"Eventually we made it up there," Deck would recall in an interview with Jonn Nubian in 2019. "I remember Busta Rhymes, and Leaders of the New School, QTip and Phife Dawg being up there at that time. You had to freestyle on the Stretch and Bobbito Show and prove to the people you were ready to take on that platform."

"Our manager Mook had a Scorpion, a 2 door car and we would drive that car everywhere for radio and college promo tours," added U-God. "I still have the pair of Timberland boots I wore back then that I call ”the boots that paved the way." After we started making money I put those boots up in the closet."

S.H. Fernando, author of From the Streets of Shaolin: The Wu-Tang Saga

"I used to run into Dirty on the street a lot in the early days because I lived in Brooklyn and he was always around in the community," Fernando told SPIN earlier this year. He was always so down-to-earth and funny, which is what people loved about him. But like most people I had no idea he had a substance abuse problem. I just thought he was a unique, free-spirited individual — which he was — but, I think once fame allowed him easy access to drugs and he developed a habit it grew into a serious problem. It really happened step-by-step and didn’t have to go down like that. Anywhere along the line, he could have been saved from the eventual outcome, so he is really a cautionary tale.