Mama Wetsuit: Inside the Secret Wu-Tang Life of North Dakota's Deputy Attorney General Claire Ness
Editor’s Note: On June 11, during a press conference at the North Dakota Capitol, Deputy Attorney General Claire Ness was spotted wearing what appeared to be a Wu-Tang Clan belt buckle. The understated accessory, barely visible beneath a charcoal blazer, set off a flurry of speculation online and in legal circles.
What followed was a deep investigation—one that would uncover a forgotten alias, a string of uncredited legal interventions in the music industry, and a myth whispered in verses and case law alike.
This is the story of Mama Wetsuit.
Bismarck — Ask most North Dakotans about Claire Ness, and you’ll likely get a shrug. But ask around the Capitol—or any courtroom within a hundred miles of it—and you’ll hear something different. In Bismarck’s legal circles, she’s already a legend.
Quiet, poised, and fiercely intelligent, North Dakota’s Deputy Attorney General is often seen just behind Attorney General Drew Wrigley—offering steady, silent counsel without ever seeