I never understood that. We were getting cake and expanding our fan base all over the world. At that time, we were at the top of our game, fifty thousand seats packed with Wu fans. My opinion is that sometimes, deep down, some people have a fear of success. I’ll never really understand that, though—isn’t that what we’re here for?
I’m gonna tell the truth here. I really think that at the time, some of my brothers were scared to make that kind of money. People say they want to make millions of dollars, but if you had a million dollars in your bank account right now, I bet you’d be scared to death. I think the average person would be, at least. Now you’re always looking over your shoulder, thinking everybody’s trying to get at you. You don’t know who you can trust. Those are the things motherfuckers with money are scared of.
And it is a problem. At first I didn’t believe it, ’til it kept happening over and over again. Every time we started getting a lot of money, there was always a couple dudes in the Clan that would get real funny about it. They’d start acting weird, sayin’, “No, we got to do this and this.” They’d fuck it up for themselves and for all of us. And I was like, “Dude, what the fuck is wrong with y’all?” Then I realized what the problem was: Wow … these dudes are scared to touch that type of bread.
That has never been a problem with me. There’s a certain way you gotta move when you have that kind of bankroll. You have to approach your life differently. You can’t be around certain people, anyone who’ll try to take advantage of you or get at your money. You have to take a more business-oriented view of your life with that kind of bread, that’s just what it is.
But of course, you get nine guys, each one having a different view of what they should be getting out of the business, and feeling that they aren’t getting what they need, that’s when trouble starts to happen.
18.
CRACKS IN THE FOUNDATION
If you really look at it, and my brothers understand this, too, we all pulled each other out of the fucked-up situation we were all born into. Without RZA and GZA laying that foundation—including taking losses with their first albums—we couldn’t have done it. Then Method Man took us to another level with “Method Man.” Raekwon and Deck kicked such real shit on “C.R.E.A.M.” Power and ODB and myself all brought our individual skills and talents to the table to make something bigger than each one of us. Our verses on “Da Mystery of Chessboxin’” and the aesthetics of the video showed that the whole crew had skills. Then getting on SWV’s joint made the R&B girls take notice, if they hadn’t already. Each step took us further toward our goal, all of it took us as a group all the way to the top, and we couldn’t have reached the next step without the previous one. And at the time, I was like, “Yeah, we got the illest crew in the whole fuckin’ world.”
That’s why no matter what business or whatever gets a little messed up, I will always have love for RZA. He really put my head back on my shoulders when it needed to be and pointed me in the right direction. No matter what shit he may have pulled on me and other dudes, I will always have mad respect for him for moving me forward.
But things started getting more complicated as more money started coming in, and some of us got pulled into solo endeavors. Of course, there’d always been minor bickering between us. You can’t have nine dudes on tour and in the studio together and not expect to disagree from time to time. But when we started out, we were all moving in the same direction. As we learned more about the ins and outs of the music business, however, rifts started forming over that side of things.
When Raekwon (Immobilarity, 1999), Method Man (Blackout!, with Redman, 1999), and Ghost (Supreme Clientele, 2000) ventured off on their own endeavors, I’ll admit I felt a bit left out. I looked at it like Deck, Masta Killa, and me were on the sidelines while the rest of the group was doing their thing. Even when Deck and me each got solo album deals, we couldn’t get the same support from the entire Clan the way earlier records had been supported.
When it was time to do my first solo album, Golden Arms Redemption, RZA only wrote and produced three tracks. I got beats from outside dudes instead. I got some darts here and there from my fellow Clansmen, but I didn’t have that entire Wu-Tang chemistry that gave listeners that unified feeling. That all-for-one mind-set wasn’t there anymore, and Redemption didn’t get the full support it should have. Regardless, my first album did good when I released it on Priority in ’99.
