I was a big hip hop girl, and still am, I listened to artists like Wu Tang, and K'Naan, but I was a particular fan of Biggie and Tupac.
When Wu-Tang came, Wu-Tang was for that era, right there. When Dre had it in the West Coast, it was for that time. Biggie and them, it was for that time.
I grew up listening to a lot of Snoop Dogg and the Wu-Tang Clan. Actually, I was a huge Wu-Tang fan.
Education is the tool. Even if we haven't directly instructed a session, I think Wu-Tang has been an instructor of education to anyone who has been a fan, anyone who has supported our movement, whether its been from buying a Wu-Tang CD or coming to see a show.
To me, Wu-Tang is beyond Wu-Tang Clan... It's just like, hip-hop is beyond Grandmaster Flash, but Grandmaster Flash was one of the first guys to hit those turntables like that. The same thing with Wu-Tang. You'll see the difference in hip-hop from the moment we came in to before we came in. We changed it. We changed the whole structure.
I grew up listening to a lot of early '90s hip-hop. I had the debut Wu-Tang album, Biggie, Snoop, that kind of stuff. Hieroglyphics, the Gravediggaz. I remember D.O.C.'s 'The Portrait of a Masterpiece' was something that had a big influence on me.
Wu-Tang was going through it. They didn't come from great homes or families. They really came from hard beginnings so it just made me reflect on my own situation. If Wu-Tang was able to make it, why can't I?
I'm a huge Wu-Tang fan.
I could never be a control freak. If Wu-Tang is a dictatorship, how does every Wu-Tang member have their own contract, their own career, and have put out more albums without me than they've done with me?
I am a Wu-Tang member and Method Man, he been a Def Squad member way before I was a Wu member. I was like a Wu member but I wasn't official.
I thought that Wu-Tang was the best sword style - the best sword-style of martial arts. And the tongue is like a sword. And so I say that we have the best lyrics, so, therefore, we are the Wu-Tang Clan.
If you hear people talking about the Golden Era of rap, they're usually talking about the early Wu Tang Clan era and then Nas and Biggie and so on. But for me, it goes back to the '80s - 1986 to 1989.
My dad is from Queens. I remember visiting as a kid. My grandparents grew up here. All the actors I respected were coming out of here. All the hip-hop I was listening to - Beastie Boys, A Tribe Called Quest, Biggie, Wu Tang - was coming out of New York. I'm just into it.
I was a huge Wu-Tang fan, along with Crucial Conflict, along with Do or Die along with Mobb Deep.
When the Internet came along, the first thing I did was look up Wu-Tang so I could print out their symbol and glue it onto my skateboard.