miha
12-29-2007, 02:58 PM
Raekwon
With Wu-Tang’s 8 Diagrams on the table, the Chef gives his recipe for handling a kitchen full of cooks.
As told to Richard “Treats” Dryden
Photograph by ALEXX HENRY
1 Find strength in numbers.
There’s been plenty of times when I felt like I wanted to do my own thing. But when I heard the family was gonna move forward, I had to take interest in that. Seventy percent of the realness from us is wanting to cater to fans, but the other 30 percent is knowing that if I could get 10 fucking birds, why would I only want one bird?
2 Say no to “yes” men.
I’m not here to make a nigga laugh, all I can do is be honest with my dudes. I put the facts on the table and separate fiction from nonfiction. We don’t allow a “yes man” mentality around us. If you wrong, you wrong. There’s always three sides to a story: yours, the other person’s, and the truth.
3 Have friendly competition.
We never dictate who gonna be first or last on a track. You just have to be ill. We stay competitive. It’s about uplifting your sword and adding techniques. I been asked to calm down the wordplay a little bit, but I can’t make baby food; I can’t rhyme weak. I don’t like everything I hear from a nigga either, but I can dig it.
4 The show must go on.
Like any other normal crew, we all go through shit, but we got a certain amount of love to move on and live out tradition. I experienced good times and other times. I could never say not having everyone here don’t affect us. It’s real hard. But you gotta understand that that person makes his own decisions. All you can do is love ’em, and that’s what it is. You need strong faith when these things hit the fan. I learned how to cope and understand that nothing lasts forever.
5 Stay loyal to the team.
Be loyal to whatever you reppin’. You could have chemistry problems with too many cooks in any kind of kitchen. There’s been arguments; sometimes we say, “Fuck you, muthafucka,” and as men we deal with it accordingly. That shows loyalty to your brotherhood. But sometimes it’s better to have a couple of fucking waiters and shit.
Get up on the rest of our interview with Raekwon that didn’t make it into the November issue.
Raekwon Outtakes
Complex: Through the years, it’s been the nine of you. How have you been able to deal with that mixture of personalities?
Raekwon: Yeah, well, like I said them qualities right there is important in any kind of structure, especially in our structure. Like, we have to automatically have some kind of understanding amongst us all. And, you know confidence is definitely another, because you gotta believe in yourself. You gotta believe in whatever you do and whatever you want, whatever you wanna do. There should be no cloud over your head when it comes to shit like that. So, them kinda things definitely play a part in my life as far as dealing with a lot of shit.
C: How does that develop though, over the years, I mean it’s been over ten years, y’all been tight…
R: I mean you know…
C: On an off, solo records…
R: It’s just about knowing where it came from and respecting it and living out the tradition. We already know nothing lasts forever though, you know what I mean? What we do understand is what’s real and what’s right. So I think we just managed to maintain ourselves that long due to the fact that we got a certain amount of love for where we came from with it. Nevertheless, each individual, we all gonna go through shit, curse each other out, that’s normal. Hey, shit we men. Men do that.
C: Right
R: I guess at the end of the day man, we try to follow a structure of being men and just recognizing the importance of feeding our families and all of that. So that’s what kept us on that type of page, you know what I mean. It’s just that, yo this is a job right now, before it was a little bit more fun to do because we didn’t have so many different headaches, but now you know, like B.I.G. said, “more money, more problems” come along. And its just like you deal with ‘em as men, and I think that’s just what we had to go through, whateva, whateva. But you know at the end of the day man, its about brotherhood man, you know what I mean. You just gotta be loyal to your brothers to a degree.
C: Yea. even in the case of Ol Dirty Bastard (rest in peace), from the outside looking in, he seemed like one of the more extreme personalities to cope with within the group.
R: I mean you know all that happened- all that happened after a certain amount of success came. But you know some dudes you can’t be who they are, they can only be who they are, you can’t be who they are. So at the end of the day it’s just about when real things hit the fan, they hit the fan but you still gotta understand that that person, he makes his own decisions. He allows himself to be him and you know all you can do is love ‘em when you love ‘em and that’s what it is.
C: How do you manage to come back each time to record a new album with everyone working on their individual projects?
