DISGRACELAND - U-God (Wu-Tang Clan Chapter 7): Police Raids, Vengeance, and Mopping Floors at the Statue of Liberty

Episode Date: October 3, 2023

U-God was raised by the streets of Staten Island, where getting beaten up was a rite of passage that made you stronger. He was busted for driving a stolen car and assaulting a police officer. He dealt crack, and narrowly avoided a police raid on the apartment building he dealt from. He also dealt vengeance – he once came within seconds of killing a rival dope peddler. And when he finally put the violent life behind him and found freedom and joy in the music he made with Wu-Tang Clan, the ghosts of his past returned and placed his two-year old son in the crosshairs.To see the full list of contributors, see the show notes at www.disgracelandpod.com.Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - GET THE NEWSLETTERFollow Jake and DISGRACELAND:InstagramYouTubeX (formerly Twitter) Facebook Fan GroupTikTok To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is exactly right. Double Elvis. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands. I vowed, I will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this. He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that trust your girlfriends. Listen to the girlfriends.

Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When like young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever. My first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that.

David O'Yellowo. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Dennis Leary, Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things, Tana Monsu, Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Just like great shoes, great books take you places. Through unforgettable love stories and into conversations with characters you'll never forget.

I think any good romance, it gives me this feeling of like, like butterflies. I'm Danielle Robay, and this is bookmarked by Reese's Book Club from Hello Sunshine and IHeart Podcast, where we dive into the stories that shape us on the page and off. Each week I'm joined by authors, celebs, book talk stars, and more for conversations that will make you laugh, cry, and add way too many books to your TBR pile. Listen to bookmarked by Reese's Book Club on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Brought to you by Cotton. of our lives. Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. The stories about Wu-Tang

Klan's U-God are insane. He was raised by the streets of Staten Island, where getting beaten up was a right of passage that made you stronger. He was busted for driving a stolen car and assaulting a police officer. He dealt crack and narrowly avoided a police raid on the apartment building he dealt from. He also dealt vengeance. He once broke a guy's jaw and came with in seconds of killing a rival dope peddler. And when he finally put the violent life behind him, the ghosts of his past returned to remind him that the streets weren't done with him yet. At that point, of course, U-God had moved on to make great music with Wutang Clan, some of the most defining music of the late 1990s. Unlike that clip I played for you at the top of the

show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my Melotron called, is this thing on MK1. I played you that clip because I can't afford the rights to the sign by Ace of Bass. And why would I play you that specific slice

of ubiquitous Europop cheese could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on March 13th, 1994, and that was the day that U-God's new life as a member of a wildly successful

hip-hop collective was shattered when A member of his own family was caught in the middle of a gunfight. On this episode, rights of passage, stolen cars, police raids, broken jaws, caught in the crossfire, and Wu-Tang Clans, You God. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is disgrace land. Park Hill, Staten Island, 1979. He took the beating like he was 18 years old, not eight. He knew it was coming.

He couldn't outrun it, couldn't outsmart it. And there was always a price to pay. And the older kids held him down and punched him in the chest until he felt like he couldn't breathe. And they wailed on his legs so long and so hard he could barely walk. The beatings were a punishment. Because Lamont Hawkins, the kid the world would later know as you got, was a little punk who ran with other little punks who liked the perch on rooftops and chuck rocks at the older kids down on the street.

And so, young Yugod, aka young Lamont here, learned real quick that if you dished it out, you had to be prepared to take it. So he did. He didn't cry. He didn't show them any weakness. He just took it. Every punch, every slap, every wedgy that left a shredded pair of haines in its wake. After a while, he didn't fear the beatings.

They couldn't hurt him anymore. He was tough now. He could take a fist to the chest or the leg or the face, and everyone had. knew it too. The young punks he ran with, the older kids who chased him, he had the respect of all of them. And when you had respect, you had a rep. People don't fuck with someone with a rep. His uncle taught him that. And the guys his uncle ran with taught him the difference between getting beaten up and getting beat down. One tuned you up a little bit, and the other put you in the hospital. His uncle's friend served up beat downs, knives, guns, bricks, whatever it took.

