cream

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“Cash rules everything around me

CREAM, get the money

Dollar dollar bill, y'all

Cash rules everything around me

CREAM, get the money

Dollar dollar bill, y'all”

Rather than glorifying money and excess, Method Man asserts that money holds power. In the materialistic world we live in, those who have money have power, and those who don’t won’t get up anywhere. C.R.E.A.M. might seem like a celebration of materialism. Yet, the words of Raekwon, Method Man, and Inspectah Deck paint a complex picture of hustling as a matter of urban survival rather than ostentatious consumption.

"The rich get richer and the poor get poorer."  By far, money is the most psychologically interesting desire there is. People never admit that they want more money. Let’s face the reality: money provides freedom, which will lead to ultimate happiness. However, many, or shall I say, most of us never get the opportunity or we simply ignore the chance when it’s presented in front of us.  “Because you can't just get by no more Word up, you gotta get over, straight up and down” Inspectah Deck suggests that the power-structures are no longer horizontal in our capitalistic world. In order to succeed, one has to get over on someone else. Power is vertical: “straight up and down”.  The world is unfair. Life is not the American Dream people associate it with. The earlier you accept life’s hecticness, the shorter you have to suffer. What made Wu-Tung overcome the headaches and pain is gratitude. Through their reference to the Shaolin Land, I interpreted that they feel blessed with what they had and prepared the next generation to carry the same values.  I believe in the hustle and the grind, and that even if the system is built against me, I will hustle to prove to hose who don't want me up there. Inspectah Deck spoke with HipHopDX about his verse on “C.R.E.A.M.”, dropping insight on the track’s depth, his mentality while writing it and how he views it in retrospect. Here’s a look into the mind that helped many shorties overcome heartaches and pain for more than 20 years. (explicit language ahead)

Inspectah Deck: When I say, “Life as a shorty shouldn’t be so rough,” I’m talking about me, myself—I grew up poor, but we grew up happy as a family. We ain’t have shit, but we was always cool about not having shit at that period and time. My mom was working, doing her thing, but I looked at other cats that used to come to my house and used to come play with my toys. We only had about two or three of them shits, but these niggas had none, so they over at my house everyday. As a shorty, you might be dealing with, a father who’s a fucking career criminal, your mom’s on drugs. You ain’t got no discipline, you up all night, and you seeing shit you ain’t supposed to see. Niggas is blowing cigarette smoke in your face…weed in your face. They’re drinking and fucking, and you just a 10-year-old or 11-year-old. You get to see all that way ahead of your time. You’re seeing coke getting chopped on the table, guns and all kinds of shit at a young age. That young age is when your mind is the ripest, man. All that information is going on, and it gets sucked in. Your brain is young, and your brain is new. You catalogue all that, and that’s what you become. You become what your surrounding is. If you’re surrounded by lions, you going to move like a lion. If you surrounded by lambs, you going to move like a lamb. So kids are forced to be grown men fast. … DX: Do you still feel that living in this world is no different than living in a prison cell? Inspectah Deck: I mean, definitely. Definitely. It’s like being in a prison cell, just with different type of inmates. There’s inmates that walk around sleep with TVs, cell phones and all that shit. You have the appearance of being free. That’s all that really is. They control everything I do. I can’t do but so much. No matter what it is, you can only go to a certain extent before you put yourself on a radar for people that’s looking for mothafuckas like you. And that’s whatever you do. You put yourself on a radar when you become too successful at certain things. DX: I think one of the strongest lines is when you say, “I guess that’s not the time when I’m not depressed  / But I’m still depressed, and I ask what’s it worth?” A lot of times people want to hide that kind of vulnerability, but you talk about that. Was there a time where you felt like you were suicidal at that point? Inspectah Deck: [Laughs] Nah, man. I ain’t never been suicidal, dog. I’m too mentally strong for all that shit. DX: But when you ask, “What’s it worth?” there is a sense of hopelessness there, right? Inspectah Deck: Yeah, there is a sense of hopelessness of being that child thinking, “Life as a shorty shouldn’t be so rough.” When you’re growing up rough like that—how I was just describing—you come into a point in life where it’s like, “Damn, I’ve been arrested three or four times. I got charges on my shit, and niggas don’t want to hire me.” You going through things with your girlfriend at the time. I wasn’t really going to school, but I always felt I was a smart nigga. I was raised on the street, and for me it was like, “Damn, you wind up at a dead end any way you go, whether it’s hustling…” If you get caught up, you losing money any time you get arrested. So with the things adding up you’re like, “Damn.” You smoking, and you get high. For that temporary moment, you might think about some other shit, like, “Yo, remember when this was going down?” But then when that high is gone, you get right back into shit. If you’re depressed, you roll a blunt, and when your high is gone, you’re still depressed. I’m like, “What the fuck? What’s it worth? Why even smoke?” That’s what I mean in that line. I’m saying, “Ready to give up so I seek the old Earth.” It’s being ready to give up in the sense of, “Fuck trying to do this righteous shit and something happen. I’m ready to just go nose-dive right into the life now. I’m ready to either just become the kingpin or become the fucking clown and get taken out real quick. Either one.” At that point, you’re just thinking, “I’m about to go head-first into whatever it is I’m doing.”