num_pages: 293
description: Selected as a Best Book of the Year by EsquireCouldn't put it down.  Charlamagne Tha GodMesmerizing.  Raekwon da ChefInsightful moving necessary.  Shea SerranoCathartic. The New YorkerA classic. The Washington PostThe explosive never-before-told story behind the historic rise of the Wu-Tang Clan as told by one of its founding members Lamont U-God Hawkins.Its time to write down not only my legacy but the story of nine dirt-bomb street thugs who took our everyday lifescrappin and hustlin and tryin to survive in the urban jungle of New York Cityand turned that into something bigger than we could possibly imagine something that took us out of the projects for good which was the only thing we all wanted in the first place. Lamont U-God HawkinsThe Wu-Tang Clan are considered hip-hop royalty. Remarkably none of the founding members have told their storyuntil now. Here for the first time the quiet one speaks. Lamont U-God Hawkins was born in Brownsville New York in 1970. Raised by a single mother and forced to reckon with the hostile conditions of project life U-God learned from an early age how to survive. And surviving in New York City in the 1970s and 1980s was no easy taskespecially as a young black boy living in some of the citys most ignored and destitute districts. But along the way he met and befriended those who would eventually form the Clans core: RZA GZA Method Man Raekwon Ol Dirty Bastard Inspectah Deck Ghostface Killah and Masta Killa. Brought up by the streets and bonding over their love of hip-hop they sought to pursue the impossible: music as their ticket out of the ghetto.U-Gods unforgettable first-person account of his journeyfrom the streets of Brooklyn to some of the biggest stages around the world is not only thoroughly affecting unfiltered and explosive but also captures in vivid detail the making of one of the greatest acts in American music history.
language: None
title: Raw: My Journey into the Wu-Tang
publisher: Picador