HIGH TIMES INTERVIEW: BONE THUGS-N-HARMONY

Few rappers have made marijuana as central a theme in their work as Bone Thugs-n-Harmony, and as you can see from this interview, they put their ganja where their mouth is. Formed in the early ’90s, Bone Thugs-n-Harmony exploded after they auditioned for NWA’s Eazy-E and put out Creepin On ah Come Up in 1994 for Ruthless Records. Thirty-five million record sales later, Layzie Bone, Krayzie Bone and Wish Bone dropped by HIGH TIMES while doing publicity for their new album, Strength & Loyalty [Interscope]. Also look out for their movie, I Tried, on cable and DVD.

When did you discover weed?

KRAYZIE BONE: This dude right here, man. [points at Layzie Bone] He brought some home from school one day.

LAYZIE BONE: My Ken Dog little brother was in the bathroom smoking weed, and I walked in. He had a bag with about 30 joints. This is before we started smoking blunts. He gave me a joint. I took it home. Smoked that motherfucker on the back steps.

KRAYZIE BONE: We was stuck on those steps for hours just laughing. I was like, “Dude, I’m seeing purple stuff!” Like actually, you know what I’m sayin’? We was gone. And from that time on, I was like, “Man, this is my new thing.”

What year was that?

LAYZIE BONE: ’91. I was in the 11th grade. I had tried to smoke weed before that, but that was the first time I got high.

KRAYZIE BONE: I did, too. First time I tried to smoke it, I actually thought it was dumb. We all did. Why you gonna spend all that money when you can buy a 40-ounce for $2 and be roasted? Then, when we learned how to smoke it, we were like, “Wait a minute, this is a whole new thing— this is enhancing the music and everything.”

Eazy-E was a big smoker too, wasn’t he?

KRAYZIE BONE: He had a whole house that was just his weed stash. All kinds of weed you could think of, he had in this house. It was a literal weed house.

LAYZIE BONE: Eazy-E used to roll his weed up in licorice papers and stuff them around the brim of his hat. And he kept his money right here in his left sock. When he left, it was the hat and the sock.