Bone Thugs-N-Harmony’s video “Foe Tha Luv of $” is perhaps the best “in the ’hood” video ever made. It has a grainy camcorder-held feel, and bitches, rims and bling are conspicuously absent. The Brothers Bone, featuring Layzie, Bizzy, Flesh, Wish and Krayzie, are cornrowed and dressed in dull black sweatshirts and no-name shoes as they rap like a barbershop quartet at high speed. Even Eazy-E, who makes a cameo, dresses conservatively: with no jewelry, he sports a black button-down, jeans and a baseball cap as he stands on the corner straight-slinging rocks—and the crackheads look real. It’s a video about survival—not styling. Still managing to keep it real in current hip-hop’s climate of romanticizing thug life, the Grammy-winning Cleveland rap group have reunited for their first album together in six years, Thug Stories, due out this month. They’ve also just minted a deal with Interscope, with plans to release a new album before Christmas. The Scene caught up with Layzie by phone while BTNH were finishing a late night studio session in L.A. Scene: They call what you’re doing Gangsta rap. Layzie: Oh that’s what they call it? I call it realistic street rap. We ghetto reporters. We really just telling how it is in the ’hood. Some things we might make into a story—you know how you write and make things more attractive to an audience. But at the same time it’s real things going on like that. It ain’t gangsta rap—it’s real life. Scene: How does Thug Stories compare to other BTNH albums? Layzie: It’s BTNH hungry again—you know what I mean. Scene: Bizzy isn’t on Thug Stories? Layzie: No, he’s not. Scene: Is he gonna be on the Interscope album? Layzie: Bizzy-Bone is not a part of Bone Thugs-N-Harmony. He’s doing his thing. But we never know. We all family. Flesh is my brother. Wish is my cousin. Bizzy is a lifelong friend. And Krayzie is my best friend since junior high. Scene: Is Flesh N-Bone still in jail? Layzie: Yeah, he’ll be home the beginning of 2008. Scene: How did BTNH come up with the fast singing and rapping combination? You’ve spawned a lot of imitators. Layzie: Our parents sing. We grew up in a household of music, for real, around drum sets and all that. So we was duplicating New Edition and doing their steps way back then. And then after Run-DMC came out, it was the thing to rap, so we started rapping early, like 7 and 8 years old in the early ’80s. So we were mimicking Run DMC, and since we were already singers, over the years, we put the two together. We weren’t even conscious of what we were doing—that we were adding harmony into the rap—because we had been singing together so long. You know how they used to do the doo-wop?—and somebody hold the bass—somebody hold different notes. That was us. And we would have contests to see who could put the most words in a bar—that’s where the fast rapping came from—just being competitive. Scene: So when did things really start to happen career-wise? Layzie: We put out an independent album in Cleveland in ’91 called Faces of Death. We were working, doing different talent shows and trying our hand and one day we went out to L.A. One-way bus tickets. Did the homeless thing out there for like fives months. Finally met Eazy E, who signed us. Some things we had like Creepin’ on Ah Come Up (EP)—just the raps but not in the song formats; but most of our first album E. 1999 Eternal came on the spot. When we was with E we were inspired to really tell our story and describe our ghetto. Scene: What did BTNH gain from working with Eazy-E? Layzie: The main thing we learned from him was entrepreneurship. Just by seeing him be the man—the rapper and the boss, controlling the show, you know, that really sent us in the right direction. Scene: You’re the only rap group to have collaborated with Eazy, Tupac, B.I.G. and Big Pun while they were alive. But what was it like to work with Phil Collins for “Home” on your 2002 LP? Layzie: Phil Collins was the man. He was real cool, humble, down to earth. We went to Switzerland to shoot the video. He kicked it with us—really talked to us. Told us a few of his stories in the game. He was real peoples. We called him Phil-Bone for the day.