One of them robbed a guy on the street while Lamont, just nine years old, stood by and watched. And that guy who got robbed took a brick to his face. It happened fast. And that's how it worked. You were fast and you were safe. You were slow. And you were fucked. His uncle's guy was fast as shit, pow!

And the other dude wobbled like a wet noodle and hit the ground with a thud. And they hit him again. And the bricks sliced open the guy's face, and the blood gushed. One of his eyes rolled back, and they took what they wanted from him. Money, jewelry, whatever they could find. He just lay there on the ground, twitching, moaning. Looked like he was having a seizure. Blood and foam oozed from the corners of his mouth.

Lamont watched it all. At first, it was shocking, but after witnessing a few of these beatdowns, it became normal. In his eyes, this is the way the world worked. Was it perfect? Far from it. But what was perfect? Back at home, nothing was perfect. Lamont's father was a ghost, and his mom did what she could to make ends meet,

but they had nothing. And little punks like Lamont wanted something, more than the bare minimum. The streets may not have been safe, but they did offer other possibilities. You just had to make your bones first. So you took beatings. You gave beatings. You got stronger. You formed crews.

Crews were power. Crews made you stronger. First, the Baby Bash crew, then the Dickham Down crew in middle school, and later it was the wrecked posse in high school. This world, these crews, they had a soundtrack, hip-hop. It was everywhere, from boom boxes to block parties, the treacherous three, Grand Wizard Theodore and the Fantastic Five, and the Cole Crush brothers.

Hip-hop was also the soundtrack of the streets, which on Staten Island in the 1980s were filled with cracked, dealers and crack users. You could either be one or the other. Into a kid like Lamont, now a teenager. A teenager with a single mom struggling to pay the bills. A teenager living so far below the poverty line it would make the average middle class American look like a Rockefeller. A teenager who'd gotten tough and earned a rep. Selling crack was a no-brainer. Crack sales made money hand over fist, hundreds of thousands of dollars all in an afternoon's work. So what if you were the conduit to put crack in someone else's hand.

Overcoming questions of morality is really easy to do when you're struggling simply to have nothing. The drug dealers had more than nothing, and they walked around with rolls of cash, and they drove shiny new cars, and they wore fresh new clothes, and they showed Lamont that he could have the same. So Lamont settled into selling crack as easily as he'd settled into taking beatings. The first time is the hardest. standing in the gate.

That's to say, on the other side of a door, the inside, plunged into darkness. You've got bindles and vials at your fingertips, and there's a knock from outside. It's loud, anxious. Someone's mumbling, a crackhead in need of a fix. Bad. The money comes through the slot in the door.

The bills are crinkled and damp. They smell like shit. The fingers pushing them through the slot don't smell much better. You take the green and then send the vindle out. through the slot, where those same fucking dirty fingers snatch that binda like it's the most important thing on the face of the earth. And after that first time, it gets easier. There's another knock, another mumble, another pair of fingers shoving another roll of bills

through the slot. And then, more, so many more. Staten Island's appetite for crack was constant. Tonight, the traffic at the door was endless, and the knocking was incessant. Knock, knock, cash through the slot. Knock, knock, cash through the slot. Lamont could hardly keep up. So he sampled some of the product to take the edge off.

He sliced open a filly, dumped the tobacco out, and replaced it with a mixture of weed and crack. But the woolly joint wasn't helping. In fact, it was making things worse. The sound of knocking and of cash sliding through the narrow slot banged around in his head. The rush just didn't stop rushing. His head spiked.

Something was off, something was wrong. Even for a busy night, this seemed a little too busy. Maybe it was just the dope talking, but suddenly Lamont felt the need to leave. He couldn't shake the suspicion that he was pushing his luck, that something bad was about to happen. So he closed up shop for the night. Lamont walked out of the building and onto the street, and he pushed by clients past, present and future. And then he saw him standing right there directly ahead. NYPD drug squad, maybe T&T, he couldn't be sure.

