Rap veterans Bone Thugs-n-Harmony are best known for “Tha Crossroads,” their 1996 tribute to late mentor and label head Eazy-E (Eric Wright), but it’s the gilded sidewalks of Hollywood where they’ll soon be immortalized in the annals of pop culture history. The Cleveland-based rap group will receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at a ceremony July 8.
After 35 years in the industry, to claim that the star brings the Bone Thugs “full circle” is more than a convenient turn of phrase. It closes a loop in the group’s apocryphal origin story, when Ohio natives Bizzy Bone (Bryon Anthony McCane II), Flesh-n-Bone (Stanley Howse), Krayzie Bone (Anthony Henderson), Layzie Bone (Howse’s younger brother Steven) and Wish Bone (Charles Scruggs Jr.) scraped together enough money to buy one-way bus tickets to Los Angeles in the hopes of auditioning in person for Eazy-E. When they arrive, they discovered that the former N.W.A. frontman was at that moment on tour — in Cleveland. Although some details of their pursuit of fame are true, Flesh-n-Bone says that the actual events that led to their distribution deal with E’s Ruthless Records are less mythic than a couple of ships (or buses) passing in the night.
