WU-TANG CLAN INTERVIEW
August 2, 2006

Ed Martin for Prophecy21.com: Are you excited to be getting back on the road with Wu Tang?
U-GOD: I've been with the guys from Wu-Tang for what, almost 20 years? What's there to be gettin excited about? Hahaha.

P21: How do you travel when you're on tour? Do you get individual buses or does the group share one?
U-GOD: We got two big busses and I bring my whole house out in my luggage. We bring the cooking plate out, sometimes we don't whatever, whatever. That's about it man.

P21: What do you like to do with your spare time when you're out on the road?
U-GOD: In my spare time I work out, I read, you know I'll fuck with broads, I'll be on the phone. Whatever man, I'll write rhymes.

P21: What type of books do you usually read?
U-GOD: I read all types of shit man. I can't just put it into one sentence. I read too much man. You know like The Art of War, scientific books, stuff on kinetic energy, fuckin physics, bio. You know, fuckin biographies on Sugar Ray whatever man it doesn't fuckin matter.

P21: Which members of the group are you usually closest with when you're on the road?
U-GOD: You know, everybody is spread out man, it depends. Tomorrow I might be with Deck for the day, then Deck might get on my fuckin nerves and I won't fuck with him, so I might be with fuckin Meth, and if Meth gets on my nerves I might be with Masta-fuckin-Killa, know what I mean. There's a whole bunch of shit. I can't really say who I'm gonna be with. Stop trying to get people to see who be the Devil the most. It don't work like that, know what I mean. It's cool man.

P21: You guys have a couple festivals coming up on this tour; do you like playing festivals like that?
U-GOD: Yeah we got a couple, we got the Rock the Bells poppin, we got Chi-Town, Fort Lauderdale, Myrtle Beach, we got another date comin October 29th. And some other festivals, you know we just be doing our thing. Just cause you don't hear us on the radio and shit don't mean we ain't out there gettin our money and we ain't out there doing our thing. You know what I'm saying, the Clan is always there. We just ain't got home and haven't gotten in the studio to make an album, that's it. People sayin "When you gonna come back" and we're just gonna make a new album and come back, hahaha. Deal with that!

P21: Have you guys started writing for the new album?
U-GOD: You know we got a few joints but we aint stuck our piece to it 100% yet.

P21: How do you feel the passing of ODB is going to change things on the new album?
U-GOD: Well we got songs for ODB understand, so OD ain't going nowhere. We still got joints for him, know what I mean?

P21: Have you started writing for your new solo record?
U-GOD: Yeah I'm coming with something different on this album. That's the crazy shit about independent albums. I don't like hip-hop much right now because its like a bunch of dick riding acts. It's like where if everybody else likes it, then they gonna like it. You know what I'm saying, that's what I don't like about a lot of hip-hop fans, they don't have their own ears anymore, they done lost their damn ear. So, that's the only thing I don't like. As far as like "Mr. Xcitement" and all that shit, I got mixed reviews because I didn't have enough money to get something in this magazine over here, not enough money to buy a cover story over here, so I got fucked for reviews. But when dudes come back and they listen to the shit, I get hit up on MySpace and I get a different view of the shit and dudes be tellin me like, 'Dude, that shit was fire!!!' So I be like damn see, everything I'm sayin is true. But as far as my solo career stuff, this is gonna be a totally different venture. I got a new camp, new beat makers. I ain't tryin to get a hundred dudes that nobody knows. We're gonna try to go take it places where motherfuckers know motherfuckers, know what I'm saying?

P21: Speaking of MySpace, you post a lot of bulletins with life lessons, where do you get those from and why do you post those?
U-GOD: Don't ask me where I get my shit from, it ain't happenin. You ain't gonna find out, I just do what I do. I'm sorry to let y'all down but everybody in the world wants to know where I got it from, how I do with it, so they can copy it and steal my shit. Well, I ain't that dude. Go find out, read some books, find out, get your own perception on life and go out there and make somethin happen with yourself, you know.

P21: Is everything between you and RZA settled? And do you think you would ever give him another shot at producing any of your solo stuff?
U-GOD: First of all, RZA is RZA, he ain't never produce a whole album for me, period. As far as me and him and who he is, he's him and I'm me. We speak, sometimes we don't, sometimes we do. It's shit that families do and it ain't got nothin to do with y'all, so mind your business.

P21: What is your favorite song to perform live?
U-GOD: I ain't got no favorite song no more. We got too much, too much, too many songs. I can't even tell ya, it's just hard. Sometimes I like doing It's Yourz, sometimes I like this, sometimes I like that, you know? It's just too much, too fucking much; we got a bigger catalog then Sugar Hill man. You know, our catalog is humongous, we got too many songs. We could perform for like 3 or 4 hours straight and still have some shit y'all probably ain't heard. You know, so whatever.

P21: What are your feelings about the bulk of the music on the radio these days?
U-GOD: Don't care. I don't care bout that. Wait til we come back man. Right now, we ain't got no home, we ain't got no label, we ain't got to deal with that.

P21: What's the most memorable show that you've ever been to?
U-GOD: Well I just went to go see System of a Down this weekend up in Randall's Island. That was some shit, there was about 30,000 people and we had VIP tickets and that was one the best shows I seen. One of the other best concerts I ever seen was when I was growin up, the Jackson 5 at Madison Square Garden back before Michael dropped "Thriller." There a couple others too like a Run-DMC joint back in the day. I think that's one of the best concerts I ever seen in my life.

P21: If you could go back in the past and change anything with your career, is there something that you would do differently?
U-GOD: Yeah I wouldn't have went to jail before the Wu album came out. I been playing catch up since then. I'm in last fuckin place, I ain't got no fuckin label, I ain't got the shit I need to go where I need to go in my career. I'm in purgatory, I'm half way known and half way unknown. And that's all because I went to jail on the first album. If I'd have been out on the first album, I probably would've had a nice Wu-Tang sing along on the 36 Chambers instead of a fuckin verse and I probably would've had a better fuckin career. You know, but I'm not giving up that easy. That's the only thing I regret. Everything else is what I am forever.

P21: Where do you see yourself being in five years?
U-GOD: Who knows man? I don't know man, I can't pinpoint it. I don't like to talk about what I wanna do, and what I'm gonna do, because someone's always trying to beat me to the punch and fuck my shit up before I get there. I'm not trying to hear that.

P21: Where are some of your favorite places to perform when you're on tour?
U-GOD: Boston, Arizona, Mexico, Florida, the whole fuckin Florida, LA, those are my favorite places.

P21: Thanks, is there anything that you want to add?
U-GOD: Machine Gun Funk coming out next year.