If you really look at it, and my brothers understand this, too, we all pulled each other out of the fucked-up situation we were all born into. Without RZA and GZA laying that foundation—including taking losses with their first albums—we couldn’t have done it. Then Method Man took us to another level with “Method Man.” Raekwon and Deck kicked such real shit on “C.R.E.A.M.” Power and ODB and myself all brought our individual skills and talents to the table to make something bigger than each one of us. Our verses on “Da Mystery of Chessboxin’” and the aesthetics of the video showed that the whole crew had skills. Then getting on SWV’s joint made the R&B girls take notice, if they hadn’t already. Each step took us further toward our goal, all of it took us as a group all the way to the top, and we couldn’t have reached the next step without the previous one. And at the time, I was like, “Yeah, we got the illest crew in the whole fuckin’ world.”
That’s why no matter what business or whatever gets a little messed up, I will always have love for RZA. He really put my head back on my shoulders when it needed to be and pointed me in the right direction. No matter what shit he may have pulled on me and other dudes, I will always have mad respect for him for moving me forward.
But things started getting more complicated as more money started coming in, and some of us got pulled into solo endeavors. Of course, there’d always been minor bickering between us. You can’t have nine dudes on tour and in the studio together and not expect to disagree from time to time. But when we started out, we were all moving in the same direction. As we learned more about the ins and outs of the music business, however, rifts started forming over that side of things.
When Raekwon (Immobilarity, 1999), Method Man (Blackout!, with Redman, 1999), and Ghost (Supreme Clientele, 2000) ventured off on their own endeavors, I’ll admit I felt a bit left out. I looked at it like Deck, Masta Killa, and me were on the sidelines while the rest of the group was doing their thing. Even when Deck and me each got solo album deals, we couldn’t get the same support from the entire Clan the way earlier records had been supported.
When it was time to do my first solo album, Golden Arms Redemption, RZA only wrote and produced three tracks. I got beats from outside dudes instead. I got some darts here and there from my fellow Clansmen, but I didn’t have that entire Wu-Tang chemistry that gave listeners that unified feeling. That all-for-one mind-set wasn’t there anymore, and Redemption didn’t get the full support it should have. Regardless, my first album did good when I released it on Priority in ’99.
My first single was “Bizarre,” and was produced by Bink! That was my man. It was the first Wu-related single to chart in the top ten on Billboard’s hip-hop chart, debuting at number 7. I was out of the gate with a full head of steam, and my second single “Rumble” was on the first rap-related video game, Wu-Tang: Shaolin Style, so I was getting tons of shine.
At the time, Priority was home to N.W.A, Ice Cube, and Snoop Dogg. The owner, Bryan Turner, sold it to EMI in the middle of my record dropping, so tons of people were in and out the door at the label. I got no support from anyone, I was literally maintaining off the energy we had in the streets as a Wu-Tang member. Later, in 2001, Priority, bought for one hundred million dollars, went belly up and was dissolved into their catalog. To this day, I haven’t seen one statement for all those record sales!
Hell, Masta Killa didn’t even get to put out a solo album (No Said Date) until 2004. It was a great album, but it wasn’t like the earlier ones. Those were all Wu-Tang albums, with certain artists featured more heavily than others, but everybody was present.
Deck had similar issues when it came time to release his album in ’99. Uncontrolled Substance didn’t get any support from the Clan at all. Deck should’ve been putting out a solo by that time, but a lot of his work got lost in a flood in RZA’s basement. So much work was lost in that disaster. To make matters worse, RZA contributed less than a handful of beats, while Ghost, Method Man, and Raekwon weren’t even present. Instead, some of the lesser-known Clan affiliates, like La the Darkman, Streetlife, Shadii, and Beretta 9, came through to get on tracks.
*
In 2000, as RZA had promised on Wu-Tang Forever, we dropped the next album, The W. Overall, I felt like it didn’t have enough heat, like we didn’t come hard enough with enough grit to satisfy our real fans. The W was the first album we weren’t truly feeling.
Iron Flag followed a year later. Again, the sound was off to some of us. It wasn’t what we wanted a Wu-Tang album to sound like. It wasn’t the direction we all wanted to go.
Also, some of the members, like Deck and myself, felt like we weren’t getting the full support of the Clan on our solo projects, and major signs of discord began to show. Dudes weren’t happy with the current Wu-Tang Clan sound, and it all stemmed from what RZA was focusing on at that time.
RZA leveraged the group’s success to make inroads into Hollywood, acting in and directing major motion pictures. Hanging out in Hollywood, altering his style and persona, he lost track of what made us hot along the way. The winning formula was lost, the focus on production of the music took a nosedive, the guys spent less and less time together recording, thus the music was flawed, and that edginess just wasn’t there anymore.
This subsequently created a domino effect on the group. Our solo projects weren’t riding the coattails or energy created by a platinum Wu album anymore. The music was still more or less solid, but fans missed that old, gritty sound they were used to hearing from the brothers.
This was also around the time when big budgets in music started drying up. GZA left Geffen, Meth and Ghost left Def Jam, Raekwon left Universal in 2003 after The Lex Diamond Story, and RZA had crashed and burned three or four distribution deals by then. I guess that’s what happens when you put amateurs in charge of your business instead of people with actual business experience. Overall sales numbers started decreasing in general, both in the music business and for the group as well. This was also a sign of the times that the Golden Era was over.
*
In 2004, I took a flyer to put together my Hillside Scramblers project. I tried to set this up for two reasons: one, I was trying to expand my producing abilities, and two, I was trying to cultivate some new talent. I thought I had the perfect plan—I knew some dope, killer MCs from various projects in the city, and with me headlining the album as U-Godzilla, I’d introduce them to the world.
The only problem was that I wound up doing the same thing Meth did with his album Tical 0; I shot myself in the foot. The main problem was they were too gangsta! Every dude I brought on there was the hood of the hood. From the Bronx to Staten Island, nothing but grimy street motherfuckers. They were carrying guns, doing drugs, they just couldn’t leave that gangsta shit alone.
In particular, my man Face—who was a dope MC—just couldn’t shake that hood shit. I was trying to get him a job, trying to get him to put the drugs and guns down, to stop hustlin’ and just focus on his rhymes, but he just couldn’t leave it alone. Plus, I don’t think he really believed in himself and his ability. If he had, and if he’d gone at it full throttle, maybe he could have done what he needed to do to get it poppin’.
In the end, I got into some drama with one of his peoples who tried to run up on me. I had to beat him up, put him in a coma in the hospital, and after that we had to call it quits. That whole project almost cost me my career—it definitely dealt a serious blow to my credibility in the industry.
After that whole thing crashed and burned, I was adrift again. And there was no one I could really turn to for help, either—RZA wasn’t guiding me or providing advice or anything like that.
It was around this time that I found my current manager, Domingo. The Lord brought him to me during that time, and he came in and repaired all the shit I’d done, and we’ve been a team ever since.
Domingo actually saved me on a spiritual level; if he hadn’t been around, I probably would have slipped up and headed back into Savagery and violence. But he humbled me and helped me find myself again. He’s also helped with my temper, always telling me, “Uey, you gotta Gandhi that shit,” when I wanna go off about something. He tells me to MLK it, to Malcolm X it and just turn the other cheek. And every time I’m about to go off, I just repeat to myself, “Gandhi, Gandhi, Gandhi.” And damn if it doesn’t defuse me and bring me back to a better place. And I got Domingo to thank for that, not to mention my repaired career.
Despite the growing troubles, Deck, Masta Killa, and me were just getting started, though, and our solo albums contained some of our best work. Masta finally got his solo album No Said Date released in 2004, Deck dropped The Movement in 2006, and I released Dopium in 2009. All of these were critically acclaimed, but didn’t have the big budgets our brothers received via their major labels. I think one thing that hurt those releases is that we could never perform any new material at our Wu-Tang shows. That’s something I never understood.
It’s been a long time since we rocked new songs onstage. Shit, we didn’t even support the last few albums with proper tours; I mean we went on tour, but stuck to performing the classics. That’s backward to me. For us to ask the fans to support us, we had to support ourselves by performing new material—all for one and one for all—first.
Back in the day, when RZA put the Bat Signal up, the rest of us understood that we needed to stop what we were doing individually and come together, period. For there to be fruit hanging on the tree, the roots needed watering, so we would come together as Wu-Tang first, that was the priority. We were an unstoppable unit at that time, one for all and all for one—at least, that’s what we told ourselves. We’d hit the road, and if one of us was in the middle of promoting a project, the rest would support that project, too. Like when Cuban Linx came out, no one knew that the record was supposed to be the next Wu album, but when Raekwon signed the deal, we all agreed to let him have it for his solo joint, no problem.
So years later, when revenue streams started drying up, members who were used to living crazy lifestyles started complaining about everyone’s fees being equal. This led to some of the guys missing shows, holding the entire group for ransom before agreeing to go on tour. Bottom line, no solo member has ever played in front of sold-out arenas, the whole group is the foundation. There is no Earth without Wind and Fire!
Things started changing little by little, guys got fed up, and eventually we all got individual managers to negotiate and serve as a buffer from all the bullshit. It was no longer one for all and all for one. But now you had people in our brothers’ ears, saying why you getting the same thing he getting? Now that the days of gold and platinum plaques had dried up, dudes started fighting over the W. The whole foundation that we were built on and that made us powerful fell apart. We weren’t building anymore, we were destroying ourselves.
Right now, it just looks like the Wu brothers are not on the same page, going at each other’s throats, missing shows, and all that. But, to me, it’s really years of BS catching up to RZA. See, he put his family in charge of shit, and for years, we would go on the road but the money came up short. Whether it was because Divine overpromised or cut a deal he couldn’t deliver, or he made bad management decisions, I don’t know.
Don’t get me wrong, at the end of the day, my brothers and I typically work things out and still come together as the Clan, but in twenty-five years of being in the business, RZA has never placed the group at an A-list agency. Instead, Divine has always placed us with these B-or C-list guys. I wonder why?
One time I asked him, “Vine, why aren’t we with William Morris or The Agency?”
And he said, “’Cause no one wants to deal with our bullshit.”
I just looked back at him and said, “Our bullshit? Or your bullshit?”
Just talking about this shit frustrates me. I mean here we are, the Rolling Stones of hip-hop, and we ain’t even got proper representation. Meanwhile, RZA’s always had A-list agents repping him personally. What the fuck is that all about?
If you let him tell it, Divine would blame a lot of the shit that goes down on these low-level motherfuckers we’re forced to deal with, subpar agents and the like. But if that’s the case, why the fuck did you give your strongest asset, the Wu-Tang fucking Clan, to a shitty dude instead of a top-notch agent in the game?
I mean, my manager would tell me how some chick from Jersey was booking our European tours from her house? When I heard that, I was like, “Not her again! She owes me fifteen fuckin’ stacks!” Whatever it was, it was always something, excuses, excuses, and more excuses as to why we were always coming up short.
Looking back, there’s other things that I really question, too. For example, Wu Wear is coming back in time for our twenty-fifth anniversary, and that’s all great, but what people don’t know is that none of us—the original members who each invested a significant amount (around forty thousand dollars apiece) from our 36 Chambers royalties and the Rage tour—ever saw a dime back from the first version of the line founded back in ’97. And that’s something that needs to be addressed and rectified.
There’s also the use of our logo. Many people don’t know this, but DJ Mathematics drew that logo on the back of a napkin back in the day. RZA quickly trademarked it, and to this very day his brother beefs when any of the original members attempt to use it. That to me is crazy—I mean, I understand if someone was using it without the group’s permission, but the members of the group itself? Wow, that’s just crazy.
Anyway, GZA uses a G that looks like a font similar to the W, Meth uses an upside-down W or an M, I have a U that looks like a W that’s cut off—I guess you get creative when necessary, but we all stand behind that W in the end!
Divine always told us, “Y’all can’t use that W without paying a brand fee, and if a promoter calls your manager direct to book a Wu-Tang show, best believe they’re paying that brand fee!” Ain’t that a motherfucker!
RZA also started becoming a bit of a control freak around this time. He wanted to control budget, publishing, writing hooks, everything. I kept quiet and kept working, but it didn’t take a brain surgeon to see he was trying too hard to control the entire creative process.
Now, RZA’s undeniably talented. He’s also a good talker, smart, and a groundbreaking, genre-bending producer, but I wouldn’t go so far as to call him a hit record maker. Remember, “All I Need” was Method Man’s biggest single, but remember, RZA’s version didn’t win the Grammy—Puffy’s remix with Mary J. Blige did.
A classic example of how he operates is “Gravel Pit” on The W. It was one of our biggest hits he wrote the hook for, but I hate that fuckin’ hook. Me and Meth were supposed to write that one, but RZA came in and wouldn’t let us do what we do best. He had to jump in the middle of the process to stop what we were building. It was like, “Yeah, you made the beat, now can we work on it?”
And RZA was like, “Nah, let’s publish it.” He just had to get his name on it however he could. It’s like, just give the dudes the fuckin’ music, let them go off by themselves and do their thing, come back with their idea—you know, how we used to do it. Collaboration, not domination.
Trying to exert too much control over grown-ass men leads to problems. RZA doesn’t know how to let go and let motherfuckers be grown men anymore, like he used to back in the day, when it was four or five motherfuckers touring the country in an old Mitsubishi Scorpion. Somewhere along the way, he forgot to let his soldiers do what he initially recruited us to do and coached us to do. He forgot that you don’t tear down your soldiers, you build your soldiers up. Because when they rise up, they bring you with them.
On the flip side, you need somebody calling the shots, or it becomes every man for himself. We still needed order, and he was the mastermind who had brought us up to this point. But it can’t become a dictatorship, with everything coming from the top down. It takes a certain kind of personality to be able to run the ship but still be open to ideas and collaboration.
The other thing nowadays is working with RZA now, it’s a race to get a spot on a good beat. In the old days, we’d all compete against each other, and the best man won. But today, it’s like whoever gets there first gets on it, something RZA started. He pitted everyone against each other, so they were all thinking, “I gotta get on this beat, I gotta get on this record!”
It should be that you just give me the music I wanna rhyme to, let me go to my spot, listen to it, fuck with it, mess with it, fuck to it, drive to it, squeeze titties to it, drink to it, do everything I got to do to get my inspiration. And I’ll come back in like a month or so, maybe two, maybe three, ’cause if it’s that dope and I can’t get a handle on it, I’m gonna wait on it, because sometimes creativity is a motherfucker. Sometimes the beat you wanna rhyme to gives you a blank. And you’re listening and listening until ping! For whatever reason, the Lord comes outta nowhere and hits you with an idea. And you go, “Oh, shit! Yeah, I got it now, I got it.” And then you’re off and running.
But RZA won’t let us develop our shit like we used to. Now we get into the studio and he’s like, “We got two months to record.” Two months?! Motherfucker, we can’t do anything in two months! That’s constipated! That kind of window makes you tight and stressed. You can’t get loose with that deadline hanging over your head. When you’re rushing to complete something, often you don’t bring your A-game with you, and more often than not that’ll be revealed on the final track.
And RZA doesn’t want to relinquish control anymore, even though that would be best for everyone. To go back to the old way of doing shit, like me and Meth are doing right now, like I’m doing right now. Instead everyone’s gonna notice the difference, they’re gonna hear it, and they’re gonna go, “What the fuck?”
*
I got into rapping because I just wanted to make a living free from looking over my shoulder, guns, and fucked-up people. I chose the wrong profession, because the music industry is the same fucking shit. You’re dealing with people who want to rob you, who are getting mad at you because you’re successful, who hate you. You can’t show off too much, you can’t show this, you can’t do that. Now it’s about contracts and all this other shit that people want to hold you to, that bind you for life, try to take the credit for the hard work you put in.
Let me tell you, you sign a contract with anyone, make sure you have a good fucking lawyer review every single line, ’cause people always saying a contract says one thing, but then you turn around and they’re saying it says something else. Then they accuse you of not doing what the contract says you’re supposed to do, or the other side isn’t doing what they’re supposed to do. It’s just messed up.