Lamont was sure, though, that he was fucked, that he was a sitting duck, that he was stone, that he was stupid, that his pockets were lined with cash and dope. But the cop just yelled at him, move out of the way. The more cops materialized directly behind this one and began to push forward together. What was happening? Move out of the way, now! Lamont moved quickly to his side. When the cop led a group of NYPD officers straight up into the bill,

building that Lamont had just been selling from. Juan held a battering ram in his hands, and he swung it forward and smashed through the door. And the sound was enormous. The wood splintered into pieces. But one more swing and the door busted wide open. Lamont watched as the cops stormed inside and began to grab whoever they could get their hands on.

But they didn't get their hands on Lamont. Because the streets hadn't just made him stronger. They made them wiser. The streets, though, they weren't perfect, and they never would be. And just because you got away this time didn't mean there wouldn't be a next time. And there was always a next time.

And there would always be a price to pay. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield. And in this new season of The Girlfriends,

Oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no. I vowed.

I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the Girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever. for you get your podcast. This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark.

When, like, young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever. My first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do. Rather be disappointed in. Do that. Dennis Leary. I wake up and I'm hitting him in the head with a water bomb.

And Bruce Jenner is on the aisle in a karate stance Like he's about to attack me, like, making karate noises. And his entire the Kardashian family over there, everybody's going, and the air marshal is trying to grab my arms and screaming. I immediately know that I've been a sleepwalk.

David O'Yello. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Guy Branham. So anyway, Nicole Kidman broke up with Keith Thurban. Being half of a country couple was always a hat she was going to wear, not like a life she was going to lead.

Oh, interesting. I like that. Did you practice that on your way over? Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things. Tena Monsu. Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, host of the Wicked Words Podcast. Each week I sit down with the true crime writers behind some of the most compelling true crime stories and discuss their years spent investigating and why it still matters. He sees his father coming out of the woods with his hands over his face,

and he knows something happened. His father just grabs him and says she's gone. She's gone. These are the cases that leave survivors, families, and the journalists who cover them changed forever. Working in national television, it'll push you to your limits, and you'll end up doing things you never thought you do. You know, you look back at it and you're like, I can't believe that really happened. Join me and step inside the investigation. New episodes drop every Monday on the exactly right network. Listen to Wicked Words on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Like a lot of kids growing up in the New York projects in the 1980s, Lamont Hawkins liked what he heard when the older 5% dudes talked. They used words like peace, and they were all about building up, not tearing down. They built ciphers, bonds, and brotherhood. And they gave Lamont hope and promise. And they gave him his new name, too. They called him U-God.

That's the letter you-God, as in you are God, or God is inside you. A reference to the 5% nation's teachings that the original man is the Asiatic black man, the maker, the owner, the cream of the planet earth, the father of civilization, and God of the universe. To quote one of the answers to the nation's 120 lessons, that is. But the letter U is also short for universal. In other words, infinite or comprehensive, meaning that Lamont Hawkins, a.k.a. universal

God could accomplish anything he set out to do. He could hustle if he wanted to hustle. and he could rhyme if he wanted to rhyme. But right now, though, you god, needed to find a way out. Not out of the crack game. He did that once already. All it took was narrowly avoiding a police raid on the spot he was selling from to scare him off. But the legit job he took in its place at the Statue of Liberty with his guy Clifford Smith,

aka Method Man, that was, well, that was work. Actual work. Too much work. The small amount of money he got at the end of a long shift, mopping floors, and hauling trash, it didn't seem worth it. So two years later, now 17 years old, you got ditched that legit shit and went back to hustling on the streets. And now he was wondering if the better money he was making slinging dope was worth all this.

Standing against a rented Ford Taurus, his hands on the hood, 5-0 getting real friendly with the requisite pat-down. His first mistake was getting pulled over. His second mistake was driving without a license. And his third mistake was driving a car that didn't belong to him. Turns out the Taurus had been reported stolen and was currently a vehicle of interest in a hit and run. Which is why U-God was out of the car getting searched by the police.

Thankfully, he had no product on him at the moment. But he did have a set of brass knuckles in five grand in cash. And the cop found both and put them on top of the car. U-God was fucked. He stared at the 5Gs. He couldn't afford to lose that money. And the cop would make that shit disappear like David Copperfield. He also couldn't afford to get arrested.

