When you grow up in that environment of drugs and guns and people gettin' hurt, it start to reflect your background. And I think, at that time when I was doin' it, that's all I knew. But as I got older in the business, I stopped bein' involved with that, and I started to look at the world. And I said, 'Yo, I wanna start talkin' about everything that goes on in the world. I don't wanna just limit myself to one style'.

I always write to the moment. I've always been that kind of emcee. I don't wanna come in with all the paperwork and all o' that or whatever. That's good when you just an emcee from off the block that really don't have to work as hard as the next man. But when, you know... Y'all make me write like this, from, I guess, me makin' a classic and everybody callin' my stuff classic material - that makes me have to work ten times harder. But a lot o' times things just happen at the moment for me: spur o' the moment. That's just how it goes sometimes.

Rza just used the whole synopsis of the karate flick and capitalised offa that around this music. Some things you find out and you compare to yourself, and you're like, 'Wow, it has so much comparison to it', you start to live like that. And that's what happened - we started callin' ourselves Wu-Tang.

I love the energy that comes when I get on the mic. It keeps me creative and I love to hear what the fans want, what they love or hate about it.

I never been a hater of these other cats, who never really had nothing, being successful. That's not my problem.

When you think of a chef you think of somebody that could cook - you don't think of chef that says, 'Yo, I make only steaks'. No. A chef knows how to bake, he knows how to fry, he knows how to sautee, he knows how to do everything that's pertaining to food, and that's how I felt about my lyrical position. It's like I would say, 'Today I'm gonna make a hot salmon. Tomorrow I make you spaghetti. The next day I make you baked fish'. This is how my lyrical content in my head was already bein' reciprocated to the world, bein' given to y'all like that.

It's important to have a spiritual side because tomorrow's no promise to us. We have to pay homage to our saviour and put him in our life more because, without him, you don't know where you're going to go.