Raekwon Outtakes: Get up on the rest of our interview with Raekwon that didn't make it into the November issue.

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.

How does that develop though, over the years, I mean it's been over ten years, y'all been tight...

Raekwon: I mean you know...

On an off, solo records...

Raekwon: 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.

Right

Raekwon: 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.

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.

Raekwon: 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.

How do you manage to come back each time to record a new album with everyone working on their individual projects?

Raekwon: 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?

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?

Raekwon: 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. Home // CELEBRITIES // MANTRAS // Raekwon