R: I mean, you know, we just say that ‘yo this is on the menu’ and we just work out each other’s schedule and we get at it. I mean I know that’s what happened for this record, you know what I mean. I was working on “Cuban Linx” and all of that, but when I heard that the family is gonna move forward, I had to take some kind of interest to that and really paint a picture to myself and be like ‘well that’s the best thing.’ If you ask me, to see everybody back on the ball, you know what I mean…”Cuban Linx” is already in a glass shelf, so you know we just gonna build up the hype on both sides of the table. So it was a decision that I felt was needed, you know what I mean, I’m always a dude that recognize strength is in numbers. I’m a one-man army, but at the same time strength is in numbers so it just popped off like that. And everybody made is feasible for them to be there and do what they had to do. It wasn’t nothing that we really had to sit down and contemplate too long, because if we gotta contemplate it too long it’s only a matter of time when you have to make a decision. We love to satisfy our fans and give them what they want. I’d say seventy percent of the realness from us is always wanting to cater to y’all and you know be more innovative with our shit. The other thirty percent is just us being men and knowing that at the end of the day if I could get ten fucking birds, why would I only want one bird?
C: True. At any point throughout all of your careers was there a point where you felt like you didn’t want to put off what you were doing at that time to record another group album?
R: I mean, of course. But at the end of the day its like, you know it goes back to that seventy/thirty attitud. But its been plenty of times where I felt like I want to do my thing, and you know sometimes you go for it and sometimes you don’t go for it. You know it just depends how you wake up sometimes, like, one thing about Wu-Tang, we real optimistic about our careers and what we did as a team. We always gonna sit there and draw it up to best advantage that we could and see if it works for us as well as it works for y’all.
C: So whether an album did or well or not, you never felt like this one should be the last one or the next one had be the last one because…
R: Nah, we never, I never, as far as me, I never put a limitation on what we could do in the future. It’s like every project ain’t gonna attack everybody the way you may want it to attack everybody, because they probably don’t have their mind open to what you may have your mind open to. When we made this music, every time, we didn’t never say that everybody is gonna constantly like our shit. I don’t constantly like everything that I fucking hear from a nigga, but if I’m a real fan and I really respect this artist, I’ma grow with the artist. I’m not gonna be selfish and be like ‘oh all right well that wasn’t all that so I’m not gonna check for him.’ I mean that’s just being corny, that’s like saying nobody don’t love Mary J. even though she not talking about drama no more, you know what I mean. If you love Mary, you love Mary nigga. You gonna always look into Mary’s soul and I think that’s what people gotta deal with with us. Look at our soul you know what I mean. Honestly I don’t think none of the music is wack. I think that we go a lot of places, you know what I mean, we make catalogue music that stands in its own court. You know we from the forgotten borough so we kinda like try to keep our shit to us, keep our style unique, you know what I mean. And like I said, we real MC’s too, you know and that’s very important in the game. You have a lot of cosmetic MC’s and shit. And when you dealing with our graph, you dealing with a different kind of skin. So my skin may be a little bit thicker than them other niggas. They doing they thing now, but I’ll be the nigga probably last like five more years past all that shit.
C: Ok, over the years you guys have also had like some internal strife in the group, was there ever a point where you felt that the mixture of friendship and business was getting pushed to the limit?
R: Of course, you know what I mean, but you know you always allow certain things to happen that you just allow. So you know once we realized that certain things wasn’t working we had to put our foot down and that’s what it be. Like I said you know all this shit seem like you asking me, is like, it seem like you interrogating me about the group…
C: No, no, no. no, not at all.
R: Nah, I mean it just seem like it, but I don’t know if you doing it or not, but you know like I said we all go through shit man, like any other normal crew. I’m not saying that you aiming at me with Wu-Tang, but you know its just that if you ever been a part of something at that velocity and made so much success with, you gotta know at some point shit happens. Shit ruptures, it ruptures, you know what sometimes we say ‘fuck you muthafucker. I don’t wanna talk to you no more’ whateva, whateva, but at the end of the day my seed, your seeds and our seeds love each other. So its one thing about being a kid and it’s one thing about being a man, a man?you could swallow certain shit as long as it ain’t out of too much of a reach, but when you young you don’t really wanna hear shit like that. So I guess as we get older, you know sometimes I might be wrong, I might be right, you may be right, he may be wrong so its just about respect man. You got knowledge you got respect that’s all you need man.