He wasn't doing time. Not now, not ever. U-God found strength in his 5% or name. He was infinite. He could accomplish anything he set out to do. But right now he was going to do this. He'd grabbed the wad of cash from the hood of the Taurus, and he ran. He tore ass across the basketball court, beeline it towards the projects. The cop was stunned but got his sprint on right

away. Look at this pencil dick with a mustache and a two-pack-a-day habit suddenly finding his inner Carl Lewis. The gold rope chains around Yuga's neck were heavy, and they wanted to sink him like a stone. Not today, though. Today, the pair of Gucci's on his feet were going to carry him like the wind coming off of the Hudson. His chest burned, and the air was ice to his lungs. But he wasn't going to let them catch him. And there were two cops behind him now, and two more were coming in hot right in front of him.

Shit. The two in front had him cold, and that was it. Lights out. So he juked to the left, and then he spun hard to the right. And those Keystone Herbs bought it and fell to the ground trying to keep up. And he laughed as he kept running. He felt a surge of adrenaline shoot through him like a spike to a vein and found a higher gear.

He was really moving now. He was the wind. He was the air. He was everything. And he was getting deeper into the projects, where he could finally lose these jokers in the crowd, and his feet then tripped up, and in a flash were out in front of him.

His face hit the pavement hard, and he looked back, and some dude hanging out in the neighborhood had stuck his foot out and tripped you got on purpose. Who was this guy rooting for anyway? Not the underdog. Not the guy who was now smothered by a litter of cop's pig piling on top.

of them, including the ones he'd left in the dust, that fake-out move. Those guys were especially pissed. They went full Tyson. They beat Yugaud with their fists. They kicked them with their feet. One went right for the mouth, sent his polished Oxford straight at Yud 's teeth. He knew the cops could knock every last tooth out of his head and get away with it. And he put an arm up in defense, and the cops kept bashing away. By the time they brought him down to the station, Yugat was bruised and bloodied, relieved of his $5,000 too. charged with grand larceny and assault on a police officer. He beat the assault charge, though, and but the other one stuck.

He did a weekend in the Manhattan detention complex, aka the tombs, and got assigned 150 hours of community service. But before giving back to the community, U-God had some unfinished business to settle. That stupid Taurus. More specifically, the stupid piece of shit who rented him the Taurus. Not Enterprise, not Hertz. A dude from around the way.

A dude who worked the streets just like Yuga did. U-God made finding that dude his first piece of business when he got out. Yo! U-God slipped his fingers through a pair of brass knuckles. You rented me a stolen car. Dude barely got two words out in response before U-God connected those brass knuckles to the guy's face. Some float like a butterfly and sting like a bee. U-God just bashed the motherfucker.

And fast. If you blinked, you missed it. You got heard the guy's jaw split in half. His fist broke it in two. Dude would never disrespect him again. The violence flew in the face of all that peace talk amongst five percenters, but it was necessary. The game was changing. It wasn't just about making money anymore.

Things would never stay that simple. It wasn't always going to be money and bindles back and forth through slots in the door. Now it was about respect and about protecting yourself. Park Hill had become Killa Hill. Bodies dropped. Lives were snuffed out. Guns trumped brass knuckles. And when it came to guns, the bigger the better.

Some pansy-ass piece like a 22 wasn't going to do shit for you when you had a Tech 9 or a Mac 10 trained on your skull. The chrome's so shiny you can look at your own reflection looking back at you seconds before your brains got splattered all over the sidewalk. And hierarchies were always in flux. You climb up the proverbial ladder one day. and the next day you miss a rung and fall down to the ground. Chances were pretty good that things would wind up pretty bad.

You God knew this. He knew even his fate was up in the air on any given day, and he was pretty far up that ladder at this point. But he wanted out. He wanted out more than he never wanted out before. More than the time he walked away from his drug-dealing door minutes before the NYPD opened it up with a battering ram. He was a new father, and he wanted to be there for his son.