During the early contracts, I was just playing the cut and watching. Raekwon, Method Man, and Dirty got solo deals damn near right out of the gate. See, that was a blessing to them, but it was also a blessing to me, Deck, and Masta Killa not to get signed for solo deals just yet. The first ones through the door always take the biggest hit because they’re the pioneers touching new land. They’re explorers who don’t know the terrain yet. I didn’t go through that. I learned by watching other people’s mistakes.
First, I knew what I was getting into as far as how tricky the industry could be. As a result, I was extra careful about what I was signing and how I was moving. Like I said, I’m not nearly as well known as some of the other members, but I’m also not bound by contractual obligations like those same members.
And now, the game is very different than it was back then, when we were first starting out. For example, our contracts were executed way back in the day, before CDs, before MP3s, before any kind of streaming service even existed. Nowadays, all that shit’s gotta be licensed as well. And if you own your work, those licensing fees come to you, and those fees can get heavy. That’s where the cake is going to—anyone who controls those rights. This is just one example of how different the business is today and how you gotta keep up on that shit. If you don’t, you will be left behind. And not only that, you’ll leave money on the table for someone else to pick up.
Ultimately, I can’t be bitter about not going in to get my shit correct and stay on top of my business. That’s my fault now—there’s no one else to lay the blame onto. It’s my fuckin’ fault for not going in and regulating my shit, for letting other dudes get over on me, thinking what was mine should be theirs. I let it happen, I let a lot of shit slide, and because I did that, it left me in a weaker position and made somebody else strong.
It’s the same for the Clan as a whole—by letting other dudes be in charge, we let them come in and throw the rest of us off balance. If we had hung together as a solid unit from the beginning and had a lawyer represent the Wu-Tang as a whole, then we wouldn’t be in this situation now. But no, they divided us and conquered us. And they’re still trying to do it to this day.
Fortunately, in the end the Wu almost always looks out for its own. Like last year, when I filed my lawsuit against RZA, he tried to kick me off our live shows. Again, I’ve been in the Wu for more than twenty-five years, and I’ve never missed a show I’ve been scheduled for—until RZA tried to give me the boot. But after a week, my brothers found out what was going on, and they faced off with RZA and made him reinstate me. Throughout all of it, I didn’t take it personally. I never let my emotions get in the way of business.
And though I will always have my brothers’ backs, there comes a time when you have to look to taking care of yourself and yours first. So now I gotta get strong myself. I gotta go in and correct whatever I can before I take any other action. And that’s exactly what I’m doing now.
*
There was more than just this rift over recording and solo versus group projects forming. There was a major rift over business with Wu-Tang Productions. RZA’s brother Divine, Power, and RZA made up the executive hierarchy of the Clan, also known as Wu-Tang Productions. The three of them, along with Ghostface, executive produced 36 Chambers.
Now, me and Divine have always been cool since our days at P.S. 57 in Stapleton. Not sure what it is, but we just always got along, never had any real problems. We argue, of course, but deep down we know it’s never serious. We understand and respect each other. We were in public school together and gravitated toward one another way back then. We’re both just some money-getting dudes. Long as money’s coming in, all that bickering goes out the window. We realize what’s important at the end of the day.
Other members in the Clan don’t always have that understanding. They haven’t been through what I’ve been through. It’s just a different mentality. I can’t talk business or economics with certain dudes. I can talk about investing and credit scores and equity with Divine. Other guys I just talk street shit to. Divine understands that it’s a business. He and I went to court back in 2008 because I sued him over a small amount of money, and we settled that case. But we’re still good friends—to a certain degree. He knows and I know it’s not personal. It’s never personal, it’s business.
But RZA, he knew more about the music industry—and also, it seems, about our cash flow—than the rest of us. From what I can tell, he got rich, but I still don’t know what I’m due. And while I can’t speak for everyone, I believe that’s how a lot of my brothers see things, too. We thought we were all united, but at the end of the day, it turned out that it was all about Wu-Tang Productions, and we were just the workers.
Divine controlled all the ledger books and financial information, and RZA, at the expense of the rest of us, went along with it. He could have put a stop to it if he’d wanted, he could have gotten us all together and sat us down and worked it all out, but he didn’t. He stood by and let it happen for years. Finally, I concluded I had no choice but to bring my lawsuit against RZA and the others in 2016, after all those years of not knowing what was happening financially and where I stood. All I’m really looking for is transparency: Where do I stand regarding each album I recorded? What am I owed, if anything, and who owes it to me?