C: In no way do I believe that you are like “the voice of Wu-Tang,” that you have to speak for this person and that person…
R: Yeah, this is all coming from Chef, this is just my cookbook on how I feel, feel me?
C: Yeah. It just seems that through the years you all have grown and made a lot of individual success and group success, but throughout whatever ups and downs that you’ve had you kind of have taken more of a neutral roll in those issues. Whether it was Ghost and RZA or if there was any other kind of conflict within the group, I mean how have you been able to maintain that position, if any at all?
R: Just to cope with a lot of shit is only due to fact of because it’s a certain amount of respect here, a loyalty man, for what we bring to the table. I could never sit here and say ‘yo I’m not putting the Clan on “Cuban Linx.” It’s like my record that’s just plain old being a selfish dude if you ask me. Like we all built it together so I don’t give a fuck if nigga ain’t sell ten records, that’s part of his ownership regardless ’cause we did it together. And these are the type of things that you ask yourself when you going through shit with a family. Like damn, you think about the time that niggas is on the tour bus tight as a motherfucker, you think about being on the tour bus and you think about being in a old ass van, you know what I mean like ‘yo nigga, you slobbed on me.’ Nigga I remember that shit, you know what I mean. Word, so I think it’s just about growth and development man
C: Ok, how are the tracks put together now, I mean lets say in this particular situation with the new album, with “8 Diagrams,” how did you guys record for this album?
R: I mean we always in the building together, we all took time out our schedules. It may have been one or two people that wasn’t actually there every five minutes but the majority of us was there you know and we collaborated and you know we let RZA be the maestro or whateva, you know that’s what he like to do. But at the same token we always want to open up other doors for other sounds too, because we like other producers too. But when you dealing with a crew and a family we just, you kinda let dudes do what they do and put you input in. But you know RZA makes a lot of authentic type of shit, but it may not be the sound of today and that’s where we may have a little conflict of interest at times. Because it’s like we understand that he’s a scientist, one thing about scientist they don’t like to make the same shit all the time. If they found a way to cure this, they wanna find another way to cure something else. They don’t just stay on one page, so you know when it comes to this rap music man its like we just be trying to keep up with the mind, with what’s going on now and you know hit it with a slight twist of what we normally do. But for the most part we all just want to leave happy with whatever project we dealing with and that’s what we do. Like a lot of the songs on the album is very ill, but it may not be what the young generation may respect. I could be wrong, I could be right. Whateva, whateva, at the end of the day it’s classic because we put our heart into our shit for real, we don’t just let a A&R throw us a fucking beat and say ‘that’s the beat’. You feel me, nah everything is skin graph-ted for real. Like we our worst critics all the time and you know even now you may have a couple of dudes like unhappy but at the end of the day you only allow yourself to get on what you feel is hot. Like with me, I’m not getting on nothing I don’t feel is hot. Bottom line, you know what I mean, so that’s for me.
C: True, I mean why would you? That would just be a waste of time.
R: Exactly, but you know sometimes, RZA the type of dude where he like to try shit, he like to experiment, you know what I mean. And he did a lot of experimenting that basically went, that had fans going crazy too, I can’t front on that.
C: You mean over this album or for what?
R: I’m just saying in the past, in general, you know what I mean, I may have rhymed over something that was a totally different beat and he did his ‘one-two’ to it and it came out to be that. But my whole shit is that, it still gotta stay hot man and we still gotta know that it’s a fifty/fifty when we making everything together anyway. You don’t just put all that pressure on one man.
C: Were there times of like pressure though?
R: Yea, of course, I mean its been arguments, whateva. It’s been arguments because its like ‘yo we not ready for that right now.’ People may not be ready for that right now, you know what I mean. It goes back and forth, like I said it ain’t nothing new up under the sun when you dealing with an in-house producer, you know what I mean, such as the RZA or whoever.
C: Ok, so you he did a hundred percent of the production?
R: Nah, nah we didn’t let him do that one on this one due to the fact of we feel its time to do shit, interact with other artists. I mean right now it ain’t no new rappers on there, its just us. But as far as the production it’s a lot of dudes that we got a lot of respect for, that we pulled in and we like ‘aight now you give us a taste.’ And that just shows other producers that may not have thought that we get down like that on a collective album, they know now that ‘yo, maybe I could get a shot on them, on a Wu album one day, I could get them niggas on something.’
