Lamont Hawkins - Raw: My Journey into the Wu-Tang

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Time is a motherfucker. Time reveals shit. It wears things down. Breaks things. Crushes things. Kills things. Reveals truth. Theres nothing greater than Father Time.

If you have patience, time will be on your side. And if you recognize how valuable time is, and if you know the right time to make your move, youll be a bad motherfucker.

Thats how I feel right now writing this book. The time is now for me to write all this shit down. Its time to write down not only my legacy, but the story of nine dirt-bomb street thugs who took our everyday lifescrappin and hustlin and tryin to survive in the urban jungle of New York Cityand turned that into something bigger than we could possibly imagine, something that took us out of the projects for good, which was the only thing we all wanted in the first place.

But first, we had to come from hell all the way up. New York City was a crazy place to grow up, especially in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s. There was so much energy on the streets and the clubs back then. That shit got into my system early and stays there to this day. Not just the club scene, but that whole era, the Mayor Koch, punch-you-in-the-face, snatch-your-pocketbook era. The whole Clan is from that era, and we convey it in our music, because that era molded us, its still in us. Were constantly evolving and changing, but that core is where I draw my inspiration from. And not just what we saw, but everything we went through at that time.

When they built the projects, it was just an urban jungle; dangerous, but if you knew the rules, you could get by all right, maybe even have some fun occasionally. Thered be fights, usually with fists, maybe brass knuckles, maybe a knife. Drugs were around, sure, but not like they were later on.

But when crack hit my Park Hill neighborhood on Staten Island, that jungle became a goddamn war zone. Fists and knives turned to pistols and submachine guns. Bulletproof vests were hidden under sports jerseys. Bullets and bodies littered the streets, and often you didnt know who you could trust from day to day. People you thought were your friends, lured in by addiction or easy money, often became sneak thieves or stickup kids.

That fear, anger, and terror in the streets made the friends you could trust all the more precious. And in the early nineties, nine friends, each a master of his own craft, each with his own part to play, came together to form the legendary group you know as the Wu-Tang Clan.

RZA, the Mastermind: From creating the very idea of the Wu-Tang to gathering the members who would execute his plan to shaping the hooks, concepts, and themes of our early albums, RZA was the general whose orders we all followed. He had a great mind; he was very, very intelligent for his age. He wasnt no real hustling-ass dude, but to feed his family, hed put that great mind of his to it and came up with things to put food on his plate. Wu-Tang was just one of those things that took us all higher.

GZA, the Genius: Often right beside his cousin RZA, GZA elevated his verses from the grimy, crime-ridden streets to higher planes of thought, consciousness, and expression. When he dropped his debut album, Words from the Genius, on Warner Bros., suddenly we could see the reality of music taking us out of the projects. I still remember me and Method Man listening to that tape and just vibing off it.

Method Man and Ol Dirty Bastard, the Performers: We were all performers, but Meth and ODB were the two who always took shows to a higher level. Meth had his infectious enthusiasm and natural charm, and brought it from way back when he was kickin New Edition dance moves at the P.S. 49 after-school center. ODB was just unpredictably wild, with insane stage charisma. Out of all of us, he was already a natural entertainer right out of the boxhe was just early with it. Sometimes I used to look at him like he was fucking crazy, but he always knew what he was doing, every time.

Inspectah Deck, the Artist: As a kid, Deck was always looking out his apartment window at 160, down at everything going on in the street below. He absorbed all that shit and turned it into these vivid rhymes. His visual details, plus using words you hear news reporters use, just made it seem like he was reporting street news in his verses.

Ghostface Killah, the Storyteller: A troublemaker all his life who hit the streets early, Ghost made his stories come alive because when he rapped them, it felt like you were living them right alongside him.

Masta Killa, the Natural: A disciple of GZA, Mastas the only one of us whose first performance was with the fully formed Wu, but his ability to hold his own from the start was undeniable. I know everyones roots in Wu-Tangeverybody except Masta Killas. Hes always just held himself real close to the vest. And thats just the way it is.

Raekwon, the Hustler: Creator of the mafioso rap subgenre, he was in the streets at an early age, pushing crack out of the gate down the block from Meth and me. One of my very first drug stories is of Rae and me trying to move this shitty weed wed gotten from his cousin Rico. Drug dealing may not have been the best vocation, but it sure gave him a lot to rhyme about.

And me, U-God, the Ambassador: I was just a straight hard-core thug with the brain capacity to do a lot of shit, make things happen on my own, and hustle those bombs to get my bread. I was there from the very beginning, beatboxin in the hallways of 160 with Rae and ODB, hustlin on the streets with Meth, layin down the first tracks at RZAs cribI was there for all of it. Walking my own path, which had a detour or two, to be sure, but that path led inexorably to the Wu-Tang Clan, as Id somehow known it would from the very beginning.

This is my story.

This is our story.

Growing up as hard, as rough, as wild, as crazy as we in Wu-Tang did, death was always a part of my life.

I remember the first time I saw somebody die. I was only about four or five years old. It was just me and my mother in the apartment. Lovin You by Minnie Riperton was playing on a radio in the street. It seemed like whenever shit was going down, there was always music playing along with it.

Something was always happening in the Park Hill projects. I remember a commotion outside my windowI could barely reach the windowsill to look out to the street. A crowd was forming, making the uproar that drew my mother and me outside to see what was going on. By the time we arrived, the gathering had gotten bigger, so she put me up on her shoulders. I looked around the courtyard and up the street. All my neighbors, as well as half of 260 Park Hill Terrace, were outside.

Soon, the cops, firemen, and an ambulance showed up. A woman was standing on the roof of the project next door280 Park Hillthreatening to jump. She was pretty young, talking to herself and yelling down at everyone as the cops tried to talk her down off the ledge.

I remember staring up at her till my neck was stiff. I didnt understand what was going on or what was about to happen. At first, it seemed like she was going to be okay. She looked like she didnt really want to kill herself, but something still kept her from coming down off the ledge. I can still see her facetormented, twisted in despair, her wide eyes staring down at the crowd seven stories below.