Raekwon of Wu-Tang Clan Tells His Life Story (Full Interview) (Full Interview)

all right here we go rayquan the chef welcome back to vlad tv what up vlad what's good what's good hey man it's been about a decade since our last one thank you so much decade it's been 10 years it's been about that yeah damn bro yes a minute that's a minute man that's that's that's a long time bro it's been a minute it's been a minute man congratulations on everything you've done since then uh you know and most of all congratulations to the new book from staircase to stage no doubt no doubt appreciate it man thank you you know and and that title is from the song incarcerated scarfaces which is actually my favorite rayquan song ever there you go that's what's up that's what's up word and she was so crazy i ain't even think about that like that i didn't even realize when i came up with the title that for the book that it resurrected with that you know it resonated with that so wow from staircase to stage minimum wage [ __ ] yeah you right you right yeah soon to get an article on rap page there you go there you go all right so you know we've done interviews before but i really want to focus on the book because i feel this is really the first time that the world got to see the reality of rayquan you know i mean we heard you on the records you know the hulu the hulu series gives a certain amount of insight but there are certain things that are different than what actually happened so i want to get into the real rayquan story there you go okay so you grew up in new york originally brownsville and then you moved to staten island yeah okay and you were primarily raised by your mom and in the book you said that you never actually met your dad until you were six and that was only once yeah yeah it was you know i was too young to really understood what happened understand what was going on in the situation you know he wasn't really around so you know i go back in the 70s it was real you know you know parents wasn't really pairing up like that back then you know it was what it was and back to the streets you know my dad was always in that world he was on some gangster [ __ ] from what my cousin told me you know a stick-up kid a hustler you know you know and at the same time the drugs was big back in brooklyn back then so you know i'm hearing stories you know later on he was on heroin you know he always was fly though they said he said he dressed his ass so but he was just a stone cold crook you know yeah you know when you when you listen to the lyrics of uh can it all be so simple when you say yeah my pops was a phoenix in 16 shoot that's that [ __ ] in his bloodstream that's a real lyric actually absolutely no doubt so i mean here you are in the 80s the crack era hits new york and you know according to the book you jump into that head first i mean i wouldn't really call it jumping in it like that it was just a part of my growing up thing you know we grew up around those times where you know once that crack epidemic hit it really [ __ ] up a lot of [ __ ] like it [ __ ] communities up so we was just living in the community you know youngsters going to school you know [ __ ] come home with a fresh pair of sneakers on and then you see that you see a fly pair of sneakers on the [ __ ] feet who you know really don't got money like that and telling you yo i went down the block and i made a hundred dollars or 150 automatically to any kid he's gonna adapt to that he's gonna say to himself yo how can i get a hundred dollars so for us it wasn't no career thing it was more like a phase you know a phase that was taking place in our communities you know and i remember you know a couple of years before that everything was smooth it was like it was a nice place to live you know nice people of course but once that crack [ __ ] hit and i seen that [ __ ] on tv like yo it's this new epidemic it's almost like the news is promoting this [ __ ] you know next thing you know i find myself coming outside and it's loaded loaded with fiends out there just looking for this drug so of course you know me and my friends we want to make money we want to explore we even want to try it out because we hear it's the [ __ ] you know this was way before you know we even knew about [ __ ] you know really beaming and all this [ __ ] and you know hitting the pipe you know we talking about the cracks in weed era so of course for us it wasn't it wasn't a drug that said nobody down it was more of a drug that just got you high and it was an expensive drug but nobody knew it was going to start damaging people the way it did but for us we was getting flocked mixing it with weed you know back then we was you know sniffing blowing all that [ __ ] just young wild kids at the age of 14 13 14 15. that was the time frame yeah and at one point it got so bad for you when i guess like your aunt kicked you out of her house and you ended up having to actually live with one of the crack users yeah and uh that really seemed like a low point when i was reading the book yeah i mean you know my aunt never kicked me out you know i think he got a little messed up but what it was was she let me stay there but my aunt my mom's had kicked me out and i went over to my aunt spot you know my aunt she you know her sister she loved me to death she was like yo you'll never be on the street as long as i'm here she was like yo the only thing i need you to do is just be in this house by nine o'clock you know cause my doors is locked i gotta go to work you know and um you ain't gonna be knocking on my door like that she wasn't giving up no keys or nothing that so for me i just had to make a decision like yo do i make my aunt stress out and be banging on her door one o'clock in the morning cause i know i'm not gonna be there at no nine o'clock that's not happening so i think i chilled with her for about probably like four days and then i decided to just find somewhere else to rest my dome at you know yeah well there was a situation when you got into it with some guy uh on the block and you went and got your cousin unique to go handle it and that turned into the first time you actually saw someone get shot in front of you yeah i mean you know it was it was more like i heard it i didn't see actually what happened i just heard the blast you know um this was a this was my cousin this was a good friend of his too you know they was running in the street together doing whatever they was doing and um you know when you still little you had the older [ __ ] that really like to [ __ ] with us in the hood you know what i mean they catch us in the elevator it's like it's straight body shots blows kicking you punching on you or whatever the case may be and we was used to that it's just that day i wasn't i wasn't in the mood and you know some of the older cats around the hood it was this thing in the hood we call chop where they where they chop you on you on your neck you know what i mean like so you could be walking by next thing you know you get a real heavy hand chop on your neck so you know you know they was playing that day i remember i remember it clear as day and i'm like yo i punched him in his stomach real quick yo stop playing i ain't playing today so you know they jumped me a little bit beat me up laughing and all of that and i just i just told my cousin because he was upstairs like yo man [ __ ] keep playing with me man he was like yo what happened why you what's wrong i was like nah man yo blah blah blah he knew that these was the neighborhood bullies in the hood so he went down there to go see what's going on and i remember him grabbing her grabbing the fly fat tree tree pound you know what i mean and it was like me i know it wasn't that serious but that's how i was in the hood that's how [ __ ] move if they feel like it's an issue you know [ __ ] gonna go get they slammers in and come and see what's going on but what had happened was it wasn't my cousin's people's that was bothering me at the time it was his cousins you know his man's cousin so you know i guess he came over to see why my cousin screamed on on these dudes and told them like yo stop playing and they got into it and then next thing you know two friends going at it and you know i just heard a shot go off wow you know what i mean and um that was that situation you know and these and i'm talking about the dude was a stand-up dude you know what i mean cause i guess for him he was looking at my cousin like yo [ __ ] you know me you know how we get down this don't gotta go no way but at the end of the day they started to argue or whatever in their own little way and it just it just turned up a little bit and they both got excited and it was only popping you know but um so today they they homies now you know what i mean they homies you know it wasn't even that serious back then but it was that serious at the moment for them and um like i told you once homie got hit he came right to my cousin's house like real rap like by itself like yo and my aunt was in there and all of that so you know my aunt was like he ain't here and he didn't want to hear that he wanted to get up in that house so you know banging on the door boom boom boom next thing you know he come to the door with a shoddy she like boy you better get away from my goddamn door with this [ __ ] what the hell you talking about and you know he was respecting my aunt still gunshot wound and all that he ain't worrying about it he he's just like yo where yeah where your son at still being respectful though so for me it was just like a young kid just watching all of this and the first time really seeing a reaction from two friends having this altercation and it's like when he walked away he walked away with the shoddy on his show doing some f troop [ __ ] and he just let off a shot in the hallway like bong and walked away though so you know me and my aunt was just bugging off of it though like like this nigga's crazy but at the end of the day they worked it out it wasn't really you know back then let me tell you something back then you know those top those kind of men back then were different they didn't care about telling police anything they dealt with whatever they felt they had to dealt with they had to deal with but for the most part they were friends and they were able to get past that down the line you know what i mean and to me that's that's how i look at them as being solid because a lot of people can't take an altercation and get shot and try to after that you know what i mean become friends again you know but later on the line that that wind up happening to me so okay and then there was a situation where you guys shot in the legs uh and what was interesting about that whole situation is that the guy who shot you called you to apologize and that guy later on became one of your family members because he ended up having exactly you know there was like an in-law situation where yeah yeah you know you ended up getting really hurt yeah i mean you know it was it was an accident it was really a real deal accident like you know i just wanted to stand around and see what was going on see if it was going to really become something and everything just seemed like it happened real quick and everybody got off the pole and walked across the street but i walked in the building and was looking through the lobby at it looking through the lobby watching them get ready to get into whatever they get into because at that point nobody was was trying to stop it at that point you know nobody knew what they was going through they just know that that they got it going on with each other and it's about to be something so yeah the bullets came flying through the lobby you know god bless the dead my man you know my man um two cent he was running through the lobby and um the bullets was coming right behind him and i just happened to be there in the hall and they were coming so it was so many shots coming through like the only thing i could really do was try to hit the hit the floor and kind of crawl out of that area because i wasn't going to just stand there and just you know what i mean i had to get on my army camouflage [ __ ] you know when um try to crawl in the bullets ricocheted off the wall and inside the lobby in and tagged me in both legs so you know it's so crazy that they was they was right under my knee so really it could it could have really damaged