My first single was “Bizarre,” and was produced by Bink! That was my man. It was the first Wu-related single to chart in the top ten on Billboard’s hip-hop chart, debuting at number 7. I was out of the gate with a full head of steam, and my second single “Rumble” was on the first rap-related video game, Wu-Tang: Shaolin Style, so I was getting tons of shine.
At the time, Priority was home to N.W.A, Ice Cube, and Snoop Dogg. The owner, Bryan Turner, sold it to EMI in the middle of my record dropping, so tons of people were in and out the door at the label. I got no support from anyone, I was literally maintaining off the energy we had in the streets as a Wu-Tang member. Later, in 2001, Priority, bought for one hundred million dollars, went belly up and was dissolved into their catalog. To this day, I haven’t seen one statement for all those record sales!
Hell, Masta Killa didn’t even get to put out a solo album (No Said Date) until 2004. It was a great album, but it wasn’t like the earlier ones. Those were all Wu-Tang albums, with certain artists featured more heavily than others, but everybody was present.
Deck had similar issues when it came time to release his album in ’99. Uncontrolled Substance didn’t get any support from the Clan at all. Deck should’ve been putting out a solo by that time, but a lot of his work got lost in a flood in RZA’s basement. So much work was lost in that disaster. To make matters worse, RZA contributed less than a handful of beats, while Ghost, Method Man, and Raekwon weren’t even present. Instead, some of the lesser-known Clan affiliates, like La the Darkman, Streetlife, Shadii, and Beretta 9, came through to get on tracks.
*
In 2000, as RZA had promised on Wu-Tang Forever, we dropped the next album, The W. Overall, I felt like it didn’t have enough heat, like we didn’t come hard enough with enough grit to satisfy our real fans. The W was the first album we weren’t truly feeling.
Iron Flag followed a year later. Again, the sound was off to some of us. It wasn’t what we wanted a Wu-Tang album to sound like. It wasn’t the direction we all wanted to go.
Also, some of the members, like Deck and myself, felt like we weren’t getting the full support of the Clan on our solo projects, and major signs of discord began to show. Dudes weren’t happy with the current Wu-Tang Clan sound, and it all stemmed from what RZA was focusing on at that time.
RZA leveraged the group’s success to make inroads into Hollywood, acting in and directing major motion pictures. Hanging out in Hollywood, altering his style and persona, he lost track of what made us hot along the way. The winning formula was lost, the focus on production of the music took a nosedive, the guys spent less and less time together recording, thus the music was flawed, and that edginess just wasn’t there anymore.
This subsequently created a domino effect on the group. Our solo projects weren’t riding the coattails or energy created by a platinum Wu album anymore. The music was still more or less solid, but fans missed that old, gritty sound they were used to hearing from the brothers.
This was also around the time when big budgets in music started drying up. GZA left Geffen, Meth and Ghost left Def Jam, Raekwon left Universal in 2003 after The Lex Diamond Story, and RZA had crashed and burned three or four distribution deals by then. I guess that’s what happens when you put amateurs in charge of your business instead of people with actual business experience. Overall sales numbers started decreasing in general, both in the music business and for the group as well. This was also a sign of the times that the Golden Era was over.
*
In 2004, I took a flyer to put together my Hillside Scramblers project
. I tried to set this up for two reasons: one, I was trying to expand my producing abilities, and two, I was trying to cultivate some new talent. I thought I had the perfect plan—I knew some dope, killer MCs from various projects in the city, and with me headlining the album as U-Godzilla, I’d introduce them to the world.
The only problem was that I wound up doing the same thing Meth did with his album Tical 0; I shot myself in the foot. The main problem was they were too gangsta! Every dude I brought on there was the hood of the hood. From the Bronx to Staten Island, nothing but grimy street motherfuckers. They were carrying guns, doing drugs, they just couldn’t leave that gangsta shit alone.
In particular, my man Face—who was a dope MC—just couldn’t shake that hood shit. I was trying to get him a job, trying to get him to put the drugs and guns down, to stop hustlin’ and just focus on his rhymes, but he just couldn’t leave it alone. Plus, I don’t think he really believed in himself and his ability. If he had, and if he’d gone at it full throttle, maybe he could have done what he needed to do to get it poppin’.
