Excerpt courtesy of tidal
Excerpt From U-God’s ‘RAW: My Journey into the Wu-Tang’ Book
Every fan of the Clan knows Wu-Tang ain’t nuthin’ ta F with and in this excerpt from rapper and Wu member Lamont “U-God” Hawkins’ forthcoming memoir,
RAW: My Journey into the Wu-Tang (out March 5), U-God keeps it real about life on the road.
From random beatdowns to impromptu parties, U-God recalls falling into a bash thrown by 2 Live Crew’s Uncle Luke, wild nights with their entourage homie, Reef, and that time the late great Tupac helped RZA recover a chain. Allow U-God to take the mic from here.
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Now that I was getting ill in the booth and the album was dropping, we had to hit the road again. With the release of
Wu-Tang Forever in ’97, we were practically a household name. This round of promotions and touring was gonna be a much bigger deal. Before, when we were doing shows promoting the first album, the venues were up close and personal— which sometime made things crazier. Things were haphazard, security was shaky, and promoters were shady.
Regardless of the unprofessionalism that went on in those early days when we were learning the industry, the tours were still a lot of fun. Even when shyt got thick, we had each other to hold it down. Sometimes we fought to protect ourselves against a mob at a venue with inadequate security. Sometimes we were the aggressors. We stomped a few dudes out on some rah-rah shyt, for no real reason other than angst. That was just the era. Rolling deep with a crew in fatigues, skullies, and hoodies was just the aesthetic, but we had a head start on everybody. Why do you think people always make metaphors and similes about being deep like the Wu?
We had so many other soldiers and cousins and producers and offshoots of the Clan and MCs in training on the road with us at times that we’d wind up sixty deep on a regular day, omnipresent forties and blunts getting passed around, etc. It was like we brought the hood with us everywhere we went. Rolling with a mob might get you sweated by the punk-ass cops, but it could save your life, too. These were the days when hip-hop clubs were still grimy. A shootout with a few fights sprinkled throughout the night was almost a given.
You had to have some dudes that were experienced in throw-downs and were gonna hold it down if shyt got hairy. Every man in the Clan was already just that on his own, so together? We were definitely a problem when we wanted to be. Dudes were always testing back then, out of boredom maybe, or looking for a rep. Maybe some of ’em had that crab-in-the-barrel mentality, just didn’t like seeing other brothers getting successful. Whatever the reasoning, we were gonna get tested at some point.
If I saw a problem comin’ at us, I didn’t let it fester and always addressed it right away. As I got older, though, I learned how everything was a test. When you’re young, the answer is violence, or at least being abrasive—either you pop off or you knuckle up. Over time, you learn how to handle those tests differently. Then maybe, as a last resort, if you absolutely have to wash somebody up in the streets, you do it. Took my whole life to get to that level of maturity. We were wildin’ for years before I outgrew that nonsense.
Sometimes dudes would try to rush the back door so they wouldn’t have to pay and try to fukk some people up in the process. Some dude and his crew tried to come through the back door at one show. I knocked him down with a two-piece (two punches), and Masta Killa stomped his face. The rest of the Clan was right behind us, so his boys backed down real quick.
It’s awesome when you have your mob behind you; it’s like having a weapon you can’t get frisked for. But sometimes that Clan mentality gets out of hand, too. Like one night after a show in Europe, we thought someone had stolen Ghostface’s jacket. At the time, there was a dude on the bus with us. I don’t know if he was a fan or something, but he was the only outside dude that wasn’t down with us. We were conducting our own little investigation, and we were like, “Yo, dawg.” We brought him up into a fukking hotel room and started beating his motherfukking ass, trying to find out if he’d stolen the fukking jacket. I mean, I’m jumping off the bed onto his head, smashing him with chairs, all this shyt. We were tearing this motherfukker up. We whupped his ass so fukking bad, I thought we was gonna kill this guy.
Then it turns out we did all that fukking sucker shyt for nothing. Popa Wu had taken Ghost’s jacket and hidden it downstairs behind a goddamn vending machine. So we just let the poor, fukked-up guy go. Live and learn, I guess. It was unfortunate, but the violence we inflicted was born from a place of loyalty. That’s not an excuse, it’s just the way things went down.
And sometimes shyt goes down and you don’t even know what the fukk’s goin’ on. We got shot at in Chicago once. That was a crazy night. Some dudes shot at us over there. We were just coming out of the venue when somebody started shooting. fukking bullets flyin’, so we hit the floor and shyt. To this day, I don’t even know what the fukk it was about. It was just more drama.
Another time, we were touring in Florida. Me and Meth are sitting in a room, smoking, drinking, playing video games, whatever. We were invited to go to this little gathering Luke Skyywalker from 2 Live Crew was having. But Me and Meth were like, “Man, we ain’t gonna do that shyt.” We’re just keeping to ourselves.
Then one of my peoples, General Wah, calls up. “Yo, son, you gotta get down here. There’s fukking mad bytches everywhere. This dude Luke is off the chain.”
At first, we were like, “Ah, fukk this, man.” But he called so many times, we finally said, “fukk it. Let’s go.”
So me and Meth skate off to the motherfukking party with our crew. We get to the spot, and there’s a long corridor. This dude named Born was also with us at the time. Raekwon and his cousin Rico were there. We had these dudes who had just came out of prison, you know? Part of the entourage. All these motherfukking gangstas was already there.
We get there, Wah’s already coming out of the party like, “Yo, son. You ain’t gonna believe. Your man’s in there bugging the fukk out.”
We were like, “Who you talking about?” This dude Born was Busta Rhymes’s man. He just came home from doing eight or nine years. He was having a fukking good time. But I didn’t know the extent of the good time he was having yet.
We walk up in the door. And General Wah was like, “Yo.” He was on his way out.
I said, “Hey, man, how you gonna tell us to come to the spot and you leavin’ when we come here, motherfukker? fukk is wrong with you?”
“Yo, son, you gotta go inside,” he said.
We get inside. Mad commotion goin’ on. Women are doing their little strip-dancing shyt. As we got closer, the shyt started opening up. In the middle of this fukking parted sea of people, this dude Born’s in there eating this girl out right in front of everybody.
Luke is looking at us like, “You! You with this dude? Is he with you?” I don’t know this motherfukker from a hole in the ground. I just met him that night, so I didn’t really know him all that well. He’s a 5 Percenter and had just come home after doing eight years, that was about all I knew. But we felt his pain, so we accepted him into our crew that night.
