Flesh-N-Bone

Flesh-N-Bone ranked as the most volatile figure inside Cleveland’s turbulent rap outfit Bone Thugs-N-Harmony and repeatedly battled legal setbacks that stalled his uneven solo output. As the sibling of Layzie Bone—the group’s central architect—he shared in the rapid fame that arrived with the 1994 album Creepin on Ah Come Up and its 1995 successor E 1999 Eternal. Those multi-platinum releases and the Grammy that followed opened the door for his first solo project, T.H.U.G.S.: Trues Humbly United Gatherin' Souls, on Def Jam, yet the record underperformed commercially and drew lukewarm notices. In July 1997, as Bone Thugs-N-Harmony (without Flesh) dropped the double album Art of War, police raided his home, seized a stolen firearm and explosives, and charged him with assault and battery plus possession of an explosive device; he also checked into drug rehabilitation in Los Angeles. A year afterward he served jail time stemming from probation breaches tied to the earlier case. Although conversations about a follow-up tentatively titled Book of Thugs surfaced in mid-1998, the project finally reached stores in October 2000 under the new title 5th Dog Let Loose on Koch. Weeks before its arrival, in September, he received a ten-year sentence for threatening an acquaintance with an AK-47 in December 1999, his latest clash with authorities.