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Monday, January 27, 2003

By Ed Masley, Post-Gazette Pop Music Critic

In 1994, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony broke out of Cleveland with a debut single, "Thuggish Ruggish Bone," that sold more than 500,000 copies while topping the year-end list of most-requested videos at the Box, a cable music channel.

	Bone Thugs-N-Harmony: Cool cats from Cleveland. Bone Thugs-N-Harmony With: Twiztid. Where: Metropol in the Strip District. When: 7:30 p.m. today. Tickets: $22.50 advance, $25 at door; 412-323-1919.

Eight years, a Grammy and millions of album sales later, Layzie Bone is quick to credit Cleveland for shaping the man he is today.

"The way I think, the way I act, my whole demeanor, I'm a Cleveland cat," he says.

But as a launching pad for Grammy-winning hip-hop acts, he wouldn't necessarily recommend it.

"Miserably hard," in fact, is how he recalls the experience of trying to launch a career out of Cleveland.

"Cleveland is a cutthroat town," he says, "a whole bunch of small-timers trying to get on top. And if you know our history, you know we had to leave Cleveland to actually make it. We didn't make it in Cleveland. We made it in L.A. But we give all our props to Cleveland, though, 'cause Cleveland raised us."

In November 1993, the group bought one-way Greyhound tickets out of Cleveland, and the rest is hip-hop history.

As Layzie recalls, "We was homeless in L.A. for, like, three months. It was one of the craziest times of my life -- out there, being 18 years old, fresh out of school, trying to do something. It was just a miracle that it paid off for us. Thank God."

And Eazy-E, of course.

The late, great rapper signed them to his Ruthless Records label.

"We went there to rap to anybody that was gonna listen," Layzie says. "He was just the one that returned our call."

And since he was out of town when he did return their call, the group auditioned right there through the phone.

When Bone Thugs-N-Harmony found out Eazy-E was going to be in Cleveland, "we hurried up and went back to Cleveland and met him there and reminded him that we was the cats on the phone and from there, it's been history."

As the group took off, their harmonized raps were dubbed the Cleveland sound.

But Layzie wouldn't call it that.

"I think we just real, real, real cool cats and creative people and they had to label it something," he says, "so they labeled it anything they could. But it's just from being cool and humble and creative people, man."

Even so, he didn't expect the group's career to take off as fast as it did.

"I was so naive to everything," he says. "I was just happy to be rapping at the time. So when they started tellin' us sales and all the phenomenal things that was happening, I didn't know how to take it at the time. It wasn't until years later that I appreciated everything that we achieved."

Except the Grammy.

He appreciated that right away.

"When we got the Grammy," he says, "we thought we most definitely for sure really made it then. We knew that was the highest honor in the music industry, to get a Grammy."

The group's new album, "Thug World Order," follows a flurry of solo albums -- by Bizzy Bone, Krayzie Bone and Flesh-N-Bone. Layzie's project, "Mo' Thugs IV, The Movement," drops in May, preceded by a single with Felecia, "All Life Long."

The time away, says Layzie, was "a beautiful thing for us 'cause when we went into the studio it was just so easy. I think it just made us all mature as artists. ... Coming off our solo albums, we was all in the mood for a group album, so we knew exactly what we wanted to do. We basically had everything in our heads already thought out and just went into the studio and started banging it out."

They had to bang it out without his older brother, Flesh-N-Bone, though. He's in jail, serving an 11-year sentence for resisting arrest and illegal weapons possession.

"The most difficult part," says Layzie, "was not that he wasn't there to be on the songs, but that he wasn't there to share his spirit with us, you know what I mean? We missed his whole vibe. Everybody [is] on their toes when Flesh come around 'cause he's so hyper and lovable like that. That's what we missed. That was a challenge. That and blocking out that I had a brother in jail. That was the hardest part, accepting that he was really locked up."

His brother's doing fine, though, Lazyie is pleased to report. "I actually got a letter from him over the holidays to let me know that his spirit and mind are in a beautiful place right now. He might be locked up, but he ain't incarcerated in the mind, so that's all good."

And rest assured, they will record together when he's out.

"We gonna do that regardless," Layzie says. "That's my older brother, so no doubt about that."