By 1993, we were all ready to go all out to make the Wu-Tang happen for real. All the Clan members had that hustler’s mentality, because that’s where we came from. Oli “Power” Grant, the executive producer of every Wu-Tang album and CEO of Wu Wear, hustled. John “Mook” Gibbons, our road manager, hustled. Even RZA hustled in Ohio at a certain point. Some of us might have been deeper in the game than others, but we were all going through rough times, scrapping and scraping for a meal. We were out there with grumbling bellies and worn-out sneakers, our clothes smelling like mildew.
All that negative shit we were going hard with in the streets? We put that same energy into something positive. Times were changing on the streets; the drug game was over, at least the heyday was. There wasn’t much out there for street dudes like me and my clan. Luckily the seeds had been planted years and years earlier, and now they started coming to fruition.
That’s another reason why it was easy for the Wu-Tang members to stick together at first: We had a gang mentality, or at least we did in those early days. We knew each other and all had a common cause, so it was easy for us to bond over that.
We had to work harder than ever, though. No free rides, no free money. I had to stop making five thousand dollars a day hustling and do something for far less. We sacrificed fast cash and the street life for the security of a career that we weren’t even sure was gonna pay off, but we went for it anyway. We believed in what we were doing, so it was pretty easy to stop calling the connect for the re-up.
Besides, I was still making a little bit of bread during this time. We had shows here and there and got paid per diems from the record label, forty to sixty dollars a day. The label also took care of our recording expenses. So I just ate off my lil’ stacks I’d saved, the per diem, and the little bit of show money we were getting here and there. We didn’t have to do nothing but get on the road and go. So why not go somewhere farther than I’ve ever been and help make a name for me and my team?
We were young as hell: twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four years old. Our first road experience wasn’t even on a tour bus. Mook would come get us in his car, an old, two-door Mitsubishi Scorpion, and we’d all pile in and drive for hundreds of miles to do college promos. We’d go from college to college. Sometimes it was just me, Deck, Meth, and Raekwon. The Four Horsemen. We would drive two hours to Philadelphia. We’d drive three hours this way. We’d do little showcases that led to more shows and more promo. It was all leading up to that album release. Eventually all that initial work paid off in more ways than just record sales.
Truth be told, it was awesome. I didn’t have to worry about being hassled by the police anymore. I didn’t have to worry about my product or stickup kids or junkies trying to hold me up anymore. I didn’t have to go around strapped with a vest on anymore. I didn’t have to constantly check my rearview mirror to see if the police were following us. Later on, we had the van, with a driver supplied by the record company to take us anywhere we wanted to go. I just got to sit in the back, smoke a little weed, drink a little, and chill with my brothers. I didn’t have to watch my back all the time anymore, and while I would never trade that learning experience for nothing, touring was great because the pressure of the streets was finally off me.
In 1993, I made the choice to leave all that negative shit behind me. I got caught out there doing some shit, yeah. I went to jail, did my fucking time, came home, and changed my fucking life. I had come to a realization: Yo, you know what, man? I’m going back to the old UG man, who was just doing for himself, staying to himself, staying out of trouble, but this time I know how to live. I know how to enjoy myself. I know what matters.
I made that transition. The Wu-Tang Clan all made that transition. We’re all just some street-hustlin’ dudes who put in that work, and we made it.
*
When Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) came out, it took us out of the hood and into mainstream America. It felt like it all happened overnight, but, of course, we’d already been grinding for years. A lot of folks also don’t realize we dropped a double-A-sided single (“Protect Ya Neck”/“After the Laughter Comes Tears”) independently on vinyl via Wu-Tang Records, and that we hit the road and developed our own fan base long before we signed to Loud/RCA.
We’d always had an indie mentality from the beginning. Since we didn’t pay for play on the radio, we hit the streets, tore clubs up, and blazed our own path like rock stars. Our stage show was what put us on the map—we were a spectacle. No one had ever seen anything like it before, a big crew of characters hitting the stage, spitting so lyrical with so much energy, bringing the ruckus raw and uncut, leaving crowds soaked and always wanting more! A Wu-Tang concert was a mind-blowing experience; it wasn’t till much later that radio started showing us love because we were undeniable, and soon thereafter labels started signing solo one-off deals with various crew members.
