RAW

by Lamont U-God Hawkins

  Nas was there that day, too, recording his verse for “Verbal Intercourse.” We were in the booth together. He came in by himself, too. At the time he was a little G. I give that to him. To come into the studio and be around dudes you don’t know and be comfortable like that, he was a real laid-back dude. He had heart.

  After “Knuckleheadz,” I got on the hook for “Investigative Reports,” on Liquid Swords, and went back to trying to find my bounce again. I might not have found it for a while longer if it hadn’t been for Cappadonna. That’s why it turned out to be even more of a blessing that I’d gone back to Park Hill to get Cap. He was a necessary force on the team. And with a few simple words of advice, he paid me back for pulling him into the Wu.

  But I felt like everyone in the Clan was still looking at me like I was a fluke-ass dude. “The Four-Bar Killa,” they called me. I hated that fucking nickname. I didn’t want to get labeled like that during my awkward growth phase. I didn’t complain, though, I just kept studying.

  In 1995, I did a track with Cypress Hill called “Killa Hill Niggas” with RZA that gave me a little bit of hope that I was getting better. I knew it still wasn’t right just yet, but I was hearing the progress in my bounce. So I kept writing. Every day I would go through a few pages of my notebook.

  One day, while I was struggling with writing this particular rhyme, I looked over my shoulder to find Cappa reading it, nodding his head to the beat. “Yo, that dart is crazy sharp, Uey. That’s gonna be fire. You just forgot to put a word right there.”

  He points to a space between two words on the page I was scribbling on. I read my rhyme over and over again ’til I saw what he meant. It just hit me like enlightenment, or something instant like that. It all fell into place after that one little bit of advice. Another brain jump.

  But I still kept getting kicked out of the booth. The only thing I knew was that I had to keep going. I had no other choice to get it right. No was not an option for me. That’s when I learned about the difference between being a warrior—a champion, really—and a regular person. It was the difference between giving up and getting back up and trying again. Some people take a loss and it breaks them spiritually. A true champion is a motherfucker who can take a loss and rise back up with a full heart and keep going until he wins. I got kicked out of the booth over and over, but every time I picked myself back up and got back in there. I never, ever stopped trying.

  And on my fifteenth try, I recorded my verse on “Winter Warz” for Ironman, with Cappa coming in on the back with his long-ass verse. That’s when I started getting my momentum back. It was a banger. It wound up being a gold record.

  At the time, there were rumors swirling around about how I should be kicked out of the group. Then I came with “Winter Warz.” I came with this other shit, getting a verse off on “Black Jesus,” another one for Ironman. Now I’m getting on a track here and a track there. I just started dropping them. Bong. Bong. Bong. I started doing soundtracks (The Great White Hype and High School High). I found my speed. I found my rhythm. I was getting my balance. I was getting oily. My practice was starting to pay off.

  *

  I was getting better at laying vocals and writing rhymes, but now I was torn about what my subject matter should be. Should I talk about the streets? How would I distinguish my style from the eight other guys in Wu-Tang Clan?

  Raekwon was claiming that crime rhyme shit for himself. He was repping that Gambino/Scarface shit hard, so that threw me off as far as where my lane was. Rae was always rhyming about crime since the days in front of 160, when he was a Kool G Rap disciple, so I couldn’t get mad. Plus, he’d been pumping out the gate, so he had his street stories to tell.

  Ghostface was always a big thug, so he was claiming that chamber, which was cool because that’s how he always was. He changed up a bit after his verse on “Protect Ya Neck,” to incorporate that “silk shirt, suede Wallabees fly shit” for Raekwon’s album, but it was still Ghostface. He wasn’t perpetrating the fraud at all.

  Method Man was just that dude. He was always entertaining and popping, and just had that magnetism that would carry him far.

  Deck was a quieter type; his style was efficient, no wasted words or bars. He wouldn’t open up his mouth until he had that rhyme polished and ready. Then when he would spit, everybody would be in awe. Just incredible the way he was so descriptive. Deck was always on point.

