Fly International Luxurious Art will be your seventh album, what will this project say about you artistically?

Raekwon: Fly International Luxurious Art – it just tell you I’m a rich glass of wine man that anybody loves the taste. I’m fly, internationally known and luxurious. People are going to hear it and see my growth, they are going to say to themselves “for a 20-year veteran, he still got it.” It’s about giving people a lifestyle album that’s dope. My music is intelligently made and crafted.

With so many years under your belt, what has been your biggest lesson?

Raekwon:Being able to learn the business more, get better with my craft, my art, build better relationships with brands and just as an artist sometimes we don’t realize our power until we have to go the stretch of a long distance, until we are like “oh shit I’m somebody in this shit.” It might have took me 10 years to go from rapper to CEO because I was caught up in so much in the culture of doing my job. Now it’s a different job because I still gotta do that, but now I’m on the CEO position. I run my on label, Ice H20 Records, we got artist that I’m working with. I’m getting things done now more independently than when I was with a label. I have a lot of people that love to work with me now.

How do you scope out the artists you take on to your label?

Raekwon: I study them and I study how much history they know about what they’re into. You can just tell sometimes when you meet them, body language tells everything. When you look in the person’s eyes, you can just tell what you see if he about that life when it come to being an artist, entertainer, highly respected in the game.

What about these younger artists – what’s it like when you meet them?

Raekwon: The other day I met Joey Bada$$ for the first time. We had an event together at the All Star weekend, and he came and dapped me and I dapped him. We talked about working together. I think that once we can relate to each other more, as guys in the game that done so much work, it conditions us to be humble to know how important it is to get to that level. I look at myself when I was in his shoes, that’s how I felt when [Big Daddy] Kane at Shay 45 said “yo you a legend, don’t ever let anybody tell you aint in the books” and that’s all he said and that gave me peace. At the end of the day just be humble, respect the craft, appreciate your fans, just do your job it’s still a job.

Being able to use sources like GoFundMe or Fanbacked to create projects, what inspired your decision to go that route?

Raekwon: It’s not so much about the funding, we can get that from anywhere. It’s about being charitable to the movement, us watching each others back, giving me the opportunity to bring in my fans instead of sitting in a room with an executive. I’d prefer to sit with my fans and hear where they coming from. If this is something you care about and you want to be attached to it, you might have $5 but you’ll have a million dollar thought. I wanted to have the fans attached – y’all know what it takes, y’all know what we looking for, you know the way I think, what I like. A lot of artists don’t take their fans to be so important to their lives and for me, 20 years B…what the fuck? They still checking for you? It’s hard not to be attached to them. I’m doing this for the fans.