May 18, 2007 @ 12:32 pm

Live Another Day

by: Ben Detrick

Bone Thugs-N-Harmony's new album has debuted at #1 on R&B/Hip-Hop charts. Read their feature from VI

A decade ago, the quintet known as BONE THUGS-N-HARMONY was on top of the world. Then, just as quickly, they weren't. Bone is down to three (one incarcerated, one in the wind), but armed for the future with an incredible new single, a partnership with Swizz Beatz, and a cache of top collaborators on their new album. BEN DETRICK watches them survive to LIVE ANOTHER DAY. The leisurely affluence in the lobby of New York's Trump Tower Hotel is a world removed from the bedlam that once was the corner of East 99th Street and St. Claire Avenue. Back then, in their treacherous neighborhood on the east side of Cleveland, the teenagers who later became Bone Thugs-N-Harmony stiffened their collars against the cruel Lake Erie wind and hoped for dope fiends to come along. The crew is better appointed on this frigid February evening, decked in crisp Timberland hoodies and sporting soap-bar-sized diamond medallions. Their finery matches the opulence of lobby's marble and polished wood. Ignoring the expressions of curiosity on the faces of the hotel's mostly blueblood clientele, the Thugs, who've seen their share of posh hostelries during their decade-plus career, feel right at home. "This is where I'm supposed to be," jokes Charles "Wish Bone" Scruggs, as the elevator glides up from the lobby to his room. "I'm a star." And like any self-respecting celebrity, he's unimpressed by the accommodations, until a drapery is pulled back to reveal a magnificent view of Central Park and an endless expanse of skeletal, leafless trees. He and the rest of the group - Steven "Layzie Bone" Howse and Anthony "Krayzie Bone" Henderson - settle in, cracking open Swisher Sweet spines and thumbing through channels on the plasma television. MTV is airing a retrospective of Yo! MTV Raps, the groundbreaking show that aired from 1988 to 1995. Clips are shown of Busta Rhymes freestyling in Union Square, MC Hammer auditioning dancers (one of whom is Jennifer Lopez), Ed Lover doing his eponymous, seizure-like dance. "We sat on the couch with Fab 5 Freddy," says Krayzie testily. "And I bet you they don't say shit about Bone. If they do, it'll be a big shock." As expected, the program makes no mention of the Cleveland boys, and MTV is soon upgraded to a heated series of NBA 2K7 games between Layzie and Wish. Bone Thugs-N-Harmony have sold approximately 11 million albums, but they're accustomed to such dismissive treatment. Cognoscenti rarely mention the group as belonging in the pantheon of all-time greats. Others have bitten the group's style, they say, without proper credit. For much of the past five years, the group didn't even have a major-label deal. But the Bone Thugs' new album, Strength in Loyalty, and a contract with Swizz Beatz's Full Surface/Interscope Records, are what they've been waiting for - waiting a long, long time. In the early 1990s, five streetwise Cleveland kids hopped a Greyhound bus to Los Angeles after speaking on the phone with Eric "Eazy E" Wright, founding member of N.W.A and co-owner of the seminal gangster-rap label Ruthless Records. Failing to meet the jheri-curled mogul in the City of Angels, the group learned he was performing in their hometown and returned in time to successfully sway Eazy with an impromptu backstage audition. He signed them, and Bone became an unexpected phenomenon thanks to an innovative blend of high-speed rapping, reticulating melodies, and harsh subject matter that fused into a beautiful and haunting nihilism. They created songs about peddling crack to welfare recipients that were mellifluous enough to ascend the pop charts. Thanks to breakthrough songs like "The Crossroads" and "1st Of Tha Month" (both from 1995's quadruple-platinum E. 1999 Eternal), they became stars. The Thugs performed at the 1997 Grammys. They collaborated with both The Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur. Then it began to fall apart. "We got a ride in Sandusky, Ohio, called 'The Demon Drop' [at Cedar Point Amusement Park], and that's what it felt like," says Layzie, 31. "Take you on the biggest heights you can go on, and then drop you off, and then yank you back up again." Not all the hard curves were of their own making. In late February of 1995, Eazy-E checked into the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, complaining of respiratory problems. By March 26, he was dead due to complications related to HIV, the virus, as we all know, that causes AIDS. Their 1996 video for "Tha Crossroads" depicted the group reuniting with their departed mentor on a mountaintop in the afterlife. But Eazy's death marked a decidedly less spiritual crossroads in reality: Ruthless fell under the control of Tomica Woods-Wright, who became Eazy's wife at a bedside ceremony just 12 days before his death, and Eazy's fortune became the center of a flurry of lawsuits. Bone languished. "All you heard about was people fighting for the money and pieces of his estate," Wish, 32, remembers. Aside from disrupting their momentum, the group believes the nature of Eazy's death saddled them with the stigma of an illness that remains misunderstood. "The way he died, with AIDS, I think we lose a lot of respect