Unlike his own father before him. He talked about all this with his friend Bobby Diggs, aka the Rizza, on nights when you God went to Rizza's place. Listen to music, made music, and dreamed up big plans. But walking away from dealing crack wasn't as easy as it used to be. He was the guy now, one of the big dealers in Killah Hill. You hand your big dealer spot over to one of these smaller fries, and then you turn your back and bam.

Who's to say they're not going to put a bullet in the back of your head? Plus, Rizza's concept of a hip-hop collective called Wutang Clan was, in the very early 90s, still just a concept. It wasn't a viable alternative. So U-God stayed the course. He stayed alert. He earned every ounce of respect given to him. And even if that meant more violence, there would always be more violence. But especially after U-God realized he'd been sold a bad batch.

Not doing anything to the guy you tried to say. screwing with bad drugs wasn't an option. He was obligated to make that guy pay. Just like the guy who rented him the stolen car, you got was infinite, comprehensive, capable of anything he was about to do. We'll be right back after this world, word, word. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. Emerald 2, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of the girlfriends...

Oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no. I vowed.

I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark.

When, like, young people come up to me and they want to be an act or whatever, my first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? You'd rather be disappointed in. Do that. Dennis Leary. I wake up and I'm hitting him in the head with a water bomb.

And Bruce Jenner is on the aisle in a karate stance like he's about to attack me. Like making karate noises. And his entire the Kardashians family over there, everybody's going. And the air marshal is trying to grab my arms and screaming. I immediately know that I've been asleep walking. David O'Yello. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts.

Guy Branham. So anyway, Nicole Kidman broke up with Keith Thurban. Being half of a country couple was always a hat she was going to wear, not like a life she was going to lead. Oh, interesting. I like that. Did you practice that on your way over? Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things. Tena, Monjou, Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Just like great shoes, great books take you places. Through unforgettable love stories and into conversations with characters you'll never forget.

I think any good romance, it gives me this feeling of like butterflies. I'm Danielle Robay, and this is bookmarked by Reese's Book Club from Hello Sunshine and IHeart podcast, where we dive into the stories that shape us on the page. and off. Each week I'm joined by authors, celebs, book talk stars, and more for conversations that will make you laugh, cry, and add way too many books to your TBR pile. Listen to bookmarked by Reese's Book Club on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your

podcasts. Brought to you by Cotton, the fabric of our lives. 1991, New York City, Uptown. The plan was simple. Find the guy who sold him the shitty crack. Give the guy the bag of shitty crack. Get his money back and then pop the guy with the burner hidden in his pocket. Bing, bang, boom, pow.

U-God finds the guy real fast. He's right where U-God left him, still slinging that pharmaceutical bullshit on the street. This is going to be easier than he thought. U-God pulls the pathfinder right up on the curb and hops out. Yo, that shit you sold me was garbage. You need to give me my money back. Now.

Nah, the guy says. Not true. He's backing up as U-God pushes on him. And then he starts to make some stupid excuse. U-God doesn't want to hear it. The money. Now, asshole. Okay, the guy says, okay, man, just chill. Chill out, man. And the guy can see U-Gut's coming unhinged. His eyes are bulging out of his head, and he's got a piece, and he is clearly not fucking around. Dude also knows U-God's badass rep from Killer Hill. Okay, the guy says, okay, always with the okay, this fucking guy here. He says, Chill out, okay? Chill out, okay?

Let me go upstairs, okay, and grab the money for you, okay? So Yugaug gets back in the Pathfinder and waits. And as he waits, he thinks about how stupid this all is, rolling up here in broad daylight, strapped, ready to murder a dude. He waits some more, and the guy's up there somewhere. And in one of the apartment units, You God doesn't know which one. You God starts to feel like he's being fooled again. It's that same fucking feeling,

that feeling of knowing that something else is going on, and that asshole didn't dirty, not once but twice. And then, You God, here's sirens, and they're coming in fast. And within seconds, the Pathfinder is surrounded by blue lights. It's at that moment that U-God realizes, that motherfucker went up there back up to his motherfucking place not to get money, but to call the cops. The NYPD wanted Yugod to snitch on other dealers in New York,

part of the tactical narcotics team business, or TNT, the cop's master plan where they ensnared the little guys in order to get the bigger guys. But U-God was no snitch. U-God was a vault. They gave him one to three years, and he did time first at a place called Manhattan House, and then Rikers Island, and then a minimum security prison called Camp Gabriel's. He took classes and attended meetings, anger management, narcotics anonymous.

