Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis.

The stories about the Wu-Tang clan's Method Man are insane.

As a teenager, he won $800 on a $5 bet in a dice game.

He used those winnings to set himself up as a crack dealer on Staten Island.

He was dragged down the street by a car when a buyer stole

his product and sped off. His life was saved by a friend who pulled him out of the wrong place

at the right moment, a moment in which he literally dodged a bullet. That friend was the Rizza,

who offered Method Man a spot in the new hip-hop supergroup he was assembling,

a group that made great music, some of the most enduring hip-hop music of all time.

Unlike that clip I played for you at the top of the show, that wasn't great music.

That was a preset loop from my Melotron called

Kmart Wardrobe, MK2. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to bump and grind

by R. Kelly. And why would I play you that specific slice of 31-year prison sentence cheese, could I afford it?

Because that was the number one song in America on April 29, 1994.

And that was the day that Ernest Seon, known to Method Man as Case, was choked to death by cops on Staten Island.

A senseless tragedy that had a major ripple effect on Wu-Tang's community and home base.

On this episode, dice games, drug games, stolen product, dodged bullets,

a death on Staten Island and Wu-Tang Clan's Method Man.

I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgraceland. From up on the roof, he could see everything.

The sidewalk, the street, the car's coming and people going.

Staten Island hummed with activity.

Clifford Smith, the teenage kid that the world would later know as Method Man,

...