In the end, I got into some drama with one of his peoples who tried to run up on me. I had to beat him up, put him in a coma in the hospital, and after that we had to call it quits. That whole project almost cost me my career—it definitely dealt a serious blow to my credibility in the industry.
After that whole thing crashed and burned, I was adrift again. And there was no one I could really turn to for help, either—RZA wasn’t guiding me or providing advice or anything like that.
It was around this time that I found my current manager, Domingo. The Lord brought him to me during that time, and he came in and repaired all the shit I’d done, and we’ve been a team ever since.
Domingo actually saved me on a spiritual level; if he hadn’t been around, I probably would have slipped up and headed back into Savagery and violence. But he humbled me and helped me find myself again. He’s also helped with my temper, always telling me, “Uey, you gotta Gandhi that shit,” when I wanna go off about something. He tells me to MLK it, to Malcolm X it and just turn the other cheek. And every time I’m about to go off, I just repeat to myself, “Gandhi, Gandhi, Gandhi.” And damn if it doesn’t defuse me and bring me back to a better place. And I got Domingo to thank for that, not to mention my repaired career.
Despite the growing troubles, Deck, Masta Killa, and me were just getting started, though, and our solo albums contained some of our best work. Masta finally got his solo album No Said Date released in 2004, Deck dropped The Movement in 2006, and I released Dopium in 2009. All of these were critically acclaimed, but didn’t have the big budgets our brothers received via their major labels. I think one thing that hurt those releases is that we could never perform any new material at our Wu-Tang shows. That’s something I never understood.
It’s been a long time since we rocked new songs onstage. Shit, we didn’t even support the last few albums with proper tours; I mean we went on tour, but stuck to performing the classics. That’s backward to me. For us to ask the fans to support us, we had to support ourselves by performing new material—all for one and one for all—first.
Back in the day, when RZA put the Bat Signal up, the rest of us understood that we needed to stop what we were doing individually and come together, period. For there to be fruit hanging on the tree, the roots needed watering, so we would come together as Wu-Tang first, that was the priority. We were an unstoppable unit at that time, one for all and all for one—at least, that’s what we told ourselves. We’d hit the road, and if one of us was in the middle of promoting a project, the rest would support that project, too. Like when Cuban Linx came out, no one knew that the record was supposed to be the next Wu album, but when Raekwon signed the deal, we all agreed to let him have it for his solo joint, no problem.
So years later, when revenue streams started drying up, members who were used to living crazy lifestyles started complaining about everyone’s fees being equal. This led to some of the guys missing shows, holding the entire group for ransom before agreeing to go on tour. Bottom line, no solo member has ever played in front of sold-out arenas, the whole group is the foundation. There is no Earth without Wind and Fire!
Things started changing little by little, guys got fed up, and eventually we all got individual managers to negotiate and serve as a buffer from all the bullshit. It was no longer one for all and all for one. But now you had people in our brothers’ ears, saying why you getting the same thing he getting? Now that the days of gold and platinum plaques had dried up, dudes started fighting over the W. The whole foundation that we were built on and that made us powerful fell apart. We weren’t building anymore, we were destroying ourselves.
Right now, it just looks like the Wu brothers are not on the same page, going at each other’s throats, missing shows, and all that. But, to me, it’s really years of BS catching up to RZA. See, he put his family in charge of shit, and for years, we would go on the road but the money came up short. Whether it was because Divine overpromised or cut a deal he couldn’t deliver, or he made bad management decisions, I don’t know.
Don’t get me wrong, at the end of the day, my brothers and I typically work things out and still come together as the Clan, but in twenty-five years of being in the business, RZA has never placed the group at an A-list agency. Instead, Divine has always placed us with these B-or C-list guys. I wonder why?