your boy like walking walking perspective right now to the fullest i would have been washed on the walking tip but it was right under my knee and it took a long time for these for these wounds to hail on me but it was an accident you know well at one point you and rizza started to hang out and he started to put the wu tang together so rizza jizza an old dirty bastard they're already family so that's that part of the clique you brought in method man uh inspector deck had just gotten home from prison and then you got and cappadono were in jail uh selling drugs you know for selling drugs so they were locked up at the time so as he's putting everything together um so the wu-tang name was a name that the stapleton guys were using amongst themselves right yeah okay so as he's putting this crew together and everyone's kind of getting along he brings in ghostface who is from stapleton and park hill where you're from in stapleton were sworn enemies there wasn't sworn enemies it was just it was just they didn't [ __ ] with each other they was you know kids that went to school that was from different projects so you know if you don't rock with this side you you don't rock with them so when they come around it's like you know back then it was all about representation and you know yo that [ __ ] yo he from the hell what are you doing over here yo that nigga's from state what's in [ __ ] them [ __ ] you know it was that kind of thing but it was kind of like a traditional beef that they had with each other just because they felt that they all was going to school together so you know this [ __ ] was nice with his hands so yo he from stapleton so automatically a [ __ ] from the hill that's nice with his hands want to test his hand game and vice versa so it was just a lot of growing up [ __ ] this was a way that you know the community was for us it was like you had to be that person that you say you are and if you coming from a certain neighborhood your name ring bells you know so now the [ __ ] where i'm from it's like [ __ ] names ring bells out there so eventually they gonna clash based on the fact the reputation and um we was just used to that just watching fights with with you know i'm talking about i'm talking about the older cats coming through they would they would be a bunch of like 50 [ __ ] coming from stapleton walking up the park hill you know flipping [ __ ] and all you know is yo [ __ ] is responding and you see people running down the block with bats and you know chains and knives and you know they was going at it so this was going on for a long time way before you know we even you know started picking up what was going on but stapleton and park hill is so close together it's like brooklyn it's like being in brownsville and [ __ ] got beef with [ __ ] in bed stop you know that's just how neighbors neighborhoods are they only represent where they from and that's it if you ain't from here get out the way well uh ghostface according to your book was actually part of a notorious stick-up crew in stapleton and in fact he had actually cut a guy's face that you knew yeah youngster yeah you know i mean a little hustler you know it was a kid that you know he was on the block he never he wasn't running with with us but he was out there running around us and um he got caught you know he ran into ghosts and his outlaws and you know they was on they [ __ ] they was that's what they specialize in they specialize in waxing [ __ ] and catching you you know on a short he got caught you know he wasn't a little kid but he was a youngster and um i guess he didn't he didn't recognize the code and he got hit with one you know and they said you know it was like yo blasi blah did it you know what i mean so he wore it like a champion um you know shorty put the h on his back and handle it and realize he had got caught out there well then there was a more recent situation you know as you guys were forming the group where ghostface got into it with your partner jamie and that went totally crazy yeah i mean you know at that time ghost was still running around with his set you know doing what he loved to do and um ghost is a bully man like you know that's just how they were they was just real real stick up gunmen type of dudes that just that's all we knew was to be that way so for him you know he got he got into a situation where my man over divine over something that devine and my man had a problem with and you know he was more or less trying to help out his men help out divine in a way like yo you got any problems [ __ ] call me you know what i'm saying like you know and and devon never really called him he never you know what i mean like it wasn't that serious but just knowing that my guy was a get down dude and they bumped heads it was just a situation that happened and next thing you know before you know what they they they mouthing off with each other and one thing led to the next so right well the things that led to it was they got into an argument uh ghost actually started shooting at jamie at his mother's house and then jamie turned around and shot up ghost mother's house well you know yeah you know what i mean it was an eye for our situation it was like you know you know yo you shot at my crib so you know that was that's what it was you know what i mean and um that's just that's how i played out you know well i wasn't mad you know i wasn't i wasn't around that day you know to see what was going on and like i said we knew that ghosts knew risen divine but we didn't really know that he knew him the way he knew him because like i said rizzo would hang in the hell he would be in state with cheney would be in new brighton he would be all over so you don't know everybody risen no but these dudes love rizzo the way i love rizzo the way we love rizza so it was a situation that got out of hand real quick and it was just a lot of anger with with those two men and next thing you know rizzo came in and had to really dead the [ __ ] because he loved both sides and they stood up like real men and and really let it fly and be like yo the pass is the pass nobody got hurt thank god and [ __ ] moved on like real men and and became close became became real cool after that you know you guys start putting together the music you know protecting that comes out blows up you know method man blows up you guys sign to loud records uh and then you know history starts to begin at this point absolutely you know one of the things that was really interesting is that you know you said that you guys would come to shows 300 deep and and one of the things that really stood out in the book is that you guys would roll with dudes who were ready to go to jail if they didn't get into the club yeah and uh apparently occasionally some bouncers would end up getting stabbed so clubs were scared to book bootangus at a certain point yeah i mean you know back then the roaring 90s was serious and for us coming from staten island we had everything to prove because we was the forgotten borough we was the borough that wasn't mentioned all the time in the live spots in the city you know when they start yelling out yo brooklyn in the house queens and house bronx and alex manhattan in the house you know nobody mentions that now so you know a lot of staten island [ __ ] took that [ __ ] personal like yo what the [ __ ] is going on here you know what i mean they ready to flip the ready to flip the dj just for even mentioning that because you're not mentioning us so back then it was a lot of competitive burrow [ __ ] going on you know everybody wanted to be heard everybody wanted to be supported but staten island was like at its lower chair of being heard so when it was time for us to come out and shine it was like now everybody feel like yeah remember us you know what i mean so now it's a it's an ego thing it's a reputation thing it's a it's a representing thing you know so that was our mentality when we went in clubs it was like yo before we leave y'all gonna know what staten island stand for you know don't get it twisted just because you gotta get on the ferry and come over there and think that we don't live the same way y'all live you know because that was really only the difference like driving the staten island to brooklyn is only 20 minutes but when you got to take that boat that ferry and all that that's like that's 30 to 35 40 minutes right there so a lot of times people ain't have vehicles to drive so everybody's on the boat and back then the boat was rocking because downstairs that's where the older [ __ ] like it was like they took over the bottom of the boat like i'm talking about remind you this is when i'm young so you know i'm reflecting back when i was 14 15 16 years old when it was like that when the ferry was rocking i'm talking about it be blasting music boxes brothers rolling up joints you know chicks on the bottom everybody was just having fun down there listening to hip-hop you know but at the same time it'd be a couple of rumbles on the boat you know with rivals or whatever the case may be and um you couldn't really do nothing because you you're going across the water so whatever happens on that boat is gonna be on that boat unless you unless somebody got thrown off that [ __ ] but that never that never became the situation but all i could remember was it was like the projects riding on the boat you know back and forth to the city yeah you know well you guys go on your first tour and you know all the wu-tang members are really gelling and they're bonding and everyone's becoming close friends and close brothers and you're doing shows together and you're wilding out in hotels and everything is going good and then out of nowhere you god's son gets shot in stapleton and i remember i interviewed i interviewed you god about this allegedly the dude actually used his son as a human shield there was a shooting involved and someone actually used your son as a as a human shield yeah on some sucker [ __ ] yeah this this is this is what i was told allegedly i mean you know allegedly we're not we're not sure we're not sure but that's but that's he he said yeah he had heard something like that as well and what i didn't realize you know when i interviewed you god was that the dude who who did the shooting was one of ghostface's boys wow so that set up so all the bonding really kind of came to uh to a head at that point and you guys had to convince you god not to go run back and get revenge yeah you know what i mean yeah i mean you know we just we just came to a a fly truce and really wanted to accept our peoples and state but like our peoples wanted to accept us from paul kell like it was almost like ghost was a representative of stapleton and we were representatives of the hell so just when we were starting to become cool and feel like yo we could sleep in the same room together this happens so i remember you know you guard was very tight that day we was on the road i remember you know he got the call and you know he came to the front of the bus we was on tour at least that's what i could recall and he was very very upset about that and he was making calls like yo i'm going back home and this is the time we was about to blow we we was really on our on our getting famous [ __ ] so nobody wanted to see something negative coming between what was going on with us and what happened but this is his kid this is his child that was being babysitted by a friend of his you know when um how do you tell a man not to go do what he feel if that's what it is when it comes kids so we just kept telling them like yo you know just look into it man you know what i mean see what really happened here you know it wasn't like the shots were for his kid you know one thing about bullets in in in the streets bullets fly where they want to go they go to addresses they feel they want to go and um his son happened to get hit and i remember that you know you got really was on his by his self [ __ ] on the tall because he he felt like damn he was confused he was hurt his son you know and we all felt that even ghost felt that and you know he go saying know what was going on or whatever the case may be you know but you got he's a man you know he was going to deal with it according to how he felt he was going to deal with it and unfortunately he just he just took the l and was like you know i see the bigger picture i see i see something positive in