And that’s a fundamental difference between RZA and me. When I was in the drug business, at the height of my operation, I knew how to treat the people selling for me. I knew how to handle my crew fairly to maximize my business. I knew how to deal with people so they felt respected and would work hard for me. I respected them, so they were loyal to me, that’s why they loved me so much.
But RZA never had a situation like that; he never had to work with employees on that level. Back in the day, when I gave him that package and he fucked it up, I should have known then what I know now, which is that he lacks business skills—the nerd in him won’t allow him to put the right brothers in position to win. Instead, he puts brothers he thinks he can control in positions of power.
And now that he’s older, he doesn’t have anyone he can really rely on, because he froze out the brothers who would have been the most loyal to him. He put achieving his own dream ahead of helping the rest of the group achieve theirs.
And yeah, he may have the trappings of a successful rapper and producer, he may have all the cars and houses, but he doesn’t have anyone to share it with. He doesn’t have a Kardashian or an actress or a model on his arm today. So what did he get all that fly shit for in the first place? Just to have it?
Because it wasn’t just RZA or just Divine or just Power that got Wu-Tang into the music industry—it was all of us, a combined force. And as such, we all had to learn and go through certain things. That’s the problem with my crew, especially when you have a small majority making most of the decisions. We were blind to certain aspects of the music industry, and other aspects we didn’t even know existed. And as we grew, some of us learned that we’d been left out of certain parts of the business of Wu-Tang.
If the next person knows more than you, and gets a better deal, and gets over on you a bit, you can’t be mad at them. You have to learn from that and correct what you did wrong for next time. It’s not about getting mad when someone got over on you because you were still wet behind the ears. It’s about working to fix the problem so you can make it better. That’s the music industry. It’s treacherous and shady. But if you wanna play, you have to realize you’re gonna get dirty and a bit bumped and bruised until you learn all the rules.
Same goes for Wu-Tang Productions. Those deals might have reflected the lack of knowledge we had about the paperwork side of the business, but it still got us into the game. Looking back, though, we left it to RZA, Divine, and Power to handle those deals for us at the labels; they weren’t negotiated in front of the rest of us. And instead of saying we’re a family, it feels to me like it was more about RZA putting himself ahead of the rest of us. That was okay (not really, but at least I understand where he’s coming from) when we were practically kids in this shit, but now I feel that they’re still trying to keep us in the other room. That’s harder to swallow as a grown man.
That’s why we still kinda fucked up to this day. We can’t get it together because at this level of the game, dudes feel like they’re being taken advantage of. I still got love for RZA for what he did for me, but it is what it is, and I gotta call it like I see it. As I’m arguing in my lawsuit, it’s time for some transparency. And some answers.
*
If Dirty hadn’t died, I think the Wu would be in better standing, and we’d be on a more harmonious wavelength with one another. It still wouldn’t be perfect, but it’d be a little better.
Dirty’s element—that wild, chaotic energy that helped keep the entire group on the same page—is missing. His element isn’t just missing in the Clan, it’s missing in today’s hip-hop altogether. A raw, wild style of performing. Dudes can’t perform the way he could. ODB fans wanted that grit, and Ol’ Dirty always gave it to them.
Dirty was always the most paranoid out of all of us; he was on drugs, drinking, and all this crazy shit, but at the end of the day he could pinpoint shit and he saw things we didn’t see coming. He was always the one to call people out when he thought they were pullin’ shit. Like when RZA bought a mansion in Jersey; it was supposed to be the Wu mansion. But it turned out it wasn’t no Wu mansion, it was RZA’s mansion, and he ran it like it was some kind of church. He wouldn’t let anybody bring girls there. No parties, we couldn’t get shit popping, we couldn’t do none of that fly shit. After a while, we stopped going. He kicked us out and put the keys in it. In other words, it basically was running just like his mansion, but he spun it to seem like it was our mansion to soften the blow that he was in charge.
Dirty used to say this shit all the fucking time. He was the first Clan member to call RZA out; he boycotted shows until he found out who was getting what. “Where’s my money at, RZA?” His song “Got Your Money,” that song’s about fucking RZA.