N.A. was strange at first, because he wasn't a regular user and thus didn't think he belonged there, but he was an addict, and N.A. helped him see that. He was addicted to the lifestyle, the status, and the money. When he was paroled eight months into his sentence, he left feeling like a new man, like he had a new lease on life. But when he got back to Staten Island, he couldn't be that new man. He was an ex-con on parole, and he had but one place to go. Back to the streets. The hierarchy in Killahill had shifted once again. Some crew from Queens was trying to take over, and this dude they called Uncle told you God that he and his three guys couldn't sell in their usual spot anymore.

That was some bullshit. U-God went into autopilot. He forgot about the things he'd learned on the inside. NA and anger management. He forgot about the 5%. He put it all aside. He told his guys that they were going to take out this Queens crew. Mass, gloves, bulletproof vests, to the nines.

Tech Nines, that is. And Mac 10s, too. They found Uncle chilling on the front steps of a Park Hill building, their building, their hood. Uncle never saw them coming. It was four guys against one. Four guys with semi-automatic weapons pointed at Uncle's head. U-God wrapped his finger around the trigger.

He steadied his arm, and they were going to make a mess. Paint Kill a Hill with the blood of Queens. That would send a message, and the message was this. U-God was out. U-God was back. U-God was capable of anything. But if he was capable of this, of bringing forth death and destruction and all-out war,

and many was also capable of the opposite. And this thought gave him pause. He hesitated. Doubt entered his mind. And then that feeling. That familiar feeling, once again, that something was terribly wrong, that he was pushing his luck.

It was the same feeling he'd gotten before, when he closed up shop, when he stopped dealing for the night and walked away immediately before the cops raided the apartment. And that feeling when that okay motherfucker ran upstairs and called the cops. He thought of the five percenters, narcotics anonymous, his addictions, the cycle, all of it. For what? He looked around at his boys, and they were all waiting for him to shoot first, waiting on his orders.

Nah, man, he said, I'm not doing it, not pulling the trigger. He left. went home, took off the mask and the gloves and the bulletproof vest, and put down the semi-automatic. And the violence ended here. But the dealing, the dealing went on. He couldn't give it up. He needed the money. So he kept chopping up and cooking bricks of cocaine to put money in his pockets, which meant his skin kept absorbing cocaine into his bloodstream, which meant he kept failing the piss tests that were part of his parole, and he was in and out of lockup. Every time he got out, he went right back into dealing again. The streets were always there. The streets were going

nowhere, and so was U-God. This was the advice he received from the Rizza. The streets ain't going nowhere. That's what Riza said. But Riza, Riza was ready to take this Woot Tank thing somewhere. He told U-God to stop messing around with crack. Stop failing the piss test before they locked him up and threw away the key. And follow him to Shaolin and beyond, the streets would still be there if it didn't work out. But with any luck, it would work out. And the streets would never give U-God trouble again. There's only one word to describe what the nine original members of Wu-Tang Clan felt

when they released their 1993 debut album, Joy. There was joy in the music they were making. There was joy in the immediate success they were experiencing. Joy in how they were embraced and heralded by the hip-hop world. Mostly, there was joy in the fact that they had managed against very great odds to escape the cycle of poverty and violence and the cycle of non-success. They were no longer running, no longer looking behind their backs, and no longer wondering what they'd have to do to put food on the table that night.

They had purpose now, true purpose. And they put that purpose right in the album title. 36 Chambers. Let's do the supreme math. Take the three in the six from 36. Three plus six is nine. Nine members of Wu-Tang, nine planets in the solar system. Or three, multiplied by six, is 18.

And if you take the one and the eight to 18 and add them together once again, you get nine. The ninth supreme number represents Born to bring something into existence, something new, something powerful, something like Wu-Tang Clan's first album. The world responded to that power. Wu-Tang blared from car stereos and boomboxes from coast to coast. But just because you decide to be done with something, that doesn't mean that that something is done with you. And before long, the reality of Wu-Tang's not-so-distant path.