my in my in my role right now where i'm not gonna let my emotions affect what's going on right now so yeah you know it was a serious time but back then i ain't see you guys smile for probably like maybe like a year since all that happened like he would be on the bus he would add his crazy face you look at him yo what's wrong man you good nah my my just let him be you know what i mean because we don't know what he's what he what he's going through but we know what he's going through so it was a tough situation for him but thank god his kid his kid came out okay you know to this day to his kid is doing excellent too very smart kid shout out ug son that's my little man's right there good kid well uh the first wu tang album comes out it does really well and then you go and sign your solo deal and i think one of the dopest things that i read in the whole book was that you signed a solo deal with loud records for half a mill and the plan was to have you know ghostface all over the album but you actually gave him half of your advance you gave him a quarter million dollars i don't know anyone that would have done that you know i'm saying like okay i'll break you off something or we'll share in the royalties but you actually gave him half a year advance when you did not you were not a mega millionaire at that point and i just think that was that was so dope and the final project really reflected that i feel you know what i'm saying i mean you know when i tell you it's a half a ticket that ain't mean that i actually stepped off with a half a million dollars you know that's where people get it twisted that they think they hear these big numbers and they automatically think that that's how much money you cashed in on you know it wasn't like that the deal was a half a million and at the end of the day we had to get the record done with that half a million and when it came down to it being my situation it was like yo i know me and this dude is so close right now and me and him got a crazy vibe and i just wanted to have him involved with it so it was one of those things like yo he knew it was my time and at the end of the day me and i'm out of relationship and i'm like yo you know you coming with me on this right it's like almost like telling your man like if i eat you eat and man was close like that so it was to the point where it was like yo i want to make sure he right with it too because he gonna join me on this so that was something that rizza seen the chemistry in us and said you know what i respect that you know what i mean so automatically my deal became our deal you know because i always was the type of person that was all about team you know i never wanted to be feeling like yo i'm doing it alone you know not like i couldn't do it alone it was just that i was i was looking at it like the team thing and me and ghost had had the perfect chemistry within the group so it's like you know how it is you know your [ __ ] you love all your [ __ ] but it's one [ __ ] that you like damn me and this [ __ ] like day and night and everybody knew that everybody all the whole crew they seen that they felt that they respected what we had going on and i just brought them in i'm like yo you coming he was like what you already know wherever you go i go so me and them had that al capone frank nitty vibe going on you know where it was like that's how i was looking at it where yeah i'm a killer he'll smart [ __ ] and you a staple chain assassin and this chemistry right here is going to really show another side of what wu chang can bring to the table outside of the collective so me and ghost is already scheming on how we want to make this play with this album coming to fruition so he pretty much followed my hand on on the orders that i threw out there as far as yo this is how this album is gonna be made i'm gonna take [ __ ] down a cinematic road because you know we about we about that life we about wearing silks and this and that and the woo wasn't the whole wu-chang clan wasn't about that but that was my chamber and ghost recognized my chamber and said amen and then next you know he was signed in well one of the things you mentioned in the book was that you and ghost were talking one day and he had mentioned he got with aliyah and he it was like a no big deal yeah he broke my heart with that man because you know rest in peace aliyah lee is beautiful you know um you know word ghost had bag though you know what i'm saying and i remember we had a mansion in um l.a and you know i used to talk to ghosts a lot about like yo like yo word you bag that like yo bring it to the lab like you know bring some friends over whatever the case may be and one day i i guess i took a nap that day and i wore and i was walking through the crib next thing you know i seen the lia him and elias sleep in the chair i'm like you know i wake him up like yo what's up [ __ ] what's going on he was like nah i'm just catching some rest though you know i was just laughing i'm like yo you you a wild cat man they were just sitting in the chair together just laid out like i was like wow word but nah he respected elia like he really liked it and it could have been just some friendship thing but you know like i said we we like the leah's music we like what she was doing and yeah i think they had like a little crush thing going on a little baby crush going on you know dope okay so you guys are working on the album and then one of the skits on the album is the shark skit right and you know just to kind of show what happened you know you guys are big nas fans illmatic came out and was like a nuclear bomb in hip-hop and you then reached out to nas who [ __ ] with you as well and he you know nas was on your album right you know he showed up on showing up on one of the songs you guys love nas so ghostface goes goes on this you know skit on the album where he basically you know without naming names he pretty much dissed biggie for having a similar similar album cover as nas wow showing the you know and i think what was dope as you mentioned in the book was that the night before biggie got killed ghosts went you know you guys hooked up and ghostface approached biggie and said yo i just want to let you know man that we love you we ain't got no problems with you we ain't on that yo i hope you feel my sincerity and know at the end of the day if i offended you in any kind of way i apologize real rap real rap that's definitely how i went down man cause you know at that time like i said when goes said what he said it wasn't that premeditated it was him going in there doing skits and we in the control room and he say what he say but i'ma tell you why he said it and um we had we had a certain respect for nas we was one of the guys that really rooted for nas to be that guy in new york city one of the lsmcs so when we met him it was like a barn it was like a brotherhood you know we had a lot of respect for him you know me and naz of course we we connected and then eventually are introducing the ghosts and you know the other fellas in the crew and me and ghost really respected him it's like it's like seeing somebody that's one of those dudes way ahead of his time and now the world see knives today is one of the best and he is one of the best in my eyes when it comes to doing what he do so it was a love thing that was going on and i guess that we didn't really know that nas had a super relationship with big neither we just only know he got relationship with us too we know he know [ __ ] but we [ __ ] with them so i guess whenever ghost went up in the studio you know big had around that time you know showed his album cover and you know that became a conversation in the van sometimes like yo damn didn't naz do a baby picture now he doing a baby pit you know what i mean so it wasn't like an enemy type of vibe going on we we love big you know what i mean we love bad boy it's just that that's what ghost felt at that time he went in he went in the studio he started talking yo we need a skit we need it today it got to get done now and um he just started talking about biting and this and that and then he went into what he went into so even when he said it it was like we all in a controlled wolf like hmm this could go left or right but at the end of the day we were wild [ __ ] still so it was like yo that's what you said it makes sense you know we was taught in hip-hop you know bright [ __ ] [ __ ] or or getting too close to a [ __ ] [ __ ] is a no-go so what he stood for what he meant is like yo we seen that already why come behind it and do something in the same way he said it it was like yo we know this could be a little issue down the line but it is what it is now for me i know to a degree i was a part of that skit because yeah no biting man we you know that was just what we wanted [ __ ] to know about our style like yo this is our [ __ ] this is we talk this way so we ain't want to hear another [ __ ] talk in the same way we talked and um when he said it it was like we knew that later on it could be an issue about it but we didn't care we were 25 we was fresh we was getting it you know and and one thing about new york city [ __ ] we all competitive whether we like you or not it's just it's just competition if it goes somewhere then that's that's something else but it was always about the sport you know being able to get back at all the times that staten island [ __ ] wasn't getting no rep wasn't getting no shine so now now that we up in the front it's like yo now we watching everything [ __ ] using your lines [ __ ] saying [ __ ] that you say [ __ ] using your slang xyz so when ghost said it it's like he he stood on principles he didn't have time to think about damn i'm dissing this [ __ ] you know what i'm saying and we knew who we was talking about it was it's evident but we was like yo we're gonna let it play out and see where it go right and then when he said that to big you know you even came back you know came around and said yo big it's all love like it's okay and big was like oh yeah i said nah man don't worry i didn't think about that [ __ ] you know whatever we cool let's have a drink and y'all talk about doing a song together absolutely now like you said that came later on down the line after really both of us realizing like yo we really love this dude like he's one of the best in the city he he you know he's one of the best in the game at this point so we knew he was ill and we didn't want no conflict but at the end of the day it was so much turbulence around each other each other's crews and all that that we never really wanted it to escalate the night because we knew it was a a certain relationship that we all had you know meth was rocking with big you see he was on big first album you know we did the jodeci joint you know jodeci was signed a bad boy meth had did the record with mary they signed the bad boy so it was like it was like two families that was that was blowing up that at the end of the day this ain't really a beef we ain't gonna take it there because we all love each other and respect each other so that's what it was and and that day out in l.a was was a place that we all was hanging out that night and we seemed big so you know me and ghost felt like this was the time to really go approach the army and just tell them yo bro we love you that [ __ ] ain't about nothing anything you need vice versa we here for you we know you here for us and and goes just was like yo he just kept it real yo man i just want to say sorry man you know what i mean felt bad like yo i love this [ __ ] this he won us and big was at the bar having a drink and he turned around like like oh [ __ ] like yeah [ __ ] like yo he's like he's laughing and everything and she's like yo worry about that [ __ ] man come on man i know what it is man come on man we new york [ __ ] man it is what it is man competition at its finest and let it go and that was the next day we heard the homie got hit [ __ ] us up but anyway rest in peace the b.i.g one of the one of the illest man one of the illest yeah one of the best ever absolutely that's right that voice yeah wordplay everything that word play everything we knew he'd get busy but like i said even when we knew that the stakes was high when it came to you know confrontation we knew that he had a gun we knew that he had a a big a big joint so he like yo this [ __ ] could either get on some physical [ __ ] or could get on some lyrical [ __ ] so we know we always respected what he was about but i think for i think for me it goes that day it really kind of like it calmed the storm when it came to what everybody thought it was you know nobody had to tell me a ghost whatever whatever we knew he [ __ ] with meth meth never even said nothing to us about it like yo man your [ __ ] is wrong blah blah blah blah blah he never said it to me or ghost so i think it was just the fact that me and ghost just matured up and was like yo you know what you can't front on a a real one you know what i mean your real one you gotta salute them and um get that get that [ __ ] out the way yep you guys start working on your second album and by this time wu-tang really was not the close-knit family that it was before uh from what i understand you know a lot of people didn't like that double album a lot of people thought half of it was great half it was trash you know and people were not really gelling but the album debuted number one when gold is first week went four times platinum nominated for a grammy the biggest wu-tang project ever you know when i talked to people from the uk they said that's how the uk got introduced to hip-hop through that second wu-tang album that's what really you know set the waves off internationally right um you know when you look at that album to this day do you do you feel like it's a masterpiece or do you feel like uh i'm glad people like it but i'm still not digging it um i'm 50 50 with it you know i feel like it was a masterpiece and then i felt like it wasn't the reason why i felt like it was a masterpiece because at that time it was something different that we brought to the table far as the collective of wu chang what doesn't make it a classic to me is the fact that it wasn't 100 of us involved on the creative side like we were with the first one so you know when it wasn't when it was in a situation where everybody was putting their input in automatically it ain't classic to me no more because yo it's only half of us here talking and [ __ ] you know and at that time you know brothers already have money um brothers had you know american express cards in their pocket you know pulling up in their own little vehicles in their own little world you know getting all this this love from everybody it's like after a while do stop coming to practice like like practice ain't the [ __ ] no more you know so making that album was like it was a little [ __ ] it was off and on moments in it far as how we felt about the production some of the rhymes and all of that but it still wound up being a great album but it wasn't a cohesive album where cohesive where we all feeling like yo this [ __ ] is the hit you know but um we wound up making it the best we could make it you know cause rizz always had this thing about him where it's like if you don't like something now he'd be like oh don't worry about it yo when you hear it next time you hear it it's gonna be this so we like all right we seen you try that method once or twice and it worked so now it's to the point where we trusted you to change some things that you didn't change and now when they get down to it you're not changing it and brothers is like i thought she was gonna freak it better you know what i mean so now it's like inside you know once you start hearing [ __ ] like that in the room and you don't hit nah this is it that's it that's it right there you you don't hear that on my side you know when at the end of the day that ain't what the answer you want to end so it was a lot of that going on and then once the final project got got composed and all of that you had a lot of mixed feelings in the room but that was our second album so me knowing that that's our second album i know how important it is to the world because they like ah you did it one time you did one album this one this one gotta blow this one out the water you know what i'm saying gotta blow it so for me i wanted it to be a little bit more powerful than what what we gave y'all but it was a double album it was dope to this day i still give it a a 79 on the test that's just me i give it a 79. you know well a lot of the book started to talk about how things kind of went south in terms of your relationship with rizza and wu-tang management and so forth and i think the one thing that really stood out was you said that when wu ware was originally launched every member invested forty thousand dollars into into woo wear at one point at its height wu ware was making 25 million dollars a year and you said to this day nobody has ever seen a penny from woo where i mean we didn't you know it's not no it's not fictional it happened like that but for us it was like letting our brother control a situation that we knew he was good at and he was a made guy so it's like everybody trusted him and he did everything i guess he could do to the power to get it there but when it came out to the business side of it a lot of the members still felt like yo what's going on like where's my roi you know when um i trust i trusted the fact rizza always going back to rizzo because rizza convinced everybody to invest and we knew it was a a great investment but it didn't it didn't play out the way we thought it was going to play out but woo where started to blow up it started to blow up um my peoples made it you know shout out power he made it be what it was supposed to be just when it came out to the business side dudes was still like okay okay meaning like okay we waiting for envelope later on or what's going to happen or whatever the case may be so that was always in the back of dude's mind like yo we need to investigate why this ain't play out the way it played out you know and like i said we loved our [ __ ] we love p it was like yo it just it just never got down to it because i guess for us we wasn't really stressing it but we were stressing it because he's making tons of money already so you know when you're making a bunch of money you kind of like ain't worrying about the money that you already put in but you still know it's there but it's like ah yo that ain't really no big money but it's like once you start hearing that you know who wears creaming creaming it automatically you like yo but you don't bring it to pete you bring it to the management and you bring it to wizard because the wrist is the leader at this point and like yo you're the one that told us to to pop off like this so what was really going on you know so typical brotherhood [ __ ] we got back we got past it a little something something you know pete came back to the table and you know spoke his piece on how things was going and eventually it worked itself out you know however it worked out i never got my never got my 40 joints back but um i loved him so much that it was like [ __ ] it we'll move on one of the things you said was that when you had issues with rizza and you would sit down and talk to him you actually compared rizza to a cult leader and saying that after a couple of hours he would almost brainwash you to go along with whatever he originally thought i'm talking about in minutes man i'm talking about he's one of them like you get to like you could be super tight at rizzo and the minute you see him and you start addressing the situation and you look him in his eyes and he starts talking to you with with mannerism and respect because rizzo he would he always knew how to control his emotions so he never was like us when it came down to really spazzing or whatever you know rizzo was he was well balanced when it came to you know how he dealt with his emotions so you know once you talk to a brother you love and at the same time put you in the game to get you where you at he know how to he know how to spin [ __ ] around so you know next thing you know you find yourself just agreeing to [ __ ] that you really ain't even you didn't come to agree with this [ __ ] you you already had your mind made up but you looking at this thing like damn i love this [ __ ] man like yo man for real like that's how i mean you that's how we doing this and then next you know he figure out a way to you know fix [ __ ] in his own way where it's like yo we'll fix it we'll get it right but i don't know it just felt like it felt like a love-hate relationship even back then so for me it was like okay i see that the love is overpowering the business and um do you accept that you don't have to sit there and say to myself do you accept that and sometimes i didn't and sometimes i did so it was like me having that split personality like [ __ ] on this side like yo [ __ ] that and this side's like yo it was a great opportunity bro be be blessed that you you here you know what i mean you could be somewhere else you could be wherever here it is this man has given you the opportunity to live out your dreams so a lot of times us being good brothers two good fellas like really caring about each other for real for real you kind of say yo [ __ ] the money [ __ ] that i love this [ __ ] from the heart so it was a lot of that pendulum swinging [ __ ] where one day it's like this next day it's like that you know and i think every every group every crew has been in these situations before where it's like damn you love your [ __ ] but then at the same time you may not you may not be in love with them when they come to business we have one of those relationships me and rizza back then right because there's a part in the book where you told rizza like yo there's a problem with the system and the structure and he said you're wrong it ain't the system the system is fine it's y'all it's us i could never i could never respect that you know cause now you're pointing fingers now you you trying to throw it back on on on us when in our reality you are part of us so it's all of us so where you get this you [ __ ] from you know and um you know like i said i would say the same thing to the boys too because i i'm a vocal [ __ ] you know what i mean when they come to me feeling some kind of way i gotta say something because i'm hearing uh i'm hearing the chatters in the in the in the house so when you hear the chat is in the house it's like yo the [ __ ] are we doing like yo let's let's get to it let's find out what's going on you know and a lot of times it was always the love that we had and the respect there that the business got way caught up in it and a lot of times it's like like i said you feel like yo damn i don't really want to spaz on my [ __ ] because i love these [ __ ] and at the same time we built something so beautiful that the world is is attracted to it so let it go you know what i mean let it fly it it's going to get it's going to fix itself that's that's always our thing because we look at where we came from and where we're going so when you know where you're going you don't let the little things get in the way of where you're going because you see a big picture but sometimes the little things mean a lot one little thing could turn into another [ __ ] little thing and then now you got 17 little things that become a big [ __ ] problem now you see where i'm going yeah and that was going on with this family with this assembled family assembled well at one point old dirty bastard goes to prison and what i didn't realize was that near the end of his stint at rikers island wu-tang clan actually showed up at rikers island and performed with old dirty bastard in prison how how epic of a of a performance was that oh man it was it was it was love all over again you know what i mean it was like doing the first show ever you know but dealing with the fact that your brother is up in the up in the pen and um you know just really wanting to support him and say yo let's do something for the whole jail because we knew that a lot of jail [ __ ] loved us and he was in there so it was our way to go visit him you know pay respect to the jail and give the inmates some love give them something that they may have never got an opportunity to see before and i remember you know the um the warden in them was saying like yo you know that y'all had the whole house yeah i had the whole building behaving for a couple of months like because they told them like yo we gonna come up if y'all [ __ ] this up you know how they do you you know what i mean they're gonna do you like school like yo you be good you're gonna you're gonna we gonna take you to head so everybody