The Chef Serves it Up

Raekwon brings back the Linx for Rock the Bells

By Paul Rogers

“I’ve done terrible things,” sighs Raekwon. “Comin‘ up in the street, just being wild; getting into trouble; not respecting myself or respecting people that’s around me . . . Fighting; beating people up. That wasn’t the person I wanted to be.”

Sure enough, so much of this Wu-Tang Clan rapper’s career has been about his navigating a path away from his early Staten Island street life. His solo work documents this struggle, and offers listeners lessons learned along the way.

“It’s important to know where you come from, because anybody can change something from good to bad if they believe in it—and that’s where I’m at in my life,” he says.

“That’s one of my styles”

The 41-year-old—who is slated to perform at the Rock the Bells hip-hop festival scheduled for Aug. 27 at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View—is now a family man, a Muslim, and lives in an upscale neighborhood of Atlanta. It all seems a far cry from the drug- and crime-riddled narratives of his classic 1995 solo debut, Only Built 4 Cuban Linx . . .; it’s worthy 2009 Pt. II follow-up; and the “Lex Diamond” Mafioso persona Raekwon adopts on these records (and on 2003’s The Lex Diamond Story).

“You gotta remember that I’m called ‘The Chef’ for specific reasons,” Raekwon explains in his affably forthright manner. “I’m a guy that’s going to be able to serve you many different platters and give it to you in a way where you can see exactly where I’m going . . . The Mafioso rap style —that’s one of my styles.”

Headphone Music

In the meantime, Raekwon will be revisiting his revered debut opus at Rock the Bells in a set with Ghostface.

“It’s just going to consist of us really just performing an album that we know the world really went crazy for,” he enthuses. “So it’s just going to be a lot of great imaging and building. We’re going to take you back to the times where this was one of the first albums we made.”

“You’re going to hear and sing them words,” he adds. “And we sound like the album. We sound like the records when we onstage, so it’s definitely going to be like you’ve got a pair of headphones on, listening to a classic.”

As a Stimulant

Rae—who confirmed he still partakes of the herb—also spoke to CULTURE about his views about medical cannabis.

“It’s to each his own, you know?” he says. “You’ve got people that use it for medical; you’ve got people that use it for relaxing reasons and to motivate them. It ain’t actually always about being stoned, y’know what I mean?”

“I grew up smoking marijuana and I still smoke marijuana, but I don’t use it as something to try to get me high. I use it as a stimulant that lightens me up to want to be more motivated to doing things. It opens my mind up; it definitely enhances [creativity].”

raekwonchronicles.com.

For the Record

Don’t miss your favorite albums from back-in-the-day being performed at Rock the Bells this year by the big name artists themselves. Raekwon will be performing Only Built for Cuban Linx… alongside many more notable rhyme slingers and microphone masters (and mistresses), such as Erykah Badu (Baduizm), Nas (Illmatic), Mobb Deep (The Infamous) and Ms. Lauryn Hill (The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill). So get your “doo wop” on and leave your favorite hip-hop albums at home. They’ll be live and direct up on the stage.