because of that," says Wish, "To me, it should have been totally the opposite way, because people are a lot more conscious of the disease now." Chafing at their new employer, and lacking Eazy's guidance, the Bone Thugs were adrift. "When you black, young, from the ghetto, and a little bit deprived, when you get something, you gonna act a fool," Wish says. Members of Bone found themselves hurtling back towards the life they believed they'd escaped. "We was cocky, we was toting guns," says Layzie, "We was doing shit asshole-backwards, running around with pistols with no license." The arms race shuddered to an end in September 2000, when Stanley "Flesh-N-Bone" Howse, now 32, was sentenced to 11 years in California state prison for pulling an AK-47 assault rifle from a baby's crib in his Woodland Hills apartment and pointing it at a friend. The lengthy bid ran concurrently with charges that Flesh, a sometime member of the group, accumulated after showing up at a relative's house with a shotgun and causing a 90-minute standoff with the police. "He was made an example of," says Layzie, who sends monthly letters to Pleasant Valley State Prison, a facility that also houses the notorious parricidal killer Erik Menendez. "That's my brother, my dog, a nigga I go to war with any day. That shit tore me in half." Flesh-N-Bone's incarceration was a stumbling block, but his presence on Bone's most popular work was peripheral at best. Bryon "Bizzy Bone" McCane, on the other hand, was arguably the group's most recognizable member. Pale and gaunt beneath an explosion of dark curls, Bizzy possessed an angelic voice and the otherworldly presence that made Bone's flirtations with the occult more convincing than comical. A victim of a torturous upbringing that included abduction, molestation, and foster care, Bizzy exhibited erratic behavior from the moment the ink dried on their Ruthless contracts. "After we got our first check for $80,000 a piece, Bizzy was gone," says Krayzie, 33. "He was never the same again. People talked Bizzy up - he's going to be the next Michael Jackson, he's going to sell 10 million records, this and that - but [his solo album] came out and it didn't do what people said. I think that was a major blow to his ego." Last contributing to the group on 2002's Thug World Order, Bizzy has continued his erratic behavior since then. He walked out on a 2002 New York show midway through the group's set and was kicked out of the group. More recently, he made news for speaking in tongues on a Houston radio station and roaming penniless throughout Ohio. Bizzy verbally agreed to rejoin Bone for their Full Surface album, but never showed up for the studio sessions. "Coming from where we came from, it's nothing that should have [kept them] from being a part of what we're doing," Wish says of Bone's two missing members. "They just lost their mind in the middle. There's no excuse for that type of shit. Ain't nobody trying to go back. Not me, not ever." Swizz Beatz isn't planning to book the Bone Thugs any return trips to E. 99th and St. Claire - unless it's for a video shoot. "Bone is the best rap group of all time," he says, sounding more like a diehard fan than an executive pitching his newest product. "Name another rap group that's more versatile, more creative than Bone. Hell, no." Swizz first became intrigued by the idea of working with the Bone Thugs two years ago and, after the group independently released Thug Stories on Koch in 2006, he inked them to his label last fall. Despite the fact that the group last hit the Billboard Hot 100 with 1997's "If I Could Teach the World," all parties involved are convinced that Bone's double-time deliveries and weaving harmonies will resonate in a world where everyone from R. Kelly to Nelly is sing-rapping, the sound's Cleveland heritage all but forgotten. "The industry tried to take our sound and run with it," Layzie says. "There was a lot of bitterness." Krazyie - who recently took home a Grammy for "Ridin'," his 2006 collaboration with Chamillionaire - became so frustrated that he couldn't bear watching BET. "Everybody love Bone, but why don't people respect us like they love us?" he asks. "It's a slap in the face." Confident the group's sound can be updated, Swizz has amassed an army of contributors for Strength in Loyalty: Akon, on the mellifluous lead single "I Tried," Mariah Carey, Jermaine Dupri, Game, will.i.am, and even former Bone rivals Twista and Three 6 Mafia are slated to appear. Such a pronounced emphasis on guest appearances gives the project a feel both optimistic and uneasy - it's both a celebration of the group's rebirth and an opportunity for their contemporaries to pay their respects. But just because Bone Thugs were down, they're not ready to be counted out. Just before walking into the Trump Tower, Layzie had been sprawled in a chunky, label-furnished black SUV. On his cell phone, he was gently chiding one of his children, who was complaining of a stomach ache. "I heard you don't want to go to school," Layzie said gently. "That's what kids do, go to school." Then he popped the question that Bone Thugs-N-Harmony are finally ready to have people stop asking about them. "What you gonna do, sit around all day?"

Article tags: Live, Another, Day 

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