© 2025 Connecticut Public

FCC Public Inspection Files:
WEDH · WEDN · WEDW · WEDY
WEDW-FM · WNPR · WPKT · WRLI-FM
Public Files Contact · ATSC 3.0 FAQ
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

'From Staircase to Stage': Raekwon on growing up in N.Y. and the Wu-Tang Clan

Steve Inskeep spoke to Raekwon about the new book, the difficulties of his upbringing and the trappings of success.
Sebastian Duncan
/
Courtesy of the artist
Steve Inskeep spoke to Raekwon about the new book, the difficulties of his upbringing and the trappings of success.

To hear the broadcast version of this interview, use the audio player above.

"Park Hill was a pretty nice environment — the buildings were very clean and they had doormen, intercoms in order to get in the building," recalls Raekwon, the legendary rapper best known as a core member of the canonical Wu-Tang Clan, of some early memories.

In a new memoir, From Staircase to Stage, the rapper born Corey Woods remembers watching as that relatively serene Staten Island neighborhood rapidly declined, succumbing to the wildfires of the crack-cocaine epidemic.

Steve Inskeep spoke to Raekwon about the new book, the difficulties of his upbringing and the many trappings — good and bad — of success.

"Things just started going downhill in the community — no more security guards, no more doormen, people were getting shot, dope fiends were getting strung out — all of these things started to just happen, like, overnight. The neighborhood was just going down."

As the neighborhood declined, he made it to high school — but didn't thrive, and life didn't get much easier. Racial tensions at the predominantly white high school he was sent to, and a deficit of opportunity in his own community, led him away from the classroom.

"You're realizing, 'I didn't go to school today. Okay, that's one day. Alright, one day ain't bad. One day goes to five days — it ain't that bad. It's bad, not that bad. Then one day you realize, 'I haven't been to school in 97 days.' "

As he began selling weed to make a few different ends meet, a friend he'd known from school named Robert Diggs, the RZA, had begun working on music, rapping and producing beats out of his house — a notable difference from the projects Raekwon called home at the time. With natural gifts and a surfeit of ambition, RZA's gravity drew Raekwon and a crew of friends into his orbit. What resulted ended up being one of the most revered and analyzed rap groups in history.

"We share a brotherhood that will never, ever die," Raekwon says, of both RZA and the Wu-Tang Clan, "based on the fact of what we've been through."

Copyright 2025 NPR

Corrected: December 1, 2021 at 12:00 AM EST
The web adaptation of this story originally misidentified Corey Woods as Cory Woods, and Robert Diggs as Robert Driggs.
Steve Inskeep is a host of NPR's Morning Edition, as well as NPR's morning news podcast Up First.

Federal funding is gone.

Congress has eliminated all funding for public media.

That means $2.1 million per year that Connecticut Public relied on to deliver you news, information, and entertainment programs you enjoyed is gone.

The future of public media is in your hands.

All donations are appreciated, but we ask in this moment you consider starting a monthly gift as a Sustainer to help replace what’s been lost.

SOMOS CONNECTICUT is an initiative from Connecticut Public, the state’s local NPR and PBS station, to elevate Latino stories and expand programming that uplifts and informs our Latino communities. Visit CTPublic.org/latino for more stories and resources. For updates, sign up for the SOMOS CONNECTICUT newsletter at ctpublic.org/newsletters.

SOMOS CONNECTICUT es una iniciativa de Connecticut Public, la emisora local de NPR y PBS del estado, que busca elevar nuestras historias latinas y expandir programación que alza y informa nuestras comunidades latinas locales. Visita CTPublic.org/latino para más reportajes y recursos. Para noticias, suscríbase a nuestro boletín informativo en ctpublic.org/newsletters.

Federal funding is gone.

Congress has eliminated all funding for public media.

That means $2.1 million per year that Connecticut Public relied on to deliver you news, information, and entertainment programs you enjoyed is gone.

The future of public media is in your hands.

All donations are appreciated, but we ask in this moment you consider starting a monthly gift as a Sustainer to help replace what’s been lost.