Line for line, line for line — this is how he gets down with the rhyme. I spoke with Wu Tang Clan member and venerated solo artist Raekwon the Chef about his new-found love for Toronto, his long-awaited September 8 release of Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... Pt. 2 on EMI and the meanings behind his food-based metaphors. He dropped no hints that he was planning to get in a fracas with Joe Budden, as his crew allegedly did last Saturday during a Rock The Bells tour stop. In fact, he was enthusiastic and friendly; if I were arrested for murder and he had a law degree, I’d hire him as an attorney. We might not win the case, but he’d have some fun, roundabout explanations for my misbehaviour.

So you’re coming to Toronto, but you were just in Toronto. Do you like it here?
It’s lovely. I had a show two hours outside of Toronto, but Caribana weekend was going on, so we managed to get there and experience the extravaganza. The West Indian culture really influenced my background growing up, so to really be able to be among the people at that traditional festival was a lovely time. I didn’t know that Toronto had that many West Indian people! I know it all started from Trinidad, but that was the biggest festival I’d seen in a long time. I’m definitely going back next year. I was on a float too, so a lot of people were seeing me up there, really embracing me — all colours, all the flavours of life. It felt beautiful, for real.

That’s another thing that was bugging me out — it didn’t feel like Canada. I’ve been going to Canada since way back, but [Toronto] felt so much like a twin brother to New York. The only thing that’s stopping it is the customs officers — that Britain-style shit. One thing about Toronto is that everywhere you go, parts of the city resemble another city. I was just sucking up all the good vibes, all the good energy. I’m thinking of moving there.

Did you eat any jerk chicken while you were here?
I eat jerk chicken every fuckin’ day.

You talk about food a lot in your lyrics.
It’s because I’m the Chef, man. It’s just slang, man, it’s just me making lyrics interesting. I let my mind just go and make equations and shit.

I like the song “Rushing Elephants,” on the Wu-Tang Clan album 8 Diagrams, where you say you eat “veggies for breakfast.” Is that true?
“Veggies for breakfast,” it’s like, “We like weed.” It’s something that you gotta have when you set up your day. For us, at least. You notice some shit that I ain’t even pay attention to. One thing about [Wu-Tang] is, we’ll laugh about that shit later on. We have things that we love, our passions, and we’ll put them in our rhymes. A lot of the time me and my mans will be talking about sports shit in our songs, [as far back as Ghostface’s] Ironman album’s “Assasination Day,” talkin’ ’bout [former NFL star] Terry Bradshaw. We love sports, we love food, we love clothes — we try to relate things we love to things that the people love too.

How do you write? Do you freestyle it or put pen to paper?
I’m a pen-and-paper dude. I wish I could do it off the dome, but I never really did it that way. I prefer to write. With me, my energy comes from the production. The beat becomes my homeboy. I’m already a master at lyrical gunplay, you know what I mean, so it’s all just about vibing from the production. I walk around with a Uzi everyday, so I’m always loving to be challenged by hot production. How the production is, is basically what I become. That’s what Cuban Linx 2 is gonna be — hot production. The first album had beats I’d vibed to for years before we even put it out, and that’s what I was aiming for on the sequel, because it’s five years in the making. That classic shit.