Method Man

History

Clifford Smith AKA Method Man was born April 1:st 1971 in Staten Island, New York.
His parents separated early and he had to hover between the slums of Shaolin (Staten Island in Wu-slang) where his Mother lived and the suburbs of Long Island where his father lived. His drug-dealing father taught him how to play the drums and reading poetry.
Method Man didn't like school much, and he dropped off early, too early according to himself. He regret that strongly today. For a very long time, his life was basically comic books. He read comics constantly and that was the only thing keeping him alive. Nowadays his lyrics are slightly inspired from those comics.
When Meth was about 15 years old, he joined the "5% Nation" and got the name: "Shakwon God Allah", which later became "Shakwon the Poet".
For a time he worked at the statue of liberty for 60$/week, which was not enough to buy cocaine with.

-"They were robbing us niggas, I was just happy to have a job, but then it got to the point when it was like: god damn, 60$/week! That was weak, so I started full time and that was only about 200$ a week. You can't live of that . But I was contempt on having a job."

1992 at the age 22, Meth got together with the cousins RZA(Robert Diggs), GZA(Gary Grice), and Ol' Dirty Bastard (Russell Tyrone Jones). He started to rhyme at RZA's place. By 1990 he wrote a track called "the Panty Rider" and became Method Man.
Two years later, RZA told all of the becoming Wu-members to come to his place with their best rhymes and 100$ each. Their first single (Protect ya' Neck) was recorded and the Wu-tang clan was born.
They released their debut 'Enter the 36:th Chamber' and started something hip hop never had seen before. With their old kungfu movie samples, nine members and their Wu-logo, they rapidly collected a great amount of fans. While everybody waited for the second album, the members started to release solo-albums.
And Method Man was first out, 1993 Meth signed for DefJam records.