C: Is there any one in particular?
R: Yea, prime example, like RZA got a track from this dude Scratch. Scratch, is like a legendary producer, like he been around.
C: DJ Scratch?
R: Yea, DJ Scratch, he’s legendary to us. He EPMD family, he made a lot of shit, they did a lot of things. You got Q-Tip, you know he’s a beast too at production. When you sit and think of them dudes sharing the same kinda table RZA sat at it makes you think, ‘yo, something ill might come outta this one’.
What I feel that we need to recapture is the love that we had for us and for everything we stood for. I feel like sometimes a lot of people cause us to debate amongst ourselves over a lot of shit and I feel like back then we didn’t debate nothing we just automatically came in with our heart. Lets be in love with each other and be the best that we can be, like we said when we first came in. It’s about respect, this don’t even got nothing to do with selling records. It got to do with just being ill and saying yo we gonna make them understand that.
And that’s what we do sometimes, we have to follow each other’s lead before we can sit here and say what’s the illest. A lot of times people always thought that we got this order thing we do. We don’t do orders. We don’t never dictate who gonna be first on a track or who gonna be last. A lot of songs just came out like that because whoever went first he must have felt like he had to go first, whoever went second they felt he had to go second, it was a feeling.
C: So with your album, you’re working with Dr. Dre and you have the RZA also, so you think that sometimes their presence holds too much weight? If you have five different producers on the “8 Diagrams” and you have two monumental producers like Dre and RZA working on your album, do you think that you’re going to have chemistry problems there?
R: Well you could have chemistry problems with the illest superproducers out. It’s just at the end of the day about going up in there and clicking minds together. No one man, I don’t give a fuck how many records he sold, is going to dictate if something is ill like that. At the end of the day it’s just his opinion. You gonna respect his opinion because of his track record, but at the end of the day we all come to the table, and we all agree to disagree.
(source (http://101lives.com/101Fan/2007/12/29/raekwon-2/))
With Wu-Tang’s 8 Diagrams on the table, the Chef gives his recipe for handling a kitchen full of cooks.
As told to Richard “Treats” Dryden
Photograph by ALEXX HENRY
1 Find strength in numbers.
There’s been plenty of times when I felt like I wanted to do my own thing. But when I heard the family was gonna move forward, I had to take interest in that. Seventy percent of the realness from us is wanting to cater to fans, but the other 30 percent is knowing that if I could get 10 fucking birds, why would I only want one bird?
2 Say no to “yes” men.
I’m not here to make a nigga laugh, all I can do is be honest with my dudes. I put the facts on the table and separate fiction from nonfiction. We don’t allow a “yes man” mentality around us. If you wrong, you wrong. There’s always three sides to a story: yours, the other person’s, and the truth.
3 Have friendly competition.
We never dictate who gonna be first or last on a track. You just have to be ill. We stay competitive. It’s about uplifting your sword and adding techniques. I been asked to calm down the wordplay a little bit, but I can’t make baby food; I can’t rhyme weak. I don’t like everything I hear from a nigga either, but I can dig it.
4 The show must go on.
Like any other normal crew, we all go through shit, but we got a certain amount of love to move on and live out tradition. I experienced good times and other times. I could never say not having everyone here don’t affect us. It’s real hard. But you gotta understand that that person makes his own decisions. All you can do is love ’em, and that’s what it is. You need strong faith when these things hit the fan. I learned how to cope and understand that nothing lasts forever.
5 Stay loyal to the team.
Be loyal to whatever you reppin’. You could have chemistry problems with too many cooks in any kind of kitchen. There’s been arguments; sometimes we say, “Fuck you, muthafucka,” and as men we deal with it accordingly. That shows loyalty to your brotherhood. But sometimes it’s better to have a couple of fucking waiters and shit.
Get up on the rest of our interview with Raekwon that didn’t make it into the November issue.
Raekwon Outtakes
Complex: Through the years, it’s been the nine of you. How have you been able to deal with that mixture of personalities?