  GZA and RZA were like scientists with their rhymes. They read a lot and studied science and philosophy, and were just very learned individuals. Masta Killa was a disciple of that chamber, too.

  ODB was his own unique entity as far as style; no one could do his chamber like he could. Cappadonna was more abstract with it but dead nice, and all his unorthodox styles were really original.

  My style is the project kid who was the real, actual street dude who fought against all odds to make it. When I rhyme, I rhyme like a superhero based on the fact that I had to overcome all these obstacles, everything I had to do to survive in the hood. Dudes are always tellin’ me that when I rhyme, it sounds like I’m a warrior, like I’m going to war, in the biblical sense. In fact, Warrior Spirit was one of the possible titles for my next album, the one that ended up being called Venom.

  I was also the one who’d been in jail for that street shit, so I felt a bit entitled to that subject matter. I didn’t have a beat to write to, though. Even though jail is where all the slang is from, I couldn’t put it together. One thing I did get while in there was I was writing mad notes. I was just writing, writing, writing. I had mad lines, mad concepts by the time I came home.

  Even when Meth wrote “All I Need,” I said that shit to him first. When I was upstate in shock, which is a kind of military-style program, that’s when I gave him the inspiration over the phone to write a song about his girl.

  Here’s how it went: I was getting to come home early to go on work release. They would let drug offenders come in real fast, do your time, come home. Except I got kicked out because my crime was too violent, so I got disqualified.

  I was talking to Meth—at the time, the only people I was really talking to in the outside world was my main seller, my mom, Meth, and a couple of women. I’m on the jack like, “Yo, son,” because he was passionately in love with my baby mother’s sister. He was in love with Tameka, he loved her so fucking much. Actually, he went on about her so damn much, I kinda got tired of hearing about it.

  I told him, “Man, you gettin’ on my nerves with all that. Why don’t you just write a song about her? Tell her how you feel.” Next thing you know:

  “Shorty, I be there for you anytime you need it …”

  He was like, “Yeah, man. You know. Once you come home, we gon’ get it on.” Funny thing is, RZA’s version of that song didn’t win Meth his Grammy, it was Puff Daddy’s remix that won. After Meth won his Grammy, RZA separated us—he made sure we didn’t work together anymore.

  Back in the day, me and Meth were the writing team, we used to come up with routines together. We used to be together every day. We had songs together. We had routines together. That’s what happens. That’s the reason why the dudes he’s with right now, they get more worried about writing rhymes. The dude sucks because he doesn’t have his fucking writing partner around now. I’m gonna fucking let him know to his face, “Man, you’re gonna hear when my record come. You gonna hear my new record come from my old shit.”

  Because I’m writing now, I’m oily now. I’m right here. I’ve been in the studio. I ain’t going to jail, you ain’t gettin’ rid of me like that. I ain’t going no fucking goddamn where. I’m in the studio. I got my lines right. I got my hooks. I got my concepts going. Why? Because that’s what me and Meth used to do—we used to share ideas every day.

  Even now, I put Meth on one of my songs on The Keynote Speaker, and he fit like a fucking glove. And when he got on that, I know he started to think like, Wait a minute. ’Cause the last record he did was with a bunch of hood guys. His label wanted him and me to
do an album together, but instead he did one on his own, and that shit fucked him up. I know what he was thinking—he’s a street dude at heart, and he wanted that street cred, but the album ended up flopping because nobody knew these motherfuckers. I know he was tryin’ to do these brothers a favor, trying to take them up out of the hood like we did all those years ago, but for some folks it just ain’t gonna happen like that. You can’t save everybody.

  Not only did that project tank, it shot down our collaboration with that label as well, because we never made money on it. When I heard about it, I was like, “Dawg, that shit’s like where I was ten years ago. You’re where I was at a decade ago.” That shit fucked his value up. I wanna know who the fuck told him to do that? And now I gotta get him back up again.

