Layzie Bone is in slo-mo mode. He's handed a cellular. Observing the affable amigo is like watching a youthful, Black Hugh Hefner sans the robe and pipe; he's permanently in the lounging zone. Lay talks with the vocal pitch of Snoop Doggy Dogg. He gets off the phone and checks one of the two pagers he keeps--one for business and the other for well, "other shit."
Wish returns to check up on his six-month-old son Charles III. The proud poppa playfully dangles a stripped chicken bone above his bundle of joy who's sporting an official gold Bone necklace. In between Wish's gritted teeth hangs an impressive stick of sticky bud. Layzie beckons for the herb which he then hands to a homie carrying a pack of Phillies.
To their credit, these high rollers come off real down-to-earth. When I ask if people treat them differently now that they've blown up, Lay can't help but almost choke on the blunt he's takin' pulls from.
"Shit, befo' a nigga would be livin on the streets, hungry as fuck, muthafuckas still lock you out. Now a nigga got cheese, you can go to anybody's house and get you a hot-ass good meal." He smiles contentedly. Damn, it feel good to see people up on it.
Wish responds immediately. "Hell naw! I ain't even gonna muthafuckin' lie. A nigga tried to keep it realer than a muthafucka . But there's hatas out there." Ah, the inevitable PHDers."It's gonna be one clown in the muthafuckin' club wantin' to start some dumb shit," wish says sourly. "We ain't no bitches. So we ain't backin' down."
Before the underground Faces of Death joint (a self-release
album from the early '90's), the fabled Cleveland-to-Compton-to-Cleveland
connection with Eazy-E, the 1994 quadruple platinum Creepin' On Ah Come
Up EP, the 1995 quintuple-platinium Grammy Award-garnering single "Tha
Crossroads", and last year's platinum Mo' Thug Family Scriptures
compilation album, there were the Band Aid Boys.
"It wuz me, Krayzie, Flesh, and nigga named
K Chill, "says Layzie Bone, recounting the true origins of Bone Thugs-N-Harmony.
"It wuz in junior high, like in '87. And after junior high everybody went
to different high schools. It wuz 90' when I got caught sellin' drugs and
shit and my judge had sent me to Texas to live with my uncle and aunt,
supposedly to change my life. I wuz 14 when I got caught. It wuz in Texas
or
"So I went down there and met a dude named Alzie Roundtree. He wuz from some shit called Bone. He made up the shit. I got all that shit from him. And it wuz some thug shit. He wuz from Inglewood, California. I wuz from Cleveland, Ohio. And we wuz like, in a suburban area. We wuz really the only two lil' roughnecks around. He had wanted to rap, and by me a rapper he wuz startin' to get into all that rappin' shit. Cuz he wuz from LA, I guess he wuz on some gang shit the way he did it. But I wuz thinkin' of it more as rap. His name Wish Bone at the time and my name wuz Bizzy..."
"...Wait, hold up. How did you go from being Bizzy to Layzie?"
"Cuz Bizzy wuz busier than me." He smiles.
"But then a year and a half later I had went home becuz my grandmother passed. I wuz supposed to go right back to (to Texas), but I never did. And Krayzie Bone wuz still on the set. He had his group jumpin' in Cleveland. They wuz the O.G.C--The Organized Criminals--or something like that. Once me and Krayzie hooked back up we wuz like, 'Whut's up? What we gonna do? So we started writing our raps again. We then converted to Bone Enterprise. That's when I changed my name to Layzie. he changed his name to Krayzie.