One time I asked him, “Vine, why aren’t we with William Morris or The Agency?”
And he said, “’Cause no one wants to deal with our bullshit.”
I just looked back at him and said, “Our bullshit? Or your bullshit?”
Just talking about this shit frustrates me. I mean here we are, the Rolling Stones of hip-hop, and we ain’t even got proper representation. Meanwhile, RZA’s always had A-list agents repping him personally. What the fuck is that all about?
If you let him tell it, Divine would blame a lot of the shit that goes down on these low-level motherfuckers we’re forced to deal with, subpar agents and the like. But if that’s the case, why the fuck did you give your strongest asset, the Wu-Tang fucking Clan, to a shitty dude instead of a top-notch agent in the game?
I mean, my manager would tell me how some chick from Jersey was booking our European tours from her house? When I heard that, I was like, “Not her again! She owes me fifteen fuckin’ stacks!” Whatever it was, it was always something, excuses, excuses, and more excuses as to why we were always coming up short.
Looking back, there’s other things that I really question, too. For example, Wu Wear is coming back in time for our twenty-fifth anniversary, and that’s all great, but what people don’t know is that none of us—the original members who each invested a significant amount (around forty thousand dollars apiece) from our 36 Chambers royalties and the Rage tour—ever saw a dime back from the first version of the line founded back in ’97. And that’s something that needs to be addressed and rectified.
There’s also the use of our logo. Many people don’t know this, but DJ Mathematics drew that logo on the back of a napkin back in the day. RZA quickly trademarked it, and to this very day his brother beefs when any of the original members attempt to use it. That to me is crazy—I mean, I understand if someone was using it without the group’s permission, but the members of the group itself? Wow, that’s just crazy.
Anyway, GZA uses a G that looks like a font similar to the W, Meth uses an upside-down W or an M, I have a U that looks like a W that’s cut off—I guess you get creative when necessary, but we all stand behind that W in the end!
Divine always told us, “Y’all can’t use that W without paying a brand fee, and if a promoter calls your manager direct to book a Wu-Tang show, best believe they’re paying that brand fee!” Ain’t that a motherfucker!
RZA also started becoming a bit of a control freak around this time. He wanted to control budget, publishing, writing hooks, everything. I kept quiet and kept working, but it didn’t take a brain surgeon to see he was tr
ying too hard to control the entire creative process.
Now, RZA’s undeniably talented. He’s also a good talker, smart, and a groundbreaking, genre-bending producer, but I wouldn’t go so far as to call him a hit record maker. Remember, “All I Need” was Method Man’s biggest single, but remember, RZA’s version didn’t win the Grammy—Puffy’s remix with Mary J. Blige did.
A classic example of how he operates is “Gravel Pit” on The W. It was one of our biggest hits he wrote the hook for, but I hate that fuckin’ hook. Me and Meth were supposed to write that one, but RZA came in and wouldn’t let us do what we do best. He had to jump in the middle of the process to stop what we were building. It was like, “Yeah, you made the beat, now can we work on it?”
And RZA was like, “Nah, let’s publish it.” He just had to get his name on it however he could. It’s like, just give the dudes the fuckin’ music, let them go off by themselves and do their thing, come back with their idea—you know, how we used to do it. Collaboration, not domination.
Trying to exert too much control over grown-ass men leads to problems. RZA doesn’t know how to let go and let motherfuckers be grown men anymore, like he used to back in the day, when it was four or five motherfuckers touring the country in an old Mitsubishi Scorpion. Somewhere along the way, he forgot to let his soldiers do what he initially recruited us to do and coached us to do. He forgot that you don’t tear down your soldiers, you build your soldiers up. Because when they rise up, they bring you with them.
On the flip side, you need somebody calling the shots, or it becomes every man for himself. We still needed order, and he was the mastermind who had brought us up to this point. But it can’t become a dictatorship, with everything coming from the top down. It takes a certain kind of personality to be able to run the ship but still be open to ideas and collaboration.
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