And all the while, we constantly stayed on the road. It seemed like if the Clan as a whole wasn’t touring, one of the members would drop something; guys were rotating on and off; two members would come home, the next guy would take off; it was nonstop. Money was moving so fast back then that when mistakes were made they weren’t so hard to swallow, but unfortunately deals were put in motion without proper oversight. CASH RULED EVERYTHING AROUND ME! In our later years, this would bite us in the ass and cause conflict among my brothers.
Along the way, we definitely had some characters around us. Like Mook, RZA’s cousin and our first road manager. He was around prior to our first album and was instrumental early on in our careers. The dude quit his city job as an MTA bus driver to tour with us, and he deserves all credit. He was with us every step of the way in those early years, every show, every mile. He didn’t hinder, he didn’t fall, he didn’t say no. When it was time to hit the road, he would drive us for hours to those early gigs. He was also instrumental in our early promotion efforts and getting the word out about the Wu.
Mook was a one hell of a character. He didn’t hesitate to get tough with promoters, he’d only take cash (it was C.R.E.A.M. 24/7 with this dude) at our shows, and he carried all the money in an old-school Crown Royal bag along with a .22 Special. If things got hairy, he would get us up and out of the situation. He didn’t have a problem beating people up, either.
Quite a stand-up guy, and we loved him … until we found out he sometimes charged a little more than the standard 10 percent management fee to promoters. He’d have us perform at 9 P.M. on one side of town, then take us to the other side of the same town for another show three hours later. Mook didn’t play by anyone’s rules but his own—if he could make some money, he was all in. He’d split the door with the promoters, then break us off what he deemed was reasonable at the time, depending on the situation. It’s not that he was a crook, just that he was a definite hustler, and at that stage of the game we appreciated having someone like that with us on the road. Mook still pops up here and there, and has worked for RZA off and on over the years.
Anyway, we were putting that work in, with everybody now on the road for several months at a time, traveling all over the country, staying in cheap hotels, getting paid little bits of money. Those hotels in the early days were shitty. I’m talking two or three rooms for nine motherfuckers. Some of us slept on the floor, some of us slept in the bed. But even that was better than hustlin’ on the streets, and I wouldn’t trade any of that experience for nothing.
But the early days were just crazy. There were times we got shot at on the road. Sometimes we’d go through all this drama just to make a hundred dollars for all of us. I went from making several thousand dollars a day to having to settle for a hundred dollars split nine ways.
Sometimes we wouldn’t even make that much. We got chased out of certain towns. One situation happened when we were in Houston, Texas, where we almost got our asses handed to us. It was a Scarface (from the Geto Boys) town; he was real popular down there. The crowd wasn’t really feeling us too much that night. We’d faced that type of shit before, though, so we just tried to thug through it.
We got onstage and immediately started getting booed and shit. Then we got into a confrontation with some dude who was shouting at us to get off the stage and bring out Scarface. Then he splashed RZA in the face with some water or something. RZA went “what the fuck” and splashed him back. That’s when bottles started flying. One crashed by my feet. Next bottle hit RZA, but didn’t break. RZA threw that shit back in the general direction it came from.
Two seconds later, the whole crowd bombarded us with bottles. Glass was crashing and smashing all around us. We had to run to the van. When we got there, motherfuckers started rushing it. I guess a lot of the dudes that had come to the show were members of a gang, and they surrounded our van. Shots were fired into the air and all that crazy shit. We damn near ran dudes over gettin’ out of there. It wasn’t the first time a show went south, and it damn sure wouldn’t be the last time.
Us getting run out of town was only half of the story. The promoter only gave us one hundred dollars. It turned out it was a fake hundred-dollar bill. We nearly got the shit beat out of us, we got chased out of town, and we didn’t even make a dollar. Remember, we had to split this hundred dollars between nine motherfuckers now. In the beginning, we couldn’t get no money to split among each other. We had to wing all of that.
Chicago also didn’t show us a lotta love in the early days. When we first came to town, motherfuckers were popping caps outside the venue at us. Then, when we went on, we were told to get off the stage. They were like, “Fuck y’all.”
Funny thing, though—we didn’t have those kinds of problems on the East Coast. That sort of shit went down primarily in the Midwest. To be fair, we hadn’t broken those markets yet, but we had to step into them to see where our footing was at. Back in ’93, rap was still fairly underground in the Midwest, so we wound up doing a lot of college radio, select nightclubs, record stores, anywhere that would have us.
And often there would be local artists that would make it difficult to break in—not directly, but because the audience was used to a different kind of sound. When we toured the South, we had to do “southern” remixes of our songs. It’s much different now, with everything being global, but at the time, every state seemed like a completely different situation.