they said everybody was on chill mode and [ __ ] and they kept telling us like yo everybody was waiting for this boom boom boom and i remember them saying don't get in the crowd with them because we can't hold no responsibility if something happened or whatever whatever so we was like yeah yeah alright cool cool cool and once the show started you know we did we jumped right in the crowd and started rocking you know everybody's rocking so you know they let it fly they was like ah all right well but when i tell you yo man that was a that was a a good time for us because we we loved we loved each other so much and we loved our brother and we just wanted to be there for him in any kind of way and i remember that was the only time we went to go see see our brother odb rest in peace yeah and i think there was a line in the book that really kind of it really hit me in the heart where you said losing odb was like wu-tang smile losing a front tooth yeah yeah yeah because believe it or not and i tell people all the time because you know i was [ __ ] with rizzo and old dirty before the group was even came to fruition so i knew the relationship that they had and how rizzo was more shy type of fella and dirty was more of an outspoken fella so when it came time to forming his group dirty was the battery he believed in us and he also kind of threw a battery and rizzo's back to do it even more you know kind of like letting rizza know like yo listen this [ __ ] is way bigger than what you think it's gonna be so i'm telling you whether you whether you want to have step with it you can't half step with this you know so he always was the battery pack when it came to the motivation of building his crew you know so if dirty dirty was the type of negative either say yo i don't want chef involved with it chef wouldn't be involved with it he he could call that shot because he had more of a a relationship with rizza at that time but it seemed like all the men that became a part of this crew dirty co-signed them dirty knew he was ill dirty new yo he run up on it you were ill [ __ ] you were you know let me make you laugh so dirty was definitely the spot to smile to us the spirit he been was saying back then rock the world [ __ ] yo we going head ear there they did it and we would laugh because it's like you start thinking the [ __ ] just being too hyped like stop it [ __ ] you just rocking a big pair of drawers right now you stop fronting man like we don't know that yet but he knew it he knew something that we didn't know so we always looked at him as the wick i call dirty the wick yo boom yeah this is this is how you light it then the bomb is gonna go up boom and that's just what happened so they i knew that their relationship was crazy close you know but dirty he knew how to produce he was making beats he was doing hooks he was throwing lines in here and there you know and everybody took took heed to what he felt because that's how the clan is it's like when you sit there and you think about how important it is to pass that test when it came to that that song you only look for certain [ __ ] to co-sign it and i remember it being jizzer because jizzer was always the sharpest to us he made [ __ ] step they gun game up um dirty cause dirty was was super ill and charismatic and he had everything that a rapper would have wanted to have back then so us being fresh off the block it's like yo we trusting you we trust y'all [ __ ] yo did i do my thing you killed that [ __ ] nah nah do it over this that this that like i tell people all the time like yo you know my [ __ ] told me to write over cream you know what i mean it was like oh [ __ ] word but everybody else just saluted it hey by yo 21 saluted me but my [ __ ] was like inside i'm like what you mean inside he like decide but i think you could do better you know what i mean so that was the kind of chemistry that the crew had it was it was like honesty at its finest back then when it came to making these songs and and creating this movement well at one point you actually had a meeting with q-tip and leonardo dicaprio about doing a wu-tang movie uh the nwa movie had come out it blown up you know next thing you know nwa is in the rock and roll hall of fame so you you know leonardo dicaprio was was with it he was ready to to help produce it but ultimately it never happened and it became the hulu series instead right when you look at that situation what exactly happened why do you think the movie didn't happen because all the series is dope i think the movie would have been a lot bigger now that's your opinion the same way how i felt like my opinion was was making sense um i'm just you know me i'm just looking at numbers i'm looking at you know numbers i'm looking at popularity all of that i wasn't really thinking from a series perspective and looking at how movies are taking a hit according to television series and you know [ __ ] like that so i was against it at first i was like yo i think we need to go for the gusto and do a real movie and do it good fella style do it once upon a time style like let it be something serious serious and um at that time rizzo had already was walking the way he was walking with his with his understanding of how he wanted to bring it out so um i remember having to meet in a personal meeting with rizza and i told them how i felt about it and i said yo i think we would all benefit more from a movie more than what this [ __ ] is offering us not taking anything away from the opportunity but i'm just looking at it financially it could be a better lick for us collectively yo boom he like yo we was off at 10 million dollars i turned it down i'm like you mean to tell me we can't do a movie in 10 with 10 million he like you know when he get mad at me start calling me my name and [ __ ] he's like yo rayquan what you talking about rayquan listen yo i'm like hold up you can't make a movie with 10 million dollars you can't make a movie with 10 million dollars you serious rayquan you're not listening you're not lit first of all how do you make a movie and send me how you make a movie of all of us at 10 minutes i'm like yo you can make one man he was like yo it's going to take more than that so anyway i'm like alright what's the number he told me the number that he felt we needed to go get so this is always in the back of my head trying to realize how my relationships could help you know make that happen because i feel like okay if you really think that this can happen let's go let's go let's go maneuver a little bit let's go let's go walk around the park a little bit we may be able to get that it's just all about us moving as a unit so um make a long story short i was hanging out with with chip one night q-tip a good brother very good friend of mine um we was talking and um he was like yo i'm hanging out with leonardo dicaprio tonight so i'm like oh [ __ ] i'm like that's what's up we we big fans of the homie you know we love him he's he's a talented actor he's a good guy he's a real friend of the family we know how he felt so i was telling chip like yo you think he would be interested and automatically tip was like yo i'mma call him i think he'd be i think he'll love the idea so you know me now my brain is my brain is starting to react a certain way like yo all right we get we get we get this man involved with it oh it's on and popping for real and we gonna get a great film out of this because you know like you said the nwa situation just transpired and it did great it did great i'm talking about from what was invested into it into what was the back end of everything it did excellent so this is where my mind is at so next thing you know chip called me back and say yo leo want to talk to you he said yo we're going to meet up at this old italian restaurant in park slopes boom just be there whatever so i'm like i bet you know what i mean i was in the city pull up it was leo there cooling he had about four people with him you know he had tip there i walked in super love was talking about it leo just kept staring at me like yo do you think this really can happen i'm like yo i know it could happen i just need you to come in and basically give me your word that you gonna do everything in your power to make this one of the illest movies that it deserves to be and he was like yo shep you got my word so now leo throws his peoples in the loop because i guess he was moving around and doing the film but his peoples were staying on top of me like yo we want to set up a meeting with you and rizza and let's get down to the to the real deal on how we can make this work you know so next thing you know we met up in beverly hills we met up with with leo's team his production team rizzo was at the meeting so rizzo really took the meeting on the strength of myself but also he took the meeting to see if it really was what i'm talking about so next thing you know he's sitting there blah blah blah they saying yo we interested this is what we want to do because you know me i'm i'm throwing out there yo we gonna we're gonna want to have an all-star cast of people involved with it you know i'm thinking like yo would it be younger guys that'll want to play us and then eventually you know we would all play we would all get in it somehow when it was needed but the key thing was rizzo already had an agreement with the people he was already doing something with so he was sticking he was staying loyal to his friends but instead of really looking at the fact that this could be one of the greatest classic movies ever made if we go this way and we all on it and um all i can remember was yeah yeah yeah and then you know it didn't happen and it got to the point where it was like they was calling me and i just felt like in the back of my mind yo you don't want this to happen bro bro you you don't wanna you don't wanna make it big to where we all could we all could live you know what i mean because now you're talking about something that people may be interested in seeing you know but hey but in his eyes he just kept thinking yo series it's going to last longer my relationships i can't go against them but i'ma hear you out chef and i see that you trying your best to make it bigger for all of us but i'm just gonna stay on this side of the plate and that's what he did and it just got to the point where it was like you know i was alone at the table when it came down to making that decision you know what i mean and i didn't want to be the bad apple to be like i don't want to get down with it because i didn't get this situation happening over here so i was pretty much pushed into pushed into doing the hulu [ __ ] you know but i just felt like we would have did some real business on this side of the table we would have all just been in the room together wanting that but it didn't pan out still became hold on like hold on still became a great situation down the line right you know what i mean the hulu [ __ ] shout out hulu the team they did uh they did what they did they did a great job they went and got the cash you know because we didn't have to do a lot of heavy work with this project because it was through the eyes of the rizza it was his curation of what he wanted this to be me like i said if i was doing the film it would have been more serious more more more martin scorsese style more francis ford coppola style if it was me you understand because i feel like i tell people all the time when you look at the hulu [ __ ] it's like drinking the finest scotch but it got a lot of ice in it you know what i said this one that i would have i would have wanted to happen this would have been like some 200 year old scot [ __ ] like you drink straight up though you know what i mean that's what i wanted i wanted the uncut not the not the west side story version i wanted the the good fellas the godfather version i wanted the you know the scarface the all of that and and and like i said it was just one of those situations i i was chalked out of it and i didn't i didn't get the um support from the family to really go that way so it was rizzo's you know he won the war well i mean i watched the whole series i could tell you you know this is not just me talking to you right now the actor who played you an old dirty bastard killed it i think they nailed it you know i mean and i remember like i had tyson beckford on my show we were talking about it i'm like i felt that