, so we kind of like spoke things into existence that...

At the end of the day, like, you know, now as I sit here and I'm an owner of a cannabis business, I'm like, wow, he was talking about things. You know, my first joint in it went gold. I put it on my mother's, you know, my mother's living room wall. You know, we did that. So we were kind of like saying things that meant so much to us back then, but still dreaming of.

of it being a reality and the next thing you know it happens you know like how you said you know GZA being so intelligent and talking about science and you know meth you know talking about certain things and you know now today he's in the movie world and Riz is a director and you know these were the things that were going through our minds as we were just smoking and listening to production and just saying yo what the right next what

Where do we want to go? You know? And I think that that is important as an artist is to dream and be creative. Don't sit in one box. Like that's the shit that just be driving me crazy a lot with hip hop today. It's like, yo, it's just sounding too fucking repetitious. Like let's make it bigger. Let's,

Let's take it over here, over here, over here. But sometimes it's just sitting in one fucking box where it's like, yo, come on. It's not just that. It's about opening up the doors for everybody to be able to see so many sides. Now it just seems like the hip-hop shit is just being controlled by one person that's saying, yo, we want y'all to stay right there.

We want you to talk ignorant. We want you to not grow. We want you to just... Whatever they think is going to sell.

Why is that the case? I don't get it. The same reason why they were trying to take the RZA and change him and turn him into something he's not. People always do that. They do that in comedy. They do that in podcasting. They do that in music. There's always some executive that thinks they know better, and they're going to mold you and shape you and change you, and this is what we're going to do. We're going to hire an image team. It's all just bullshit. It's non-artists interfering with art. That's what it is.

It's when you have middlemen, you know? You have these people that profit off of your talent, and they think they're going to steer it in a way that's going to be the most profitable. They don't give a fuck if you're, like, earnestly and honestly expressing yourself. That doesn't mean anything to them. They just want you to stay in that box because that's the box they're selling. Right.

And once it sells once, they don't want you to change it up. Remember when Ice-T started a fucking heavy metal band? Oh my God, yeah. Ice-T, who played a cop on TV for like fucking 30 years, he had a song called Cop Killer. Body count. And it was

And everybody wanted him to be the rapper. And Ice-T was like, I'm going to do a hardcore album. It was like, what? I'm a motherfucking cop killer. It's like, what is this? What is this? This is crazy. But it's like, he just didn't listen. He's like, I don't give a fuck what you say. I'm going to do what I want to do. And this is what I want to do now. And you have to give an artist that ability to do that. They have to be able to change it up anytime they want.

Whatever, because whatever got them to the dance is going to keep them dancing. And they might dance to the beat of a different song, but it's going to be the same person, that same creative force that created whatever you liked in the beginning. Well, you probably like this new direction they're going to go into because it's going to be just as good. Mm-hmm.

It's just like, we all like different, like you were saying you like Billy Joel. We both like Cool G Rap. It's very different. You wouldn't want to see the two of them at a concert together. But that's what you have to give room for in artists. And these executives and these people that are profiting off of art without being creative,

their input's always terrible. It's always terrible because they don't have a vision. They don't really, unless you're like a Rick Rubin, like one of those cats that's just like super eccentric, weirdo, genius dude who just knows what he likes and go, hold on, hold on, do that again. Stop that. Stop, stop, stop. Do it again. Do it again. Do it that way. Okay, can you make it echo? Do it. Do it. Give me an echo. But he's working with you because he sees something. Right, right, right. He's barefoot and shit and fucking doing yoga. Yeah.

One of the geniuses. Super weirdo. A Scott Storch type character. Yeah, you, those guys. These guys be great in they own way though, you know. They're artists though. Mm.

