If I'm not mistaken, your real name is Corey Woods?

Oh shit. Yes sir, that is my government name; my mother gave me that name. I've never heard that name before in my whole fifteen year career.  

Is there a conflict between the private Woods and the public Raekwon?

Never a conflict. At the end of the day Raekwon is somebody who is an entertainer. Corey Woods is the business man. He's the man that has to make sure that Raekwon's business is taken off. So when I’m dealing with business, Mr. Woods is my name. But it's never a conflict. You represent who you are. Raekwon is a name that I’ve had for many years. My mum called me Ray and that name stuck with me for a long time. So it's the same person. At the end of the day its never a conflict.

So, Raekwon is your persona?  

Yeah, he has his own alter-ego. When he comes on stage to perform, he transforms into an entertainer, somebody that loves hip hop, and somebody that grew up with hip hop. I go back to hip hop when I was 15 and I loved it because it taught me certain things. It kept me from being miserable. So it's definitely somebody that I could say comes to the table and he just loves music. I’ve never had a real job before and I would never think that I would ever have a real good job because of the living circumstances that I came from. I come from the poor part where you sell drugs and that’s all you know what to do. So I had low self esteem. But hip hop always made me feel good. I’m just a product of great hip hop. So, when I had the opportunity to be inside of the game, I wanted to show and prove that I had the passion for it.

Musicians, especially in the 'indie' music scene, tend to use metaphors to express reality. In contrast you use a high degree of realism in your lyrics. Why do you do this? 

The reason is that I’ve been through so much. I talk about a lot of the stuff that I've seen and what I went through. When I joined the Wu Tang Clan, the guys knew that that was what I was going to talk about -  reality and street stuff. That helped me motivate myself towards a positive direction. That's all I knew. If I came into the game and I was a dancer then I'd probably be dancing all the time. But I came from that struggle that every time I write something it flashes me back to them times. This has made me more cinematic. I love to be cinematic with my music; it allows me to reminisce.

The Raekwon of 1995 rapped about drugs and violence and the Raekwon of 2010 did the same. In writing Only Built 4 Cuban Linx…Pt. II were you fearful that your audience would not be able to embrace a forty year old Raekwon?

I kind of figured the fans wanted that because they were anticipating it a lot. For me to be a grown forty three year old man now I wasn't really proud of talking about that stuff because that's something I came from and I don't do it any more. But at the same time I am a  movie maker. Any album I give you will have a narrative to the street life. I think that's why people love me. It's because they can say 'yo, he's underground'. That's all I am. No matter how much I talk about the street life I'm still underground. I never became mainstream until the success of the album itself blew out. But we always love rhyming about hardcore music. That's what I grew up with. I grew up with Big Daddy Kane, Rakim, Kool G Rap, Dr Dre, Run DMC, KRS ONE, A Tribe Called Quest, NWA, Biz Markie and Slick Rick. These are all my mentors. These are all the guys I loved and they all had different stories. All these guys made me who I am and I applied that to my music and to my life story. I think that people want that from me. People know that I can talk about positive things, but they want the hardcore. They say 'yo, we want that'. So I have to give them what they want because they made me who I am and I'm proud of them.

In the last few years mainstream hip hop has taken a simpler, faster, more electronic sound.  Did you release Only Built 4 Cuban Linx…Pt. II in response to this paradigm shift?

When I made Only Built 4 Cuban Linx...Pt. II, I wasn't worried about what everyone else was making. I was only worried about serving my fans. I'm loyal to my fans. I'm devoted to what they want. If they want this, I give them this. I wasn't too worried about today's music. I didn't care if I sold a lot of records. I've already done it. I'm already platinum. I just wanted to give them something that they wanted. It's one  thing to give somebody something that they can say 'you made it for us'. It's easy for me to make different albums, but this one was for the other people because they wanted this for a long time. At the end of the day I just wanted to serve the people that were there for me. I had to do it. 

In regards to the paradigm shift, 'traditionalists' such as Nas have worked with more mainstream musicians. Even RZA has crept into the film industry with music production, acting, and directing. Do you feel that these ‘traditionalists’ are selling out or is it just another medium through which hip hop is expanding its horizons? 

It's just different levels of hip hop. One thing you need to understand is that when you come from the bottom and you become successful, it’s about staying up and it’s about moving up. You only sell out when you change who you are as a person and you forget where you come from. I don’t think that they've changed. Evolution is about growing. The next step after making music will probably be making movies because I like to paint pictures. I don’t really see anything wrong with it. I think that at the end of the day artists just want to show people that they still keeping it moving with the different things that they want to accomplish. Everybody wants to accomplish other goals. We use hip hop as a platform to do other things. RZA still loves hip hop, but he wants to make scores and he wants to do movies. Hip hop influences many parts of the entertainment industry. Think about Jim Jarmusch's Ghost Dog and Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill. We just want to show our versatile style and get into other things.