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Page 1
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Meth battles with a bout of schizophrenia ...
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Page 2
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Method Man admits that the drugs, partying and 'fake love' compromised his music ...
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Page 3
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Meth applies for candidacy in hip-hop's hall of fame ...
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Photo Gallery
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 Method Man: Through The Years
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Browse Bands by Name
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 Bands Main
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By the time 1998's Tical 2000: Judgement Day came around, Meth had a different obstacle to overcome: complacency. "My head was in the clouds," he explained. "I was [like], yeah, it ain't nothing. I could do this by myself. That's the mistake a lot of [rappers] make."
After the second week of Tical 2000's sales, however, Method Man got a reality check. "You know, the hip-hop drop; they've got a name for it where an artist can sell like 200,000 and change and then the next week only get 50,000." Tical 2000: Judgement Day went from over 400,000 in its first week and then steadily downhill from there.
"I was just tricking myself," Meth said. "What was bringing it down was the drugs, the partying, the drinking, and," he pauses and looks down, "the fake love, man. [It] kept me blinded for a long time. [People were saying] 'you should be happy to be there, you're already established, you don't got to work hard.' That type of fake love."
Despite what was happening in Meth's life both personally and professionally, Tical and Tical 2000: Judgement Day have sold nearly identical, and totally respectable, figures to date: roughly 1.5 million copies each. But it's not just a numbers game to the rapper. It's about finally making the album he's never been able to.
For Tical 0: The Prequel, due out this spring on Def Jam, he got some fresh blood in the mix by passing up the usual Wu-Tang branding (though some Clan members do crop up on a couple of songs) and instead enlisting Bad Boy Records Vice President Harve Pierre to executive-produce the project. Not to worry, though, Meth won't be sporting a shiny suit any time soon. Pierre appears as less of a good-time guy than P. Diddy, as we recently saw on "Making the Band 2." His reputation for running a tight ship (as well as creating a bankable sound) was the missing link Meth needed to get the focus back into his work.
"I'm happy to be working with different people," he said. "It feels like I'm going against the grain like, 'Damn, he f---ing with Bad Boy now?' But it ain't like that. It's just Meth doing Meth."
And although Method Man has his head together this time around, what he means when he says he hasn't changed is that he's still inventing new ways of saying things, bugging out, and having fun on wax.
"I just go by ear," he said. "Everything [is] just coming out as it did, concepts. Just look at my group's track record. We were never conceptual. We were just always going in, say your verse, and get the hell out. But in this album I'm turning into a metaphoric freak."
If a multiplatinum-selling career is just the man also known as Johnny Blaze having fun, acting is his "job." With over a dozen feature films under his belt and no signs of the offers slowing down, Meth is hitting the entertainment industry from all angles. His next real-life role is that of director. He's currently working on an independently produced documentary about every male rap star's fascination: strippers. But Method Man wasn't in it for the free lap dances.
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Photo: Def Jam
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