But Dirty always used to be about, “I want my money. Gimme my money.” Dirty was always one step ahead of the rest of us. He was the first motherfucker to call us robots. He basically believed RZA was taking our money. That’s why the rest of us can’t leave RZA to tell the whole story, Dirty said, because he’s going to try and make out like, “No I didn’t.” If he had his way, he’d try to make out like he was some kind of savior. To which I say get the fuck out of here. I guess we’ll find out when the Court gives me the accounting I’m asking for.
If I’m wrong, I will apologize straight to RZA’s face. I will man up and stand in front of him and say, “Yo, I didn’t know, and I’m sorry for coming at you like I did.”
But if I’m right … well, it’s a good thing I’m not that scrapper in the streets anymore, that I settle my business with lawyers and lawsuits nowadays, instead of with my fists and guns.
After Dirty died, it shifted my brain. He was the wild, crazy motherfucker the fans wanted to see, too. When he died, it took a piece of us away. I know I definitely started seeing things differently.
*
By the time 8 Diagrams was released in 2007, more Wu-Tang members were voicing their disapproval of RZA’s style.
I kept my thoughts to myself, though. I’d released a half-assed attempt at another solo project called Mr. Xcitement (2005) that got all fucked up a year or two prior, including the shutdown of the label, Priority Records, so I was willing to go along with RZA’s plans for 8 Diagrams. When the story broke of how it came out, I think the other members redoubled their efforts to put out more solo projects so each of us could have more creative control.
After four years of work, Rae and Ghost put out Cuban Linx II in 2009. Part of the reason Linx II was delayed was because we all came together for 8 Diagrams. That same year, I put out a solo project on Babygrande Records called Dopium that drew some critical praise. Ghostface, Cappa, GZA, and Meth all got on tracks for that one.
Then Method Man, Raekwon, and Ghostface put out a project called Wu-Massacre in 2010 that had one track produced by RZA. Raekwon took it a step further by releasing Shaolin vs. Wu-Tang in 2011, an album with no RZA involvement at all.
The supergroup was splintering apart. When it came time to work on A Better Tomorrow in 2013—during the twentieth-anniversary year of the release of Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)—things were still in disarray.
By this time RZA had gone full Hollywood. He was off making pictures, rubbing elbows with movie stars, and pulling down millions; he didn’t need this bullshit. Even so, the twentieth anniversary was still an opportunity, so he decided to try to get us all back on the same page by recording A Better Tomorrow. Problem was, that better tomorrow never came. Shit wasn’t getting better—shit was getting worse.
Before we started recording, RZA went on a world tour of studios and musicians from the Motown days. We heard he took trips to Nashville and Detroit, hunting down that sound so he could chop up the sessions into new beats. I ain’t gonna lie, I thought it was a good marketing ploy and was excited to hear what he’d come back with.
During that time, Divine tried to get the rest of us to go to L.A. to record, then to Vegas for a week or two, trying to rekindle the vibe we had when we made those early albums. But this one went the same way as the last three records; a lot of my brothers felt it was too soft. Method Man wanted some hard shit, as did the rest of us. Although I felt like it wasn’t that gritty, raw, high-energy sound that we were used to coming with, that made us who we were, I felt I couldn’t go against RZA like that … most of us couldn’t. I think RZA just felt like we’re all forty years old now, we can’t keep rapping about slanging and banging anymore, we need to be at the BBQ with our families.
I think the thing with RZA is that he’s accomplished a lot more. He’s been acting, scoring films for Quentin Tarantino, and now he’s even directing feature-length movies. He’s got Ferraris and millions of dollars. He’s in another space altogether, so his music reflects that.
And he had put up his own money—well, I guess it was our money, too—to make the album, so ultimately it was his decision as to the direction we were gonna take. Also, some others didn’t want to record until the paperwork was redone. It caused us to implode on a small level. We ended up laying down some stuff, but we were never all in one place; it was disjointed, with themes picked out of thin air, so the album never came together as a cohesive unit. We couldn’t get it off the way we wanted to get it off.
