Raekwon

Raekwon
Corey Quontrell Woods, better known by the stage name Raekwon, is an American rapper and a member of the Wu-Tang Clan. He released his solo debut, Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... in 1995, and has since recorded numerous solo albums, as well as continuing to work with Wu-Tang and providing an extensive number of guest contributions to other hip hop artists' works. He is the founder of his own label ICEH20 Records...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionRapper
Date of Birth12 January 1970
CityStaten Island, NY
CountryUnited States of America
I still wanted to see the family come back to life. And when that didn't transpire from the music, it kinda made me feel like I was bein' taken advantage of. I thought, when people heard '8 Diagrams,' they'd be like, 'Oh, Wu-Tang is a wrap now - they've lost it.' And I know that we didn't lose it.
When I'm making the music, I feel like everything I throw out has to work. It counts. Because if you don't have people turning they neck all the way around to see what it is, it ain't stick on the wall.
I think a lot of people can learn from listening to hip hop. It ain't always about beats and rhymes.
The most important thing is just to be recognised as a legend, like the people call me. To have that title attached to your name, you've got to be a bad man. It's an honour to have that role.
Sometimes you can make a substantial amount of money and automatically think that you've made it, that you did everything you wanted to do. Some people just stop.
In a nutshell though, it's just all about opening up to the people that really care about my career and really listening to everybody who is listening to me. It's just made me stronger, to really be able to open up that door and listen to everybody else's opinions.
I stay excited 'cause for me, this is something I love to do. I'm like Coca Cola with it. I been here for a long time, I just gotta keep it nice and stay up to date and also give them that quality taste that they been looking for. It's nothing to me. When you built for it, you born for it, you do it cuz you wanna do it, not cuz you have to.
So for me, I had to get something going to promote the new project that I got. I decided to come with the 'Lost Jewelry' EP, which is a mixtape but it's more sexier because it's all fresh music.
I'm a storyteller - that's my chamber, that's my box. I'm always tryin' to give you the best story from our side of the table that you could really relate to quick. I understand where I wanna be at, but sometimes the production takes me where I need to go.
I'm always gonna be compared to the greatest cats that's in the game, but I lack a little bit less when I'm not as visible as other guys. So I live with that thought right there - yo, you still gotta work, still got more to do. One thing where I come from you gotta remember is, don't get souped up.
I remember I heard it in an interview with Michael Jackson one day, saying the art is gone, everybody makes records just to make a record. See, I always want the artist that try to build a whole body of music on one album, so you can enjoy it. So you could say, 'I went with him here, I went with him here.'
I've been living. I've been doing the writing thing. I've been being the family man. I've been traveling the world. I been to, like, 18 cities last year. I've been getting my thoughts together, trying to figure out what's going on with hip-hop itself.
I always give RZA that support as far as saying he brought Wu-Tang to the table. It was his philosophy. He picked certain dudes to be part of this group, and he said, 'This is what it's going to be called.'
So my thing is we want come in and diffuse anything that's not real, anything that doesn't associate with real hip-hop. We want to be the one that says, 'Yo, we want to help build and build a bigger and better industry.' I'm just like, 'Yo, with talent from Toronto, Vancouver, Quebec. Who's paying attention?'