That was all fine, though, because we saw the bigger picture, just like when we used to hustle back on the street. We knew this was just like giving out some free samples to get the fiends to try it. And for every hundred places we performed at, maybe only twenty liked us, but we’d take it and move on to the next stop. Every day we’d link up and talk about what steps we were taking that day to carry out the master plan. And our trailblazing pushed down the walls for more New York and East Coast rap—Biggie Smalls, Jay-Z, all of them—to spread across the country.
*
RZA was smart when he was assembling the team in the early days. He needed responsible hustlers that he knew could do the job. That’s just my thing. That’s why I have a tattoo of sergeant’s stripes on my arm, ’cause if you give me a job to do, I’m gonna do it to the best of my ability. And keeping nine guys moving in one direction took a bit of organization. But we all had the same goal: get out of the streets. RZA knew that, and that’s why I give him credit for picking not only the best rappers on Staten Island, but the hardest workers from there to make up the Clan.
For example, in the beginning, when we had to do promotional tours, I was one of only five of the members riding out every day. At this time, other Clan members were working on their solo albums.RZA was working on his Gravediggaz project, Meth was putting Tical together, and GZA was working on Liquid Swords. They were also getting Dirty’s record (Return to the 36 Chambers: The Dirty Version) together too, so the rest of us were on the road.
It was Rae, Ghost, Deck, Meth, and me. We called ourselves the Five Horsemen, and we walked that Wu shit every single day. We went from town to town, doing our thing. Just all that promo shit, a lot of shaking hands and kissing babies. We did hundreds of radio interviews. That’s why I’m not the most famous in the group, but I’m still recognizable. My name may not be like Rae, Ghost, or Meth, but people see me and they know. Because I’ve put in that fucking work.
Besides solidifying our fan base worldwide, another plus side of touring so heavy in our early days was that we became known as a touring band. A lot dudes in the nineties didn’t want to tour, because it’s hard work. They just wanted to chill while their songs were on heavy rotation on the radio and do the glamorous things. Not us. We’d be twelve deep in a van sometimes, a bunch of funky motherfuckers stinking like armpits, but we laid that groundwork, and now we can always tour the world. That all started because we didn’t take the blessing for granted after going through the rough shit on the streets and in jail. None of us did. We were willing to put in the work. And we’re still touring to this day, still on the road getting paid.
That first go-round, though, we were still learning about life on the road and performing. We had already put out “Protect Ya Neck,” and I had come home in time to do a lil’ verse and be in the video. We toured on that for a while, then came back to NYC and put out “Da Mystery of Chessboxin’.” Those two records sold a combined 150,000 copies, giving us our first wind. Then, after RZA, Power, and Divine secured our deal with Loud Records/RCA, we filmed the videos for “C.R.E.A.M.,” “Da Mystery of Chessboxin’,” and “Wu-Tang Clan Ain’t Nuthing ta Fuck Wit.” Those three were in the clip ready to be let off while we ran around the globe promoting.
RZA hadn’t put those videos out yet, though, because “Method Man” was still doing its thing. That song was a lot of fans’ first real introduction to the Wu-Tang Clan because “Protect Ya Neck” was so underground, even though it was selling well. Video Music Box played it. That was about it. We had to stay on the road to really keep the movement flowing. Meth’s song helped usher in new fans while we were on the road. Loud also dropped a hundred thousand dollars of marketing money on us. They pushed our record hard.
And while we were on the road representing Wu to the fullest, RZA was finishing up Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers). But he told me since I had been fucking up, bouncing in and outta jail and shit, I was only on two and a half songs. “I see you working now, though, U-God,” he said. “You keep it up, and you’ll get much more shine on the next ones.”
I wasn’t even mad at the time. I took being on only a few songs for what it really was: a great opportunity. We had the Loud Records budget in place, so we were living on the road, sometimes staying in nice hotels, fucked-up spots other times. But we were getting around. And once Loud kicked in this van for us to travel with, it was a wrap. We were in there all day.
And there was absolutely nothing to miss back home. Once we left the street, we never looked back. Dudes in the street didn’t know what we were doing, because we didn’t brag about any of it. When we came back, and people started getting wind of what we had going on, there was some hate and jealousy. I came from hell all the way up, and when we were getting it together and trying to get up out of the hood, motherfuckers didn’t believe us, didn’t believe what we were doing. They didn’t believe nothing. Why? Because they couldn’t see nothing but what was in front of them.