Raekwon: Yeah, well, like I said them qualities right there is important in any kind of structure, especially in our structure. Like, we have to automatically have some kind of understanding amongst us all. And, you know confidence is definitely another, because you gotta believe in yourself. You gotta believe in whatever you do and whatever you want, whatever you wanna do. There should be no cloud over your head when it comes to shit like that. So, them kinda things definitely play a part in my life as far as dealing with a lot of shit.
C: How does that develop though, over the years, I mean it’s been over ten years, y’all been tight…
R: I mean you know…
C: On an off, solo records…
R: It’s just about knowing where it came from and respecting it and living out the tradition. We already know nothing lasts forever though, you know what I mean? What we do understand is what’s real and what’s right. So I think we just managed to maintain ourselves that long due to the fact that we got a certain amount of love for where we came from with it. Nevertheless, each individual, we all gonna go through shit, curse each other out, that’s normal. Hey, shit we men. Men do that.
C: Right
R: I guess at the end of the day man, we try to follow a structure of being men and just recognizing the importance of feeding our families and all of that. So that’s what kept us on that type of page, you know what I mean. It’s just that, yo this is a job right now, before it was a little bit more fun to do because we didn’t have so many different headaches, but now you know, like B.I.G. said, “more money, more problems” come along. And its just like you deal with ‘em as men, and I think that’s just what we had to go through, whateva, whateva. But you know at the end of the day man, its about brotherhood man, you know what I mean. You just gotta be loyal to your brothers to a degree.
C: Yea. even in the case of Ol Dirty Bastard (rest in peace), from the outside looking in, he seemed like one of the more extreme personalities to cope with within the group.
R: I mean you know all that happened- all that happened after a certain amount of success came. But you know some dudes you can’t be who they are, they can only be who they are, you can’t be who they are. So at the end of the day it’s just about when real things hit the fan, they hit the fan but you still gotta understand that that person, he makes his own decisions. He allows himself to be him and you know all you can do is love ‘em when you love ‘em and that’s what it is.
C: How do you manage to come back each time to record a new album with everyone working on their individual projects?
R: I mean, you know, we just say that ‘yo this is on the menu’ and we just work out each other’s schedule and we get at it. I mean I know that’s what happened for this record, you know what I mean. I was working on “Cuban Linx” and all of that, but when I heard that the family is gonna move forward, I had to take some kind of interest to that and really paint a picture to myself and be like ‘well that’s the best thing.’ If you ask me, to see everybody back on the ball, you know what I mean…”Cuban Linx” is already in a glass shelf, so you know we just gonna build up the hype on both sides of the table. So it was a decision that I felt was needed, you know what I mean, I’m always a dude that recognize strength is in numbers. I’m a one-man army, but at the same time strength is in numbers so it just popped off like that. And everybody made is feasible for them to be there and do what they had to do. It wasn’t nothing that we really had to sit down and contemplate too long, because if we gotta contemplate it too long it’s only a matter of time when you have to make a decision. We love to satisfy our fans and give them what they want. I’d say seventy percent of the realness from us is always wanting to cater to y’all and you know be more innovative with our shit. The other thirty percent is just us being men and knowing that at the end of the day if I could get ten fucking birds, why would I only want one bird?
C: True. At any point throughout all of your careers was there a point where you felt like you didn’t want to put off what you were doing at that time to record another group album?
R: I mean, of course. But at the end of the day its like, you know it goes back to that seventy/thirty attitud. But its been plenty of times where I felt like I want to do my thing, and you know sometimes you go for it and sometimes you don’t go for it. You know it just depends how you wake up sometimes, like, one thing about Wu-Tang, we real optimistic about our careers and what we did as a team. We always gonna sit there and draw it up to best advantage that we could and see if it works for us as well as it works for y’all.
