Bone Thugs-n-Harmony Feel the ‘Respect and Love’ With Cleveland Street Naming

Despite the tumultuous climate of the area, it was on E. 99th and St. Clair where Bone Thugs sharpened their rap skills and discovered who they were as people. 

“Everything really did birth who we really were in that era,” he says. “We had started rapping together back in junior high school, then it carried over to high school until we got out of school. When we get out of school that’s when all of us were on 99th. We was definitely focused on our music around the time we was on 99th for sure.” 

After a fruitless trip to Los Angeles in an attempt to track down Eazy-E, the N.W.A co-founder wound up connecting with the group in Cleveland while on tour. He liked what he heard and quickly signed them to Ruthless Records. In 1994, Bone Thugs released the Creepin’ On Ah Come Up EP and made plans to shoot a video in their hometown. But even Eazy-E didn’t know what he was in for when touching down in the Ohio metropolis. Being from Compton, Eazy was immersed in daily street life, but it was nothing like Cleveland. 

“Our area was pretty dangerous; it was the middle of the hood,” Krayzie explains. “When we went back to shoot the video for ‘Thuggish Ruggish Bone,’ we had actually flew back with Eazy. We was coming to the airport and a young lady who worked there noticed him and got excited, like ‘Oh my god! Eazy-E is in Cleveland.’ She was like, ‘What are you doing here?’ And he told her we had to shoot the video for Bone Thugs-n-Harmony. And she went, ‘Oh, yes, that’s right. They from Cleveland, Ohio.’ She was like, ‘Oh wow, where are you shooting it? I want to come to the video shoot.’ He was like, ‘We’ll be at 99th and St. Clair.’ She was like, ‘Oh, hell no. I ain’t going down there.’ Eazy looked at us like, ‘Man, where are y’all trying to take me?’ We were like, ‘Eazy, you’re going to the hood.’

“A lot of people don’t know this, but the day we were shooting ‘Thuggish Ruggish Bone,’ there was a shooting on set. Six people were shot. Nobody died, but a couple people we knew got shot. But the video shoot was handled the wrong way. Cleveland is somewhat of a small city and people weren’t used to having celebrities come down and be in their neighborhood, especially somebody like Eazy-E. He and N.W.A were huge in our neighborhood. So when they heard Eazy was going to be there, it’s like the entire city of Cleveland decided to come to our hood, and it was going to be nothing but problems.”