It's like that's different. But when you get these suits and the suits get involved and they know that, oh, we made, you know, Raekwon sold a million and seven hundred thousand CDs doing it like this. So this is what we want from this one, too. We want it to be the exact same way. We want to do it like that. Do it like that again. Like, oh, no, no. What's this new thing you're doing?

what's this new thing we talk about discipline no no no no no no you know but that's one of the most important things about hip-hop too is like songs inspire people to change their lives like like gangsta song discipline like that song inspires you to have discipline it's a great song with great lyrics like yo this became knowledge to us man yes

You know, that's what I miss about hip hop is the knowledge factor, you know, raising our kids to be smarter and, you know, not hiding anything from them. Like you said, once you put that warning stick on it, don't look at it. They're going to look at it anyway. So why not let them see what for what it is and then say, yo, look, you can make these choices, but you go that way. You know what you're getting.

You go this way, you know what you're getting. I think all it takes is someone today to do what you guys were doing and blow up. And then everybody would want to do it that way. If someone today became like this genius lyricist who's like pointing out things in society and became a huge artist. But you think that music is still, you think the radio...

Or play it? I don't think the radio means jack shit anymore. I think what means something now is people sharing it. That's what means something. How do they get it out there, though? Put it on Spotify, put it on SoundCloud, put it on YouTube. Someone sees it, someone hears it, you send it to somebody, they send it to 10 people, and then it goes viral. That's what it's all about now. Yeah.

I think it's just be undeniable. Be undeniable. Have some shit where you listen to it and you go, ooh. Be confident, yeah. And you have your friends like, you got to listen to this. Listen to this. Listen to this. First lines. First lines. Yeah. Yeah, listen to that shit. Oh, my God. That's how we always sold it anyway. Oh, my God. Yeah, come out of the gate with a fucking haymaker. Boom. This is what we do, though. Yeah.

See, damn, you talking like how I feel about my album I'm about to drop. When is it coming out? I feel that way. Well, you know, shit, I just been working on this documentary, right, for the Purple Team. Let me just be honest with you, take you back. I've been working on, you know, Only Built for Cuban Links is my what's going on album, my thriller album that I made.

30 years ago. This year, 2025, it'll be 30 years. So what we done was we went back and decided to do a documentary about it, a real-life film. So it's called The Purple Tape Files because, remind you, Only Built for Cuban Links was the name of the album. But being that I came with it as a cassette,

everybody started to call this album The Purple Tape. So now, you know, we came back and we decided to do, you know, me and my team from my camp, you know, the Klan, of course, the Klan, but this is something that was my intellectual property that I said, yo, you know what? Me and my guys sat down, my team sat down and said, yo, you need to do a documentary about this album because you can make 50 albums. People are still going to talk about...

Only built for Cuban Link. So I said, damn, you know what? You're right. So what I did was I said, you know what? Let me invest in it and kind of tell a story of what helped us inspire that album, what helped us be a part of the culture.

and how it still allows me to still exist today. Like, if you see a lot of these guys today in the game, they still wearing Cuban link chains. Yeah. You know what I mean? So who would have ever thought that I'm calling my album Only Built for Cuban Link, niggas? Now everybody named Mother is wearing Cuban link chains today, 30 years later. So, you know, that's been something that I've been working on, and believe it or not, we've been working on it for 10 years. Wow. So I got over 50 influential...

people that was in my life that was affected by that album to be a part of this documentary. So now, this is all in the making. We didn't actually go out there and start pitching it yet. We're finally getting ready to do it right now as we speak. As we speak.

Once the new year kicking and all that, we will be ready to go out there and position ourselves to go do a deal with a network with this project. It's going to be L. It's a great idea. You know what I mean? So my thing is to talk about it in a way to where the way we made the album, all the experiences, all the things that we went through, and eventually that would wind up becoming a movie later on because the storyboard of how I talk about it

It's going to blow people's minds because it's like, damn, this is what you was going through? This is how your mindset was? Because I just want people to know that that album was made because I love hip-hop, man. And, you know, we were in a position to make something golden that...