C: So whether an album did or well or not, you never felt like this one should be the last one or the next one had be the last one because…
R: Nah, we never, I never, as far as me, I never put a limitation on what we could do in the future. It’s like every project ain’t gonna attack everybody the way you may want it to attack everybody, because they probably don’t have their mind open to what you may have your mind open to. When we made this music, every time, we didn’t never say that everybody is gonna constantly like our shit. I don’t constantly like everything that I fucking hear from a nigga, but if I’m a real fan and I really respect this artist, I’ma grow with the artist. I’m not gonna be selfish and be like ‘oh all right well that wasn’t all that so I’m not gonna check for him.’ I mean that’s just being corny, that’s like saying nobody don’t love Mary J. even though she not talking about drama no more, you know what I mean. If you love Mary, you love Mary nigga. You gonna always look into Mary’s soul and I think that’s what people gotta deal with with us. Look at our soul you know what I mean. Honestly I don’t think none of the music is wack. I think that we go a lot of places, you know what I mean, we make catalogue music that stands in its own court. You know we from the forgotten borough so we kinda like try to keep our shit to us, keep our style unique, you know what I mean. And like I said, we real MC’s too, you know and that’s very important in the game. You have a lot of cosmetic MC’s and shit. And when you dealing with our graph, you dealing with a different kind of skin. So my skin may be a little bit thicker than them other niggas. They doing they thing now, but I’ll be the nigga probably last like five more years past all that shit.
C: Ok, over the years you guys have also had like some internal strife in the group, was there ever a point where you felt that the mixture of friendship and business was getting pushed to the limit?
R: Of course, you know what I mean, but you know you always allow certain things to happen that you just allow. So you know once we realized that certain things wasn’t working we had to put our foot down and that’s what it be. Like I said you know all this shit seem like you asking me, is like, it seem like you interrogating me about the group…
C: No, no, no. no, not at all.
R: Nah, I mean it just seem like it, but I don’t know if you doing it or not, but you know like I said we all go through shit man, like any other normal crew. I’m not saying that you aiming at me with Wu-Tang, but you know its just that if you ever been a part of something at that velocity and made so much success with, you gotta know at some point shit happens. Shit ruptures, it ruptures, you know what sometimes we say ‘fuck you muthafucker. I don’t wanna talk to you no more’ whateva, whateva, but at the end of the day my seed, your seeds and our seeds love each other. So its one thing about being a kid and it’s one thing about being a man, a man?you could swallow certain shit as long as it ain’t out of too much of a reach, but when you young you don’t really wanna hear shit like that. So I guess as we get older, you know sometimes I might be wrong, I might be right, you may be right, he may be wrong so its just about respect man. You got knowledge you got respect that’s all you need man.
C: In no way do I believe that you are like “the voice of Wu-Tang,” that you have to speak for this person and that person…
R: Yeah, this is all coming from Chef, this is just my cookbook on how I feel, feel me?
C: Yeah. It just seems that through the years you all have grown and made a lot of individual success and group success, but throughout whatever ups and downs that you’ve had you kind of have taken more of a neutral roll in those issues. Whether it was Ghost and RZA or if there was any other kind of conflict within the group, I mean how have you been able to maintain that position, if any at all?
R: Just to cope with a lot of shit is only due to fact of because it’s a certain amount of respect here, a loyalty man, for what we bring to the table. I could never sit here and say ‘yo I’m not putting the Clan on “Cuban Linx.” It’s like my record that’s just plain old being a selfish dude if you ask me. Like we all built it together so I don’t give a fuck if nigga ain’t sell ten records, that’s part of his ownership regardless ’cause we did it together. And these are the type of things that you ask yourself when you going through shit with a family. Like damn, you think about the time that niggas is on the tour bus tight as a motherfucker, you think about being on the tour bus and you think about being in a old ass van, you know what I mean like ‘yo nigga, you slobbed on me.’ Nigga I remember that shit, you know what I mean. Word, so I think it’s just about growth and development man
C: Ok, how are the tracks put together now, I mean lets say in this particular situation with the new album, with “8 Diagrams,” how did you guys record for this album?