But it went even deeper than that. First, the music: The beats weren’t there, so the foundation was missing. RZA was acting like it was all fine, but the rest of us weren’t having it, saying we wanted him to find some new shit. But he wouldn’t go and do that, so we were stuck with what he put forward. Then he didn’t want to use any outside producers, because he’s RZA. And finally, he tried to do a record in two months, which, as I’ve already said, is practically impossible to do and come up with something great.
And finally, it wasn’t just that RZA was, as usual, trying to control every aspect of the production, but I felt like the others just weren’t attacking their rhymes like they used to. It seemed like maybe the industry had beaten my brothers all down so that they didn’t believe in the power of their rhymes anymore. And when we finally heard the end product, I don’t think many of us were happy, but we all decided to roll with it in the end.
With all the rifts and disagreements within the group, when it came to doing what we had to do to ensure the album was a success, we kind of balked. There was just too much internal shit going on. When it came time to shoot a video, some of the guys went MIA. When it came time to do press, cats went missing again. We had mad magazine covers we could have done, but didn’t. We did a few shows, though, so that helped a lot in terms of us appearing as a unified front. Even if things were a mess behind the scenes, we still brought the ruckus live. We could have—we should have moved at least 150,000 units in the first week. Instead, ABT debuted at number 29 on the Billboard chart and moved less than twenty-five thousand copies in its debut week. Womp womp.
As a result, everyone was all over the place and pissed off about how ABT had landed, and the ways the business—our business—had been run for all these years. Raekwon in particular was very vocal about his disappointment with the album, giving interviews saying he felt it should have been harder, that our team was compromised by how RZA makes music, and all that.
But RZA wasn’t hearing any of it. As a leader, sometimes you have to compromise with your soldiers. They’re on the battlefield with you, fighting by your side. Everything can’t go your way every time, not everybody gonna agree with you every time. You may have put up the money to get the album done, so yeah, you get final say, but you still have to listen and take heed of what your soldiers are saying as they’re putting in the work.
And it just keeps happening. In 2017, RZA produced “Don’t Stop” with Meth, Rae, and Deck for the Silicon Valley soundtrack. Now, I’m not on that song, and I’m glad I’m not, because it’s a wack beat, and I told him so. But RZA didn’t want to listen; he thinks everything he does is hot all the time. He’s not open to criticism, even when it will make the project better. So he put it out anyway—under the Wu-Tang Clan name—like we’d all decided to put that forth. Other songs on that soundtrack have a million views; DJ Shadow’s “Nobody Speak,” featuring Run the Jewels, has millions of views. “Don’t Stop” has around seventy thousand streams at the time I’m writing this. Shit, I can get seventy thousand streams by my own damn self! So when four original Wu members come together on a song and it only gets seventy thousand streams, that’s not cool. That kind of shit hurts our stock, it hurts all of us.
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People also been talking about the last album we came together for, Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, which exists in only one pressed copy that was put up for sale in 2015.
First of all, to me, what Cilvaringz did with that project was some sucker shit, pure and simple. He went around to each of us individually and paid us money to lay verses down for an independent compilation album, not an official Wu-Tang LP. He collected a nice amount of verses from brothers to piece together a decent record. But he didn’t have the motherfucking right to sell it as a Wu-Tang Clan album, as I also argue in my lawsuit. Yet he still tried to do just that—he tried to go out and sell it as an official Wu-Tang Clan record, thought he was gonna make a profit off it. He didn’t have the paper to do that; to sell all our masters and all our rights, and neither did RZA. We wouldn’t sign off on no sucker shit like that. You know damn well my lawyers, everybody’s lawyers would cease-and-desist that shit so goddamn fast his head would turn.
At some point he schemed up this idea to sell it as an art piece, let RZA in on the idea then; at one time, Leonardo DiCaprio was gonna buy it for two million dollars. That didn’t happen, so they held an auction, and that pharma guy Martin Shkreli ended up winning with a bid of two million. RZA got in bed with Cilvaringz and sold what was supposed to be a compilation album as an official Wu-Tang album to Shkreli for millions. Of course, I still haven’t seen any of that supposed bread either. This is all in my lawsuit, too. And I’m convinced the Court will see it my way, if the case ever has to go that far. ’Cuz like so much else, that shit just ain’t right.