  See, I have a lotta love for Meth, but the dude doesn’t know how to value himself. He’s a Grammy-winning artist, but instead of taking himself higher, he tanked his stock by trying to do this straight-outta-the-hood album, which wasn’t him at that time.

  So the one I put him on, everyone who hears it is like, “Wow, this shit is hot! You two are back together again!” And I’m like, “See?”

  ’Cause at the end of the day, it’s not just about writing rhymes. It’s about your songs. It’s about your concept. It’s about what you’re talking about. What’s the song topic? What’s the song about? What’s the theme of the album, and how does that fit who you, the artist, are at that time?

  *

  Since we had gone on our second promo tour for 36 Chambers, we started getting paid better for shows. Checks also started coming in from the soundtracks we were doing, like High School High and Fresh. We had been on the road for sixty days at a time, so I had just kept my things at my mother’s house and traveled the world, living out of hotels and vans. Once we got some of that soundtrack money, me and Method Man got an apartment together.

  But as soon as Meth got his Def Jam deal in ’93, he moved out of our crib. He bounced, and it was crazy that the dude I’d been looking out for on the street was taking off now. It was humbling.

  Even worse, he left me with GC, a slob who’d leave his used condoms on the floor, cigarette butts everywhere … just a total mess. So I told GC he was out, and I changed the locks.

  For the first time in a while, I was by myself in the crib, working on my rhymes and trying to stay off the streets. I just sat in the crib and bought some notebooks and just tore through them with ink. I would spend hours writing. It didn’t even have to make sense. Sometimes it did and sometimes it didn’t, but at that point in time it was more about putting the words together so it flowed. Just practicing my flow, my cadence all day. So the more I hit the mic, the easier it got, and the more my anxiety went away.

  That was about the time that things really started getting better, not only for me, but for us. Between the touring and the solo projects, the Wu-Tang was moving forward as one, our minds and bodies together, forming that sum that was greater than any of its individual parts. It was too soon to know whetherwe were gonna to be able to feed our seeds of music forever, but in the back of our minds, we knew we were on our way.

  We went back on the road to promote the latest Wu-Tang albums (Raekwon’s Cuban Linx, GZA’s Liquid Swords, and ODB’s Return to the 36 Chambers). We were going into the studio more, and I was really starting to feel comfortable in the booth.

  But just as I was getting into the groove of things and coming into my own, I got some heartbreaking news that threw my whole world into upheaval—my baby boy had been shot in Stapleton.

  15.

  THE NIGHT THE EARTH CRIED

  I was nineteen when I first became a father. The girl who became my baby’s mother grew up in the projects with me. She lived at the top of the hill. Her mother was real loose with having neighborhood boys come over, it was never an issue. I remember they had bunk beds, and the middle of her bed had a depression, like a sinkhole. And I’d come up there sometimes in the middle of the night.

  I was just a horny little motherfucker, and that girl was a little cutie-pie from the hood. I wasn’t loyal to any of the Park Hill girls I got with; after my first girlfriend broke my heart, the concept of loyalty went right out the window. I was just trying to fuck anything that moved.

  And then she accidentally got pregnant within three months of knowing me. Like a lot of things in the ghetto, it was an accident. It was rough, because I was still too young to understand how my world had just changed. I was running around in the streets. I was still dealing. I was scared, too. I didn’t know what the fuck to do. I was also kind of upset at the whole situation, because again, it was nothing we were planning for, but here it was.

  Teenagers in the hood need to understand something: Children are for married couples. People shouldn’t be having babies unless they’re married. They’re not taught that in the hood. Motherfuckers are having babies at the drop of a hat. “Oh, I’m having your baby.” “Baby, I’m not even with you like that. We’re not even married. I was with you for a week. I was only with you for two months. Or maybe not half a year. You’re not even supposed to have that.” But it doesn’t happen like that in the hood. If a woman gets pregnant in the hood, she’s on that shit. And back in the day, abortion wasn’t even an option. They don’t believe in that shit.