R: I mean we always in the building together, we all took time out our schedules. It may have been one or two people that wasn’t actually there every five minutes but the majority of us was there you know and we collaborated and you know we let RZA be the maestro or whateva, you know that’s what he like to do. But at the same token we always want to open up other doors for other sounds too, because we like other producers too. But when you dealing with a crew and a family we just, you kinda let dudes do what they do and put you input in. But you know RZA makes a lot of authentic type of shit, but it may not be the sound of today and that’s where we may have a little conflict of interest at times. Because it’s like we understand that he’s a scientist, one thing about scientist they don’t like to make the same shit all the time. If they found a way to cure this, they wanna find another way to cure something else. They don’t just stay on one page, so you know when it comes to this rap music man its like we just be trying to keep up with the mind, with what’s going on now and you know hit it with a slight twist of what we normally do. But for the most part we all just want to leave happy with whatever project we dealing with and that’s what we do. Like a lot of the songs on the album is very ill, but it may not be what the young generation may respect. I could be wrong, I could be right. Whateva, whateva, at the end of the day it’s classic because we put our heart into our shit for real, we don’t just let a A&R throw us a fucking beat and say ‘that’s the beat’. You feel me, nah everything is skin graph-ted for real. Like we our worst critics all the time and you know even now you may have a couple of dudes like unhappy but at the end of the day you only allow yourself to get on what you feel is hot. Like with me, I’m not getting on nothing I don’t feel is hot. Bottom line, you know what I mean, so that’s for me.
C: True, I mean why would you? That would just be a waste of time.
R: Exactly, but you know sometimes, RZA the type of dude where he like to try shit, he like to experiment, you know what I mean. And he did a lot of experimenting that basically went, that had fans going crazy too, I can’t front on that.
C: You mean over this album or for what?
R: I’m just saying in the past, in general, you know what I mean, I may have rhymed over something that was a totally different beat and he did his ‘one-two’ to it and it came out to be that. But my whole shit is that, it still gotta stay hot man and we still gotta know that it’s a fifty/fifty when we making everything together anyway. You don’t just put all that pressure on one man.
C: Were there times of like pressure though?
R: Yea, of course, I mean its been arguments, whateva. It’s been arguments because its like ‘yo we not ready for that right now.’ People may not be ready for that right now, you know what I mean. It goes back and forth, like I said it ain’t nothing new up under the sun when you dealing with an in-house producer, you know what I mean, such as the RZA or whoever.
C: Ok, so you he did a hundred percent of the production?
R: Nah, nah we didn’t let him do that one on this one due to the fact of we feel its time to do shit, interact with other artists. I mean right now it ain’t no new rappers on there, its just us. But as far as the production it’s a lot of dudes that we got a lot of respect for, that we pulled in and we like ‘aight now you give us a taste.’ And that just shows other producers that may not have thought that we get down like that on a collective album, they know now that ‘yo, maybe I could get a shot on them, on a Wu album one day, I could get them niggas on something.’
C: Is there any one in particular?
R: Yea, prime example, like RZA got a track from this dude Scratch. Scratch, is like a legendary producer, like he been around.
C: DJ Scratch?
R: Yea, DJ Scratch, he’s legendary to us. He EPMD family, he made a lot of shit, they did a lot of things. You got Q-Tip, you know he’s a beast too at production. When you sit and think of them dudes sharing the same kinda table RZA sat at it makes you think, ‘yo, something ill might come outta this one’.
What I feel that we need to recapture is the love that we had for us and for everything we stood for. I feel like sometimes a lot of people cause us to debate amongst ourselves over a lot of shit and I feel like back then we didn’t debate nothing we just automatically came in with our heart. Lets be in love with each other and be the best that we can be, like we said when we first came in. It’s about respect, this don’t even got nothing to do with selling records. It got to do with just being ill and saying yo we gonna make them understand that.
And that’s what we do sometimes, we have to follow each other’s lead before we can sit here and say what’s the illest. A lot of times people always thought that we got this order thing we do. We don’t do orders. We don’t never dictate who gonna be first on a track or who gonna be last. A lot of songs just came out like that because whoever went first he must have felt like he had to go first, whoever went second they felt he had to go second, it was a feeling.
C: So with your album, you’re working with Dr. Dre and you have the RZA also, so you think that sometimes their presence holds too much weight? If you have five different producers on the “8 Diagrams” and you have two monumental producers like Dre and RZA working on your album, do you think that you’re going to have chemistry problems there?
R: Well you could have chemistry problems with the illest superproducers out. It’s just at the end of the day about going up in there and clicking minds together. No one man, I don’t give a fuck how many records he sold, is going to dictate if something is ill like that. At the end of the day it’s just his opinion. You gonna respect his opinion because of his track record, but at the end of the day we all come to the table, and we all agree to disagree.
(source (http://101lives.com/101Fan/2007/12/29/raekwon-2/))