Raekwon says he often gets asked to explain what constitutes real hip-hop. As one of the founding members of Wu-Tang Clan, and as one of New York hip-hop’s long reigning titans, it’s hard not to ask him this question again.
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Especially considering that as I talk with him, he’s on a tour bus with his Wu-Tang brethren — the same brethren who cultivated rap in their gritty, messy image with some of the genre’s most seminal releases, the same brethren who crafted one (quite literally one) of the most infamous albums in music history as a means to protest the devaluation of music in the digital age. This DIY nature behind Raekwon and Wu-Tang’s legacy is rank with a word the former uses a lot during our conversation: “authenticity.” Their fame and legacy are merely secondary, what Rae has always sought to do is make the most truthful art he can.
“To me, it’s like going to the movie theater,” Rae says. His bus is en route to what will soon be two legendary Wu-Tang farewell shows in New York City and California. “You go there, you go pay for what you wanna pay for — but at the same time it’s like, I can’t go see something that’s supposed to be a horror flick but it feels like a commercial horror flick. At the end of the day, give me what I expect of it and don’t allow it to be pushed under the rug, because it may not be as popular as things today is.”
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As part of a massive rollout with Nas’ Mass Appeal Records, Raekwon returned with his eighth studio album The Emperor’s New Clothes last week. While we talk about the project, at this point in his career, Rae seems interested more in speaking his mind on the state of hip-hop.
“I see the industry is fouler now, and filled with the greed,” he raps on “1 Life.” “Controlling narratives, sending wrong thoughts to the seeds. Save our babies, there’s nothing else to vibe with the means.”
In a quick chat with Billboard, Raekwon elaborates on these concerns he has with the genre he’s helped define, and how an old Dutch folk tale inspired his latest LP.
Why did you feel now was the time for a new project, and why was Mass Appeal the right vehicle for this next chapter?
Number one, the Mass Appeal collaboration was kind of personal. Because me and my brother Nas, we have a 30-year friendship, and we always said that one day we would connect together and do a project together. So the timing was perfect, and I felt that it was time that I release some music that I had ready for the world that I was working on. So I just kinda leave it in God’s grace, when the time hits it hits. Right now, it was just dope timing. I’m working on a couple of other different projects, so I wanted to make sure that I take care of everything I needed to do with that.
Why did you name your album after a famous folk tale?
That title is a reality title to me. Today, everything is being followed by status quo. I’m a person that’s a big advocate of authenticity over popularity. Just because tomato is to-mato, that don’t mean that you can change the words up. I just think hip-hop is being — what’s the word I wanna say? — hip-hop is definitely being punctured right now by elements that really don’t hold onto the culture the way we know it to be.
I feel like it’s our job to stay authentic. This is not to take shots at anybody, but I just feel like hip-hop is not being represented right. There’s so many different layers on top of it that makes it not authentic to me that it’ll make you question what you know about hip-hop and what you feel. That’s something that I don’t wanna ever have to sacrifice when it comes to knowing what made me who I am today.
The Emperor’s New Clothes is an old folk tale that basically describes: “Don’t believe anything you hear.” I just love the title because I know people automatically would think it was about changing clothes. But nah, it’s really more about don’t get caught up in stuff that doesn’t equate the reality of what s—t really is.
Can you speak on that a little more? What aspects of hip-hop are being punctured right now?
it’s not the same anymore. A lot of things are sounding alike. People are emulating each other, [doing] whatever makes sense according to their popularity, and you have these labels that are so much in power they could change the dynamics of what hip-hop really is, you know? Rap music is rap music, but hip-hop is something that to me always had its own flagship. Rap is something I feel like anybody can do. You can learn overnight to do it, but that doesn’t make you authentic. That just shows you have the talent and the ability to create something, but a lot of times things that everybody feel are hip-hop is not hip-hop, it’s rap. I just think it’s a separation gap here. Rap to me sounds like you’re wrapping something up. I get it — but I just think that it’s a little bit too much to the left when people are still trying to figure out what is really hip-hop.
Hip-hop is not only just skills and good production and art, but it’s supposed to make you feel a certain way. A lot of times, you got all this other stuff sterilized inside of it that makes it not feel authenticated. It’s about if you popular. The bottom line: I just wanted to stay true to the culture. I just feel like hip-hop ain’t authentic no more, you know?
Still, you have Clipse reuniting and and Drake and Kendrick on top. It doesn’t feel like rap is only a young man’s sport anymore.
You just gotta be genuine with knowing that it can’t stray away from what we know it to be. It doesn’t make you less of an artist if you don’t sell a million, billion records. But if you’re authentic, and we feel like at the end of the day it makes sense to do it the way that you feel you wanna do it, and it still feels like something new and fresh… it just can’t be something that at the end of the day everybody is yapping that, “This is it!” When it’s really not it.
A lot of the times it be like that, it be like, “Where the f—k did this s—t come from?” But the popularity of it can make things become that, and then next thing you know you start to feel like you have to respect the status quo because that’s what they feel. When you know at the end of the day, it’s like, “Hol’ up, this is not what I know hip-hop to be.”