At that time, I was already thinking cinematic. I was already in my Martin Scorsese mindset because when I came into Klan, I was like, yo, I don't do all the karate shit. I don't know how to rhyme like that. I don't even know about drugs and hustlers and trying to get from here to there and turn my life around for the positive, you know? So we talk about this in a documentary and we go through some of the songs. And like I said, you know, I got some of my guys that...

You know, we had, you know, we had conflictions with some artists out there like Biggie back then. Everybody thought we had a beef and, you know, just it becomes interesting. But the bottom line is that's what I've been working on alongside with working on some other music. So I just said, yo, let me get this done the right way first.

And then I'm going to drop some new music. So I got a definitely new album getting ready to come out. When is that going to come out, you think? The new album? I'd say probably between second quarter right now. Yeah. And I never even mentioned the name of the album, but I'll mention it on your show. The name of the album is going to be called The Emperor's New Clothes.

You ever heard that Dutch folk tale, The Emperor Wears No Clothes? You familiar with it? The Emperor Wears No Clothes. Yeah. So that's going to be the name of it because I feel like the status quo today, everybody follows bullshit. Nobody wants to be genuine no more. Nobody wants to call out shit that makes sense. It's like, oh, if you believe it, oh, I'm supposed to believe it. I'm supposed to believe nothing that don't feel like what it's supposed to be to me.

Goes back to like you said, and I'm listening to everything you're saying about you have to do it from this way. Fuck that. Fuck radio. Whatever is going to stop you from being you.

You know what I mean? So this is the same mindset that I'm thinking with my hip hop. My new album that's coming. Like, yo, I'm not going to let you tell me that this is not what people still love. You know what I mean? I don't care. I know what I know from coming up as a kid who loved hip hop and what inspired me so much.

I'm going to have a ball this year, man. I got a lot of great things that I want to give the world. But yeah, that's going to be the name of my new album. People still love it. And I'm telling you, these young kids that I have at the Comedy Mothership, when I play them 1990s hip hop, they go, oh. They love it. They just don't know yet. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. They just don't know. And we can't fault them because they wasn't alive probably at that time. Also, they got so much shit coming their way. Exactly. They're getting inundated by all these new artists and all these new TikToks. There's so much shit going on. There's so much shit going on. There's so much going on. But, you know, I always say that it's always a lane for...

people that love music. You know what I mean? I don't care. It's like, you could be 50, you know, today I'm sitting here as a 55-year-old man that still have that kid in them to love what helped me be who I am today. So I'm still at my best when it comes to making music, you know? Like, today the chef is more of a...

an architect artist now. I don't consider myself a gangster rapper or a funny rapper. I'm an architect rapper, you know, because I like to reflect on things about growth and development, you know, and, um...

When people hear this album, they're going to be like, damn, like, yo, he still fucking got it. I tell people all the time, don't ever think we're going to lose that shit. That's like sitting here and saying Mike Tyson can't fight. When you know at the end of the day, he ain't lose a fucking bit when it comes to how he feels that passion for boxing or whatever. I feel the same way with my music. So get ready. But then, like I said, the name of the album is called The Emperor's New Clothes.

Check for that shit. I'm ready. I'm ready. Listen, brother, thank you very much for being here. It was a real honor. Of course. A real pleasure. You my guy, man. Thank you. And thank you for everything you guys have done over the years. I've been endlessly entertained by Wu-Tang Clan for a long fucking time. There you go. And I hope somebody listens to this and makes that fucking movie. Make that movie.

Well, we're going to make it happen. Do it the right way. We're going to figure it out. I wish I made movies. I wish I was a movie maker because that's what I would make. I would make it that way. I would open up with that fucking Riker scene. Listen, Joe, it's never too late for us to do what the fuck we want to do. Never too late. Never too late. Never too late. Thank you, sir. Love you. Love you, too. Thank you very much. Appreciate it, sir. Bye, brother. Bye.