the actor who played the rizzo's character the accent was just a little too much the only thing that bothers me about the show is the the actor who plays rizza i feel he tries too hard too much yeah it's too much and he's a brilliant actor though he is he's a great actor but i feel like that that ris of voice that he does it's just not natural it's too much yeah oh yeah you see what i'm saying yeah see what i'm saying like he was trying to do the rizza voice a little too much and it sounded kind of forced he never really sounded like wizard he never really sounded like rizza at all to me you know to me personally he never he never sounded like him he never looked like him and see that's another thing you know not to take none away from these dope young actors because i think they did a great job i think they're they busting a gun they doing what they need to do but for me i love biopic movies so it's like when you see certain movies and they playing certain people like jamie foxx playing ray you see how he murdered that you know what i mean you seen aretha movie you seen uh jennifer hudson killed that you seen a temptation movie you see how they killed that you feel me like i want to see my movies like that when i sit here and i think about our movie you know but these young cats they came in and they did they did their thing according to the younger generation which is part of rizzo's his his plan of making it be what it is it's like yo chef you too much thinking about your generation instead of looking at the young generation so i'm like you know what yeah i am but i think the young is still gonna like it too though i'm standing on what i'm standing on vlad because i i truly felt that a movie could have been done in two hours you know what i mean a ill one though you know what i mean imagine if we had jamie foxx a dirty cop or idris alba playing you know what i mean a hustler in the street or you know me i'm thinking the stars and i know at the end of the day the relationships that leo and his in his company has i know that that was a phone call away they would have took it to the to the next level but instead rizzo wanted to do it his way this is this is the the narcissist rizza that we all know he get the talking to you he get the looking in your eyes you're going zap you bow that you know you remember looking at the flintstones you look at the alien [ __ ] with the eyes and he he look at me look at fred and some [ __ ] oh barney and he go what's that [ __ ] name the cartoon [ __ ] kazoo or some [ __ ] you never used to watch the flintstones i don't [ __ ] know i know you're talking about it yeah you have to come down an alien and just yeah yeah you thought it was just [ __ ] but to me that's how rizza his his lingo was to us like he knew how to zap [ __ ] to be like yeah okay we try it that way rizzo instead of really being like riz this is this this how we could generate though i get what you're doing i get it so you know not to take anything away from him on the creative side because like i said riz is a genius you know this is nobody can't take that away from him he doesn't do classical [ __ ] do we all agree on that absolutely so i say i say it's like riz is like that um he's like that coach on on the patriots what's what's my [ __ ] name the coach oh you're talking about uh hold on what's the coach that'll be taking them [ __ ] to the street bill belichick belichick belichick whizzes like that he won so many rings that it's hard to really tell him that yo bro you ain't gonna win a ring with this one but you may you might according to your your strategies so we want to win in a ring with his strategy but i just think that with this one it would have made the the woo movie would have been crazy because i i'm telling you i love i loved nwa movie i loved the actors in it they was getting busy they had the faces they had all of this all of that it's like with the hulu [ __ ] it was it was some young it was me sitting out with my kid and watching it and and and feeling good about seeing it because it ain't too crazy so i guess that was his main goal we don't want to make it too crazy but guess what you know how you look at narcos and you see like it's like five nacos out right you're gonna get ready to see the next version of the wu chang story through the next man's eyes you know god willing you'll see something like that coming from another member one day you know and all i kept thinking was is with this book this book might walk me into that situation because i really kind of like felt like i really was in a cinematic mind frame you know just doing a book as well so well you know you talk about you know good fellows in the mafia movies and the mafia theme has always been very big in your verses and especially growing up in staten island that's always been a mafia headquarter you know with all the people that that you know all the mafia dudes i've interviewed and i guess when you were coming together doing the the cuban links project originally the project was supposed to be called wu gambinos but then steve rifkin's father who is somewhat affiliated with the mafia got a call from the actual gambino crime family rayquan want to call it album instead of only built for cuban links he want to call it wu gambinos but then a phone call came in from the actual gambinos tell me about this my father called me somebody called him and said they that they heard that and they didn't want the name you know to keep that name out yeah the gabino mafia one of the five founders i mean so that was i don't know like i stayed out of that and i and i told ray well i guess ray says it in the book right yeah right so the book yeah uh yeah basically you said like we're not we can't use this name he's like yeah i want like we cannot use this name what would be the repercussions if you had used the name i wasn't taking a chance [Laughter] yeah i mean you know they was like yo you can't call no albums that you know and um this was a conversation that i had with rifkin you know um because you know rifkins pops rest in peace it's like we talking about a lot of people right now that's that perish is in heaven so we want to salute everybody because a lot of people that we're talking about are not here today so i definitely want to you know give them their flowers and say rest in peace but um yeah steve pops he he was connected he had a lot of relationships so i remember me enforcing the title on steve and saying yo this is what we want to call it we want to call it wu gambino's and he like yo i'ma look into that and i remember coming back to me and saying yo it's not happening i'm like what you talking about what you mean can't happen gambino man what what he was like it's not gonna happen i was like you serious he was like yeah it's not gonna happen you know and he just told me like yo they not having that and if they are having that then you know what they haven't once he said that we ain't having it so the name automatically was it was um it was dismissed you know when um we started to think of what we wanted to call it right well you actually had a song though wu gambino's on the project so they're okay with the song but not the whole album right exactly exactly i mean you know at the end of the day you know a song is a song but when you start you know using somebody's likeness or whatever on that level you know it could have been it could have been a situation where you know now you got to take a conversation you got to take a meeting behind this like how are you just going to use that name like that and run with it you know what i mean so you know it was it was something funny to me because i'm like i'm doing it anyway but then it was something like nah steve you ain't with it anyway so even if we wanted to bum rush and do it like that we can't do it like that because you ain't even down for it but you know back then our mentality was we'll take the risk [ __ ] it but you know like i said being young and kind of like a little immature not really understanding business to the fullest we had to second guess that motion and be like you know what don't do it all right so we want to call on the album only built for cuban link [ __ ] you know um that chain you know any [ __ ] in our hoods that we knew back then i was rocking big big cubans and i'm talking about long chains with eagles on it and you know dinner plate pieces and all of that all these dudes was respected they was well respected men and they had families around them that were loyal to them so for me the the idea of rocking the cuban it showed a certain level of strength respect reputation you know men men at his finest getting busy we always wanted that lifestyle so you know it was like yo we gonna call the album only built for these dudes because these dudes is gonna understand what we're talking about on these albums what we're talking about on this album rather you know this album was to me was was the hustlers a hustler's nursery book you know dudes that you know i hear today dudes that's not here today dudes that got hit with 15 million years dudes that got a one to three you know i just felt like this album was to pay respect to them because at one point we was out there in the streets and trying to make a dollar out of 15 cent so this album to me was like it taught me how to be a man a businessman a hustler you know what i mean a [ __ ] that know how to get fly throwing silks you know this is back when the game everybody wasn't rocking silks and all that you might add kane and rock him only at that time probably taking it there i see of course i see his fly [ __ ] you know certain [ __ ] i ain't gonna say it was just rock him and kane it was a couple other cats that was crispy like that but i just wanted to take it to that level to where we were paying respect to those kind of guys and bringing that whole vibe back to hip-hop you know cause when you get on from out in the street automatically you want to reward yourself so that was our way of rewarding ourselves yo let me go just throw on go get some [ __ ] made uh you know what i mean throw some custom [ __ ] on or you know do [ __ ] like that because you earned it now you know what i mean you put your work in now show where your money is going you know what i mean remember the first time i seen the benz was with rock kim back in the i ain't no joke video oh [ __ ] jumping out velours on half moon caesars big chains on eric b dripping i used to go to union square to see these [ __ ] get it in like that cause we had to see it in real life seeing slick rick red bellies on this this show next one he got the sky blue ones on yellow he got the yellow ones on oh the next thing you know he came with the kangos and the mink coats and fur coats like that was the era that was getting busy before we was getting busy our era so you got to understand how much that we were so infatuated with that lifestyle not knowing that later on this will become the manual to a rapper's a rapper's lifestyle now now every rapper in the game once they get in they show their rewards through this way they throw on the cubans thank you to all of all the cuban link [ __ ] out there thanks for seeing that vision i love you for that but you get well you get where i'm going it's all about seeing your benefits and your rewards that's what you came into business for to reward yourself and that's why the name cuban links it meant so much to us because it was like yo you getting that reward now for all of the hard work and all the [ __ ] you did here's your rewards now well yeah and with that album wendy williams went on the radio and said there's a new king in new york rayquan the chef and that's a very heavy crown to have in your head considering i mean look at who was in new york at the time nas biggie uh was jay out during that time jay probably was just he was probably just starting to resurface though maybe like a year later like yeah yo that [ __ ] was crazy to me because i had just got a condo and [ __ ] you know i think i bought me a um a lexus back then i had to um remember the convertible joint not the convertible um the coupes you know they just changed the they just changed the um the bubble on it and i had one of those and condo you know what i mean i was just saving up my money like you know we was making money of course back on the internet 36 but this right here now my