That’s a problem with a lot of people in the ghetto. They can’t see nothing past the ghetto, so they can’t fathom that there’s a life outside the hood. I had been like that once, too—I couldn’t see past the projects I was hustling in.
But by that time, we were already doing what we had set out to do. By the time we came back, people in the neighborhood, including the police, were surprised that we had actually pulled ourselves out, instead of getting ground up in the streets. They were like, “Oh, shit. These dudes went and actually did that shit.”
There were some old friends that were happy for us and our success. Still, when we left the hood, everything left the hood with us. Clientele, money, everything left. We took all that somehow. We took all the energy with us, and Park Hill was never the same afterward.
*
Meanwhile, we just kept moving forward in full-time work mode, totally focused. We played Jack the Rapper and other festivals all over the country. Then we did colleges. So many colleges, from Miami all the way to Rhode Island and back again. After that, we did nationwide radio shows.
We did the Midwest, we did Texas, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Virginia, Miami, then back to Hollywood, and then up to Canada. One day we’d be on a beach in Hawaii, and then next thing you know we’d be on a beach in Puerto Rico.
We did promotion everywhere we went. Promotion, promotion, promotion. It helped that we had serious marketing money behind us. When the record company saw how dedicated we were, they got more comfortable investing to send us places and get the word out.
As we traveled, we realized just how big the earth really is. People in the ghetto think the world is small, like the size of a pea. The thing is, being in poverty restricts you from traveling. It’s like you’re stuck in confinement. But the world is humongous. Hit Australia. Hit Europe. Hit Japan. Hit South America. You don’t have to limit yourself to just your city, or even just your country. Look at us—we’re loved all over the goddamn planet.
A lot of artists are still thinking they want to be on the radio. Don’t get it twisted, radio is an endlessly running machine, and it requires an equally endless supply of songs to keep it going. And if you don’t put yours out there, someone else definitely will.
But radio isn’t the be-all, end-all, either. There are so many touring bands out there that never have a single fucking song on the radio and still tour two hundred dates a year, filling up stadiums, traversing the world. Especially now that album sales are down. People may not be willing to buy music, but they’ll always be down to pay for the experience of live music. We were blessed to establish ourselves early in our career as a touring band.
At that time though, we weren’t sure if all those promo tours were ever gonna pay off. All the work we’d been putting in, RZA’s beats and know-how and our talents for having wild crazy styles to attack every track with, made us feel fairly confident that we were gonna win, that it was only a matter of time. Some days, though, we just weren’t as positive as others. Even with all our confidence, ability, and drive, we could never see the future with 100 percent clarity—no one ever can. We just had to do the best we could, bringing it every single time, every single day.
I remember chilling on the beach in San Juan, Puerto Rico, with Masta Killa one day. We had come down for a show and had a few days before heading back to the States for the next go-round, including an appearance on The Arsenio Hall Show, so we were just sitting on the sand, smoking weed and talking. I remember that time because it was the last occasion we ever even contemplated not succeeding as a group.
Masta started off: “Yo, God, I really don’t know if we ever gonna make it. All I know is I don’t wanna go back to the streets.”
“I know, Killa, that’s why we gotta give it all we got,” I replied. “There is no try, it’s do or die. This shit’s gotta take off, it’s just gotta. We gotta make it, ’cause I ain’t goin’ back to the streets, either. I’m never goin’ back.”
While we were there, we were playing on the fucking Jet Skis and shit with Divine and General Wah, and I’m gunning it around in the deep water. Just four guys from Staten Island fucking around on Jet Skis. For some apparent reason—I don’t know why—I thought the shit had brakes like a mountain bike. Jet Skis don’t have brakes.
I decide to try to get closer to those other motherfuckers, right? I got too close to Masta Killa. I didn’t know I’d accidentally hit his Jet Ski. He falls into the motherfuckin’ water like a bobber from a fishing pole. He had his life jacket on, but I still didn’t see him for a good five seconds. He was gone. I was like, “Oh, shit, this dude’s gone.”
All of a sudden he pops up. “Yo! Help me, dawg! Help me! Help!” Goes back down in the water. “Help me, dawg! Help me!”
I get over there and pull him out of the water. This motherfucker grabs me with the clutch of death. The grip of life! He grabbed me so hard the front of my fucking Jet Ski pops up on a wheelie. I was like, “Yo, dawg! We both gonna be in the water soon!”