So its like you said — you got guys like the Clipse, that they have their own flagship with how they do things and they continue to stay where people expect them to stay. That’s how I feel about myself. Just stay in pocket with what you know people love about the culture and about hip-hop. We were able to express ourselves and not have to worry about listening to somebody that’s trying to capitalize off fame and fortune.
Let’s make sure at the end of the day it feels like a body of work, that it makes sense for what we all love. Even not having albums and CD’s no more in your hand! Now you gotta deal with all these different levels of how music is made. I feel like all of that is just saturating what we all love. To be able to go look at a CD and look at the inside and read the credits and know those sales, whatever they are, are realistic. The way the game is now, you don’t know who’s really selling!
It’s a different game, and not only just that, but the only way I can explain it is authenticity versus popularity. Just because you’re popular don’t necessarily mean that you’re giving us what we want. It’s a lot of stuff out there that just sounds the same.
You connected again with Griselda for this album. You’ve worked with them multiple times. What is it about Westside, Conway and Benny that appeals to you so much?
They take their craft very serious. They know what they’re doing — even when I met them, they always paid me respect and paid my team respect and knew what they had to do. They knew they had to walk a certain way to where people were respecting them. I kinda seen them when they was on they mode, really getting to where they gotta go. I seen their future ahead of time, so I kinda knew that they was gonna be great in this business because I felt it. I felt like they was putting the work in.
How have you been navigating this landscape now when it comes to making and selling music? Did you feel you had to change your practice at all?
I never really felt like I had to change my practice, I only just know I had to become sharper and continue to do what I love and make fresh music and make music that I know moves people. That shows my cleverness, that shows my level of putting my passion into it. That’s important, you don’t wanna lose passion and you also wanna keep being innovative.
I guess maybe coming from one of the biggest rap groups in the world, or the most famous one that really paid their dues, I guess we was just cut from that cloth to keep it the way we know how to keep it, and not just settle for anything. It’s like listening to one of my songs. Somebody might listen to it and be like, “That ain’t it, Chef. That ain’t your style.” You know what I mean? Sometimes you could be persuaded to do something that you think may fit you that really don’t fit you.
Having a cult following like we do, we always get criticized and judged according to our sound and things that we create, and all those things right there keep me grounded. I love criticism, I’m not expecting everybody to love what I do, but I gotta stand next to the ones that know what I’m capable of doing and let them know, “Yo listen, ain’t nothing changed.” I’m still going to give you guys a body of work. I’m always trying to make sure each record plays a significant role in the culture and I just feel like that’s my duty.
Keeping all this in mind, I can’t help but think of Drake at Wireless Fest saying that U.K. rappers are better than American rappers now. What are your thoughts on comments like that?
American rap is the king, we know that. We know where it came from, not taking anything away from European rappers. I just feel like that might have been just something that he felt at that time, but he has his own opinion and that’s cool, you know. To each his own, he may feel that way. He may not feel inspired by what is going on in this side of the world, and he has that opinion. I might beg to differ, but everybody wanna have their moments on what they like and don’t… frustration is definitely in the air.
When you go back to the title “Emperor’s New Clothes,” that’s really a Dutch folktale about a king listening to people that really are following what other people do, and thinking at the end of the day that you could come and bring something over here that’s not real. But he wind up taking the word of others until he realize somebody came out of the blue and said, “Yo, what is that? That’s not what the king should be wearing!” Are you familiar with “The Emperor’s New Clothes?”
I haven’t read it since grade school.
Exactly, but it’s so real — because at the end of the day, somebody will tell you, “Yo, wear this shirt,” and it ain’t even a shirt, but everybody around you: “Yo, that s—t is dope, that s—t is that.” But you’ll be saying to yourself, “Yo, where’s the shirt at? It’s not even a shirt.” Everybody around you in order to please themselves and become a part of what’s going on, to just get a merit from that, they may convince themselves that it is a shirt.
It’s like Nas said a long time ago, “Y’all appointed me to bring rap justice.” I’m just part of that justice that feels at the end of the day, “Hol’ up, hol’ up, hol’ up, hol’ up — let’s figure this s—t out and put it back on track.” That’s all, not to take away from anybody else’s hip-hop. I just know what kind of hip-hop created this s—t. The minute we lose that, we lose the grip on what we created and what we built. I hope that hip-hop will still be exciting 300 years from now, but if we don’t pay attention to certain things that’s important… we wanna make sure it’s preserved.
It feels like what you’re saying is it’s important to remain a student. To know who Wu-Tang is, to understand who Dr. Dre is, in order to keep the culture grounded.
Trust me, I hear a lot of my peers, a lot of times we’re always saying the same thing. Like, when we know that there’s a person that really does something great in the culture, and created a body of work that influenced the people, I hear a lot of my friends say: “Yo, I needed a battery.” I needed this or I needed that. Because it’s too watery right now for me. We gotta keep this s—t on the right track. That’s what I’m aiming to do, to bring that feeling back to the table. It was fun listening to s—t! It was fun hearing, “Yo, what did he say? Rewind that.” It just felt good. We need that. We need that.
