Before I think we was emcees, we was more or less narrators too. Because if you look at the early '80s hip hop, it was so much creativity goin' on with artists like then, like Slick Rick, then you had Rakim, and you had these different kind of artists back then. And we was a marble cake of all these artists. So I didn't have a problem with writin' stories because I felt like that was somethin' I loved to do. Even to this day, I really consider myself an entertainer-slash-narrator. I like to talk about stuff that goes on.
RaekwonIt'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.
RaekwonThe main thing I look at is: Is it from the heart? If I know that you down with me, then we always gonna be down through whatever the thick and thin.
RaekwonWhen 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.
RaekwonIn the early 2000s, I was going through a lot. I didn't have my head screwed on right. Where I was at as a man, I was still growing up.
RaekwonBut 'Cuban Linx' was a project that really needed to come, and I really wanted to get it off my chest because I know that the fans were really skeptical about it, like 'is this really gonna be what it's supposed to be?' So once everybody caught it for what it was and everybody was happy, that's mission accomplished for me.
Raekwon