  With my son’s mother, I gave it two or three months to see if we could make it work, but we weren’t really connecting, so I left. I let her live her life, instead of being stuck with me through our child for the rest of her days. But I wasn’t about to just up and leave them, either; I’m no runner—I’m not abandoning anybody. That’s a big reason why I’m still in New York City today—because of family.

  *

  A lot of raising Dontae happened through trial and error. It wasn’t the thought of caring for a baby that was the issue. Since I had taken care of my younger brother growing up, the idea of raising a child didn’t really faze me. I just didn’t have a lot of stable families as role models. My mother was never married and was always working, so I didn’t have a lot of structure growing up. A lot of the time, I didn’t know what was going on.

  Truth be told, I was mostly upset about having to spend more money. But don’t get it twisted—I love my children and would do anything for any of them. When I was home, I was always around. All my babies know who their father is.

  And Dontae was another reason for me to get out of the street life. He’s a big reason why I went to college. But at the time, I still couldn’t earn enough to feed myself and care for him and stay out of jail. The kinds of jobs available to me at the time didn’t pay enough to feed a family. So I made the best of it, and then Wu-Tang started taking off, which necessitated me being on tour a lot more. I would go out, tour around, then when I came back I’d make sure Tanya had what she and Dontae needed to get by. Back home, one of my female workers who used to babysit me when I was younger also babysat my son. My son’s mother would give him to CeCe, who used to take him all around the neighborhoods. CeCe loved my son.

  It just so happened that one day CeCe was in Stapleton, and some dudes started shooting, as they do in the hood. Guy—the dude I used to hang with back in the projects—was in the mix. He was trying to kill a dude named Shawn Berry, and they were shooting at each other. During the shootout, Shawn picked my son up and used him as a fucking human shield. Dontae got shot in the hand and the kidney.

  He was two years old.

  I was in San Francisco when I got the news. I flew back as soon as possible. My son died twice on the operating table, came back both times. They got him stitched up and pulled two bullets out of his kidney, which he lost. He dislocated two fingers, and some of the nerves in his spine were damaged. He’s had many different kinds of therapy since then. A lot of it.

  When I first saw Dontae in that ER, they had my baby boy cut wide open, operating on him. I was just fucked up mentally. And the crazy thing about it was that black people, we don’t have any sort of therapy to help with something like this. I didn�
�t know about none of that. Instead, I self-medicated; I got high and I got drunk.

  RZA and the others didn’t make it any better, ’cause they didn’t give a fuck. In fact, they were just giving me shit. I didn’t get no mental support, they didn’t send me any money. You know, basically, RZA thought giving me a check for the work I did, that was good enough. I didn’t get any support from these dudes who I thought were my brothers. Matter of fact, they rubbed their fame and their wealth in my face even more. They made my life even fuckin’ rougher, much worse mentally.

  So I was goin’ through all that. You know, I got on records, I did all this, I did that, I got soundtracks. I didn’t get any flowers from my brothers, they didn’t send me any cards, none of that shit. The only person who was really there for me was Meth. Meth is family, we got blood together. Meth was in love with my son’s baby mother’s sister, so we related like that.

  And I was in a fuckin’ position, because when it happened, I wasn’t with my son’s mother, so I kinda blamed her, and she felt like it was her fault. And CeCe, my girl worker, the dudes in the hood pressed her so fuckin’ hard, they forced her not to snitch. She didn’t ever really tell me what went on. She slipped off her rocker; she went crazy, literally nuts, and she was never the same.

  I told her, “You gotta make a fuckin’ choice, you gotta tell me what happened.” And she didn’t wanna tell me. To this day, she still don’t wanna tell me. So I had to hear little bits and pieces from outside sources and all this stuff and I’m like, “Yo, how you gonna sit here and not tell me what’s goin’ on, but you in my house, you in my son’s mother’s house like this?” Finally we had to disown her.