Past came calling back. March 13, 1994. Wu Tang were in California when U-God got the call. His two-year-old son, Dante, had been shot back home on Staten Island, two years old and caught in the crossfire while playing with his babysitter outside. And one of the gunmen actually picked Dante up

and used him as a human shield, and bullets hit him in his kidney, his pancreas, and his hand. You got caught the next plane back east. He wasn't prepared for what he saw at the hospital. His boy laying there on the operating table, his chest cut wide open, tubes and machines, and so much blood. Dante died two times on that table and two times Dante came back to life. But his life would never be the same again.

He lost the kidney and the nerves in his spine were damaged and the physical and mental therapy that lay ahead was extensive. You God couldn't cope with any of it. So he drank, and so he got high, and so he ingested whatever he could to numb the feeling. Feelings of pain, feelings of guilt, that he wasn't there when it happened, and that he wasn't able to protect his son. Was this all some sort of sick, cosmic joke? He worked so hard to extract himself from all this. He had found success so that he could provide for his family legitimately and properly, only for his own children. child, his two-year-old child, had become collateral damage in the life that he thought he'd left

behind. And he wasn't out for justice or blood. He put that shit behind him. Nothing good was going to come from him rolling up on the dude who shot Dante and putting a bullet in his head. Now, the old U-God? Yeah, the old U-God would have done something. He would have put that motherfucker in a coma at least. The U-God was too busy drowning in his own misery, though. All he wanted to do was to make sure his son was safe, and he wanted to get real fucked up. The guy who shot Dante didn't know that. The guy knew U-God's old rep. He knew what U-God was capable of.

So that guy feared for his life. He was convinced that U-God was after him. And soon, these suspicions were floating from neighborhood to neighborhood. Check a man, U-Guard is going to tear that guy up. Better watch yourself. My man, U-God does not fuck around. Word of U-God's supposed wrath made it to the police, and the cops were, as we've covered here already, quite familiar with U-God.

If there was ever a time U-God was going to do something stupid, this seemed to be it. So they took this threat seriously, and they put a unit on him. He was followed. Every step he made, every breath he'd take, they were always there, no matter where he was going or what he was doing. Unmarked cars, plain-clothes dicks, knock-off rayvans, cracked, lips sipping shitty coffee from styrofoam cups, eyes peeking out from behind yesterday's copy of the post. In the sound of idling engines, CB radio static crackling, newspapers being snapped shut in a

hurry. His own footsteps echoed when he walked down the street. At first, it was just one or two of these cops, but after a while the numbers seemed to double and then triple, at least in you gods had it did. He was seeing these guys everywhere, behind the curtain in his living room, and the bathroom mirror. He even saw them in his dreams. It was enough to drive a guy crazy. And it did. There's U-God pacing around in the middle of the street in just his robe and his underwear. Timberlands on his bare feet, a frightening manifestation of crazy. He got locked up, not jail, two weeks in the psychiatric hospital. U-Guard was not crazy. He was made to think he was crazy. because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not after you and all that.

You got to have every right to be paranoid. They were after them. They were always going to be after him. Who they were varied. Sometimes it was the police and other times it was the streets. He knew this. ODB, old dirty bastard. He also knew this.

O'Don-B, Wutang's resident old school R&B officianto and lyrical wildcard was pushed beyond paranoia. He was scared. He told everyone he was scared, but no one wanted to listen. So dirty had to get their attention. ODB had to make him listen, even if that meant setting himself on fire. I'm Jake Brennan. In this episode of Disgraceland is to be continued. Disgraceland was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis.

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This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When, like, young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever. My first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that. David O'Yello I love this podcast whether it's therapy or relationships

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listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts Sometimes a suspect is found guilty before a verdict is ever read in court. On the Wicked Words podcast, I talk with the writers who dig deep into the cases that changed history, including Marsha Clark, who went from prosecuting one of the most famous murder cases to writing crime fiction. It doesn't matter that you didn't take part in the murder. If you were

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