It was some funny-ass shit, but to this day he still says I was fuckin’ trying to kill him.
*
We did The Arsenio Hall Show when we got back from Puerto Rico. This was the black Ed Sullivan Show for us, and we were the Beatles, poised and ready to invade the mainstream.
The label had everything set up already, their publicity machine was in full motion. They already had the new album. They had the videos shot and ready to go. These motherfuckers had this shit really, really big. Everything we had done over the past year, the thousands of miles on the road, hundreds of shows and interviews and events, was ready to blow up huge.
The night we performed on Arsenio was crazy. We were all backstage, and we were all nervous, Rae, Ghost, Meth, everyone. Now, we were comfortable performing in general, but this was Arsenio, the hottest show going at the time.
When we first hit the stage, we all felt the love from the crowd right away. We launched into “C.R.E.A.M.,” and when that money fell from the ceiling, that was it. We killed it. As soon as that episode aired, Loud Records dropped the video and the single.
Our sales were decent before that. We were hovering around 170,000 units. Once that shit hit the streets and people saw the video, we were outta there. Within hours, “C.R.E.A.M.” went gold. We hit 250,000 units sold, then within a week we went to 500,000, then 700,000, then 800,000, and we were gone after that. It kept going, up to 1.2 million, then to 1.8 million. That’s when we knew that life wouldn’t be the same anymore. My old life was gone.
After “C.R.E.A.M.,” the other videos came: “Wu-Tang Clan Ain’t Nuthing ta Fuck Wit” and “Da Mystery of Chessboxin’.” We got swept up in a whirlwind. We started doing bigger and bigger shows. We were able to make a living doing what we were doing. We did a tour of Europe. Everything changed, and we were becoming hip-hop royalty.
*
“C.R.E.A.M.” is a true song. Everything Inspectah Deck and Raekwon said is 100 percent true. Not one line in that entire song is a lie, or even a slight exaggeration. Deck did sell base, and he did go to jail at the age of fifteen. Rae was sticking up white boys on ball courts, rocking the same damn ’Lo sweater. And of course, Meth on the hook was like butter on the popcorn. Meth knew the hard times, too, being out there smoking woolies and pumping crack, etc. That raspy shit he was kicking just echoed in everyone’s head long after the song was done playing.
The realism on “C.R.E.A.M.” is what resonates with so many people all over the world. People everywhere know that sentiment of being slaves to the dollar. Cash is king, and we are its lowly subjects. That’s pretty much the case in every nation around the world, the desperation to put your life and your freedom on the line to make a couple dollars. Whether you’re working, stripping, hustling, or slinging, whether you’re a business owner or homeless, cash rules everything around us.
It’s amazing how the song that depicts the harsh life in Park Hill is what ended up taking us out of that very same ghetto environment. That song was just so real, so vivid, it was a no-brainer that it would connect with the people like it did. I mean, “Protect Ya Neck” and “Method Man” had both connected with a fairly large audience, but not like “C.R.E.A.M.” did. If the world wasn’t watching before, they were definitely watching us now.
We hustled up our shit to get our little first promo records pressed up, but when RCA gave us that deal, that was it. There was no going back. Their money was ten times larger than our shit. They put corporate money behind us. They gave us T-shirts, they got us bigger venues, they gave us the ability to spread our music farther and wider than we ever could have on our own.
Our budget was huge. They must have invested and marketed about thirty million into the Wu-Tang Clan, and in turn, we made sure to set it off. Once we started gaining buzz in the streets, we signed to Loud, and all they had to do was put gas on the fire, ’cause when we started creeping up and making those numbers, and they were sufficient and legit, they couldn’t do nothing. They had to get behind us.
We may have been young, but we already had the structure of hard work ingrained into us, the work ethic of the streets ingrained into us. New York is a twenty-four-hour city, so you had to be hustling twenty-four hours a day. Your drug spot wouldn’t be successful unless it was pumping every hour of every day, and if I wasn’t out there, someone else was gonna be selling to my clients. That’s the work ethic the dreads passed down to us, and we just took it and turned it into recording and the touring life. In other words, we weren’t lazy motherfuckers.
We kept expanding, not just with live shows, but by diversifying our portfolios. For example, we were doing guest spots on other albums. I got on SWV’s “Anything” with Method Man and ODB. We had the St. Ides commercial. We had Wu Wear about to take off. Everywhere you looked, we had different team members representing that W.
Dolla dolla bill y’all, indeed.