money is starting to add up and i remember going in the bathroom and i just bought this ill polo rope had all kind of lifesaver colors of this [ __ ] i'm in the mirror looking at it i'm listening to the radio and i heard wendy say that [ __ ] it felt good vlad it felt like you know what i mean i never asked to be the king i'm keeping 100 wasn't my thing i was already a king in my own world but when she said it that's when i realized yo this this album a new york must really be talking about this album and eventually other cities started talking about it va philly you know connecticut upstate all the way to buffalo all the way to canada everybody start talking about this album you know so it made me feel good in it and it really showed me that when you put your mind at something you could make it appear and that's what we wanted to do at that time and like i said to have my brother featured on it ghostface killer nobody wasn't featuring [ __ ] on these solo albums so we was doing a lot of [ __ ] that nobody wasn't doing that eventually became a trend in the game now you know because when you think about wu chang we always told y'all we came together to eventually form voltron and then do our own thing so we never lied to y'all about what the plan was from the beginning you understand i'm saying it's like dealing with the five families of five families in mafia it's like yo we could sit down and do business we don't have to love each other like that but we can do business because it's going to benefit all of us so that was always the plan was to come in set it off click style eventually you break down and everybody win and everybody eating there's more there's more fruit to eat from you know what i mean more apples and oranges to pick out of what we had going on you know when you talk about the wu tang and this really went on in the book a lot where like for example even on the first album cover not all the members showed up which is why you guys are wearing masks because not all the members are there rehearsals who knows who's going to show up you know studio sessions people might show up an hour late might show up seven hours late and so forth um you know you mentioned how the the album you came out with uh shaolin versus wu tang uh was sort of uh a side effect of your frustration with what was happening absolutely you know with with the group basically saying like yo i'm almost separating myself somewhat you know i mean by putting a title out like that it's a fight it's a divisive title right you know what i'm saying and and i remember you even said like divine was a big part of the problems you said in the book you said he has a heart of gold but was a piece of [ __ ] at the same time yeah yeah it's like he knew how to play both sides of the fence very well you know um like i said um when you sit back and you think of this organization it's really like dealing with five families you know um everybody's not gonna agree everybody's not going to be on the same page no more because at one point we were but then after a while like i said too many things that are small things that become problems now it's too many of them so you have to say to yourself you got to take some kind of responsibility but at the same time you got to go where the problem is at too and a lot of times the problem became with this guy you know what i mean with how he was dealing with certain things or how he him and rizzo being brothers how the clan is feeling like at some point yo hold up that's his brother though you know what i mean like good dude though but dude are they all they are they trying to one for you one for me two for you one two for me [ __ ] you know you start thinking all that [ __ ] because remember we we from the streets so it's like we are going to question things but yeah but like i said you can't tell us that y'all you're gonna fix something on the album and the next thing you know it don't get fixed and then on top of it dudes don't like what they're hearing but they still doing it you're still doing it but you don't like it so in a way for them i guess they felt like it's not that bad because you're still doing it but in all reality we going off for yo you're gonna fix it like you said right you're going you're gonna hold your word and um yeah that album we we was we was [ __ ] pissed with it a lot of us majority of us was like yo the [ __ ] is the ugly baby right here b like it's an ugly baby my [ __ ] but yo that's our baby we love them to death but that's the ugly one you know but um yeah man you know what i mean it just got to the point where i was you know me being the chef being vocal wanting to sprinkle as much as i could sprinkle to help facilitate the whole family because i don't know i guess i'm just i'm a real team player my [ __ ] so that's how i felt i always want all of us to win and shine together but i'm telling raw like yo look at your men you know what i mean ain't feeling good me and him will have a lot of arguments behind this and to the point where i become a threat i become that john gotti figure choking nepal now and really not really liking paul but i still respect paul you good where i'm going with it rest in peace guardian paul you know what i mean whatever it is it is what it is but all i'm just trying to make a point to you that me and rizza had a lot of turbulence because i was speaking for the family but the spent the family wasn't really letting rizzo know what he what they felt so um it just got me to the point where it's like we can't come out with another album that ain't gonna hit because they don't have our sound so guess what i'm gonna go do one on my own because i was in my bag at that time i was feeling a little you know not appreciated as a as an acting member of this family when it came to being creative musically i didn't feel like i was being respected as a boss so i decided to make one on my own i decided to walk away from wu-tang clan to a degree like y'all ain't even woo no more from just i'm just just a shaolin [ __ ] right now now remind you it was a movie called shaolin vs wu-tang same situations happen same situations in his own little way you got to look at the movie to see that yo we are living in that same world but just in the musical world confrontations loyalty ain't capital letters no more understandings is not being understood the music is not making everybody feel like they want to go in because you're not inspired and you're not saying you're not inspired somebody has to say something i'll take yeah cause i remember the one thing that really struck me when reading through the book was when you guys were working on your second album you said that certain members started saying that other people's verses were trash to their face and you even caught yourself doing that once or twice oh yeah you know but that's but see that's the that's the gift when it comes to wu because we was always on top of each other it's like teaching your brother how to fight or how to hold his hands up and say look watch your left when you throw you when you throw your [ __ ] you got to have your your you gotta have your hands up a certain way you don't just fight with your hands down so that's us sharpening still still sharp and still so after a while you know brothers wasn't in the room together writing together now as you know one day over there in the corner of a [ __ ] another room it's like everybody ate giving it the the 200 that we once gave it before because of the energy of the production that was being played we ain't talking we talking about all uh the brother the brother issues just talking about the music now the music is not it's not really clashing the way where it used to so you know yo it's gonna get fixed just chill relax keep your shirt on we're gonna fix it we're gonna change it but then nothing gets changed and then everybody got something to say so typical group [ __ ] some [ __ ] gonna believe some [ __ ] gonna be like nah that ain't it and that's just what it was with us you know we wore our hearts on our sleeves so you know what i've learned is that everybody is not going to be voiceless when it comes to certain things you might have a good listener you might have a good talker you may have a good understanding maker this person he knows how to make us all understand so we was just dealing with that kind of organization then and um we you know we wasn't we wasn't feeling good about it you know um we felt like we was losing stripes in the game stripes is being ripped off shh that wasn't it how many stripes you gonna take off with you know what i mean so it was very serious for us to give give the world our best [ __ ] and we just felt like at that time we wasn't giving them we wasn't giving y'all that last question before i let you go you guys were there at the source awards when suge got on stage and was like for all y'all artists who don't want the the ceo all up in your videos dancing come to death row and yeah that set off a chain of events i feel that a few months later you know you know hit him up drops and then vibe called it the east-west war you know and i remember when i interviewed trench and he blamed vibe for that whole situation you know i mean he said people weren't talking about east coast west coast beef like until vibe coined it when you got that [ __ ] vibe magazine right where you see big and puffer on the cover east vs west when i saw that [ __ ] cover i said man what the [ __ ] is going on gangsters don't read articles [ __ ] on the east coast like yo it's on wait till the west coast [ __ ] come out here west coast like always on wait till east coast [ __ ] come out here so it baited up a whole [ __ ] that [ __ ] went down that had just so many cycles of all biggie followers and riders all park riders [ __ ] that didn't even know neither one of them gangster has [ __ ] it could have really turned into a [ __ ] east coast west coast war right and then tupac gets killed and then the day after you guys squashed the beef with biggie biggie gets killed and being in the middle of all that and you know it's not like anyone dissed wu-tang they like anyone just rayquan but you guys were in the middle of it and you guys saw the moment that it all set off when you look at that particular night in the chain of events that happened afterwards what are your thoughts on it i mean you know we was definitely you know feeling like at the end of the day it's being thrown out of proportion now you know it's it's starting to make it seem like it's like this with each side with east coast and west coast when the new reality east coast and west coast and to do with it this is a situation that has something to do with you know two crews two rival teams you know we know puffing them was creaming them back then and and you know death row you know at that time they was they was doing a [ __ ] so you know how it go it's like it's like you go to a new city [ __ ] might know you a new york [ __ ] i may know you atlanta [ __ ] or may know you're a west coast [ __ ] but that [ __ ] probably ain't gonna get you by over here like that you get what i'm saying so it just was something that got blown out of proportion due to media on how they was carrying it because they realized yo these [ __ ] just on the west coast doing anything they win it's a great it's a great story who don't like a [ __ ] great story and and then you got you know you got people that feed into [ __ ] feed into [ __ ] we we fed right into it you know what i mean it's like we go to a [ __ ] club together the whole woo everybody got this thing like yo we [ __ ] imbeciles you know what yo them [ __ ] is going to jump on your back and bite you in the neck and this and that and then when they get to meet us it's like damn y'all some real respectable loving guys but it's the image so to me the image was took it out of proportion and made it be this and made it be that instead of it actually really being that situation because i don't i don't recall back then a lot of people from the west coast having problems with brothers on the east coast and vice versa we would have knew about it wasn't that it was just uh a quest for power right because wu tang members were showing up on tupac's allies on me see you see what i'm saying uh uh method man was on it was inspector deck on me or maybe there was a verse or something that was not you yeah i heard that yeah i heard that that he had through that decade threw a missile in i guess something happened or whatever didn't make the cut but um yeah we never you know us personally we never had an issue with those brothers and you know like i said we were all young you got to remember it was a lot of youngsters including ourselves when we came in a game that was getting they come up on that came from the same cloth that we came from so that was our way of getting to know each other is based on respect you know what i'm saying um sug said what he said and no matter how much we might have been feeling like it was tension with bad boy the the the tension went from it ain't we don't even got no problems with bad boy now like yo why is this guy right here trying to create something but we never judged it we yo it's not our business we don't know what's going on they not bringing that [ __ ] over here we going we to keep quiet but we did feel like yo the media twisted this [ __ ] up and should be something else you know what i mean suge said what he said he got up there he said it oh [ __ ] he won that puff you know puff came back with the gentleman the gentleman conversation and they dealt with it however they wanted to deal with it we didn't we didn't have nothing to deal with that we didn't have anything to do with that you understand i'm saying but when you start making it the east coast west coast thing this is where now it becomes uh uh uh uh um a issue to a degree a small issue but we we always felt like we wasn't a part of it because we love we have respect from death row we have respect from bad boy like i said it was just a competitive sport back in the 90s that had everybody going bonkers my [ __ ] everybody was just bonkers you know throughout the book throughout the book you talk about brothers when you mention anyone from the boutain regardless of how you felt about them the word brothers keeps coming up over and over again but yet a lot of the book is talking about the problems you had with with rizza and divine and power who you formed a company with and you claimed that you know he ripped you off at one point um and so forth could there ever be a time in the future you know i've interviewed you god and i guess he was suing wu-tang at one point i don't know whether that's still going or not but there was definitely some some bad feelings on on his end as well is there at all a possibility sometime in the future next year 5 10 20 years from now where everyone just gets back together like and it's all love there's no issues everything's put aside and you guys come up with a project that you've always wanted to come up with is that a possibility or do you think that there's just too many wounds that are just too deep that can't be you know healed up i think that it could come back it could be something great again you know what i mean and like i said just to reiterate anything that happened within business with my family sometimes you gotta look at yourself too and say to yourself you gotta hold some you gotta hold some responsibility on that because maybe he wasn't handling your business the way you should have handled your business so i'm not calling the robbery powwowing robbed me for nothing res ain't robbed me i robbed myself because at the end of the day i wasn't being on point with my business the way i should have you know what i mean was my loyalty there for for all those brothers absolutely and to this day it's still like that but do we still share the same views no it's not a mystery we all men here so we can agree to disagree that's that's that's what anybody you can you got a twin brother and you could be like i love you to death [ __ ] but [ __ ] you [ __ ] you ain't gonna disrespect me you ain't gonna insult me and at the end of the day i'd see them on and we can go out we could go eat some [ __ ] jerk wings and laugh it off and get it out the way that's how this family is you know what i mean do i think we could come back in and cream them again absolutely do i know when i don't know don't ask me you feel me don't ask me because i don't know do i want to see that day absolutely but guess what it's a lot of [ __ ] we want to see that we just gotta come to realization that it's not going to happen like that now they say the older man get the more he's stuck in his ways so if you stuck in your ways to this degree and that's just who you are i gotta accept it and if i accept it that mean i'm willing to walk into the park and play with you and knowing what i have to accept so that's how we deal with each other today but far as the brotherhood i love all my brothers you understand all of them play a imperative effective role in my life and we all play and vice versa i tell a [ __ ] all the time [ __ ] yeah you might have cooked the food [ __ ] but we went we went shopping we we ain't got that [ __ ] you feel me ain't no one [ __ ] no one one [ __ ] design this whole [ __ ] in the day that i start hearing that talk is the day when now is bothering me because now you're fronting so this is what you go through with groups that's why i tell people all the time they ask me yo would you want to make another would you would would you co-sign seeing another group done in the same fashion as wu tang i'm like yo number one i don't think it's gonna ever happen and number two be careful with that because that's that's a lot to deal with right there i don't recommend those kind of groups being made no more because it's not easy to put non-members and and the people that believe in you on the same page and think that it's gonna stay like that forever you just gotta be on top of your business so you know that saying first time shame on you second time shame on me so that's what i live off i live off of principles and rules and like i said i love my brothers regardless of what regards to everything we've been through when i change it when i change time no it's a learning process because all that [ __ ] did was make me stronger today i sell wine i got a cannabis business a production company i wrote a book my career is still moving it's a vessel for me right now and it allows me to go out there and sit around big businessmen and let them see my experiences that i've been through and see how i changed and went from being a young cat that was caught up to now being a guy that has responsibilities and know how to deal with certain situations when they come at me now before i didn't i know how to respect a hundred thousand and say yo do this without you can't respect a dollar you can't how the [ __ ] you all respect a hundred thousand can't respect a hundred thousand you'll never be able to respect a man you get where i'm going with it so yeah this is what i feel it's like it's no love lost it's like my brother's allowed me to still be here and i love them for that so if i'm wrong for j yo do you you see the ending um remember that movie once upon a time in the in america at the end with james woods he was like i did all of this to you noodles what noodle said you didn't do nothing to me he walked away he didn't want he told him he said y'all want you to kill me who does that y'all did so much to you i want you to kill me [ __ ] i did everything to you de niro in the movie was like you didn't do nothing to me mr blah blah blah and walked away and this [ __ ] killed himself i don't want that on my back it's cool it ain't gonna be there ain't never gonna be enough money to make me go after or go at my friends that i know that and they gave me a shot i'd rather walk away but today we still represent this that don't go nowhere and there's cats like y'all and people that seeing this [ __ ] y'all made us stick together this long and we appreciate y'all every lap i speak for all them [ __ ] so that's how it goes that's what it is rayquan man listen i have been a fan for such a long time you could hear it in my stories and some of my feelings what i expressed to you when i listen to certain songs what i told you in the very beginning how incarcerated scarfaces was was such a an important song to me how that purple tape was so important how that first wu-tang album really resonated you know and how the symbol the wu-tang symbol is the most memor you know recognizable symbol in all of hip-hop that's right you know there's lots of other dope signals out you know symbols out there but in terms of that wu-tang sign there's nothing like it and the group that you helped put together there's never going to be anything like it this is why in 2021 there's still movies you know there's still series there's still the the mikes and men documentary uh i heard there's gonna be spin-offs like the odb story might you know might have its own thing which i can't take fouls you know all of this [ __ ] you know what i mean it don't stop because because at the end of the day my [ __ ] we realized we got our own planet and you know when you think of wu-chang you got to look at the super friends and how they go out there and they deal with different situations and stand with their chin up and they head high that's just what we doing but it's tons of things that's still going to take place it's not over what we told the world is forever is forever because now you got these young kids that's younger than us you know coming in and they understand they've been there they making a money they got their crews they going through it they're going to learn from what we've been through but the key thing is to learn how to still appreciate the people that appreciated you that's why we tell our kids a day treat people how you want to be treated because if you give them this they're going to give you that you know what i mean you be good to people they're going to be good to you so that's the same energy when it comes to dealing with crews just be on top of your business that's the key thing and know how to balance it you know we love the [ __ ] that care about us but don't take advantage of a good man you know what i mean and and and just be genuine speak you can't you can't if you ain't saying that you can't expect somebody to always know what you feel can't hold it in this is what we did at some point but i'm still down for the love love is more powerful than money anytime loyalty love that's what those are my principles bro right and at your age this is why you still you know you still are who you are you're still getting booked all over the place you know i'm saying people are still you know you had multiple projects only built for cuban links part two which was dope dr dre contributed to it as well as other a bunch of other dough producers absolutely people like two chainz absolutely you used to sell buy weed from when he was titty boy yeah you know blew up and started doing versus for you later on that's why you know right there people like busta rhymes still [ __ ] with you and you know kanye let's not forget kanye's right that's right scooped you up that's right family i call these brothers you know family man because they was there for us and you know that's just an extension of our family but a lot of these a lot of these dudes we respect to the fullest you know like i'ma tell you this story real quick like you know i remember seeing um jay-z back when he was just getting started and we were coming in to do a show and i remember hope was just on the side just being real cordial and he caught my attention and he told me say yo man i respect what you guys are doing man like a lot of love for y'all man and i turned around yo thank you good brother you know i mean not really knowing too much about him and look look what i see my brothers doing man i'm so so proud of guys who really came in and did what they were supposed to do especially for my generation you know that's making tons of bread and and giving out jobs and empowering their people so when i see that i know that hip hop did something great for all of us including you so my time is up you know that's what it is rayquan man uh thank you so much for bringing you know coming back in let's not let another decade pass you know until our next interview man you and your kids and all your loved ones the best saying saying to you salute peace peace

Channel: djvlad

Views: 574,920

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Id: kFzL1tHsMFQ

Length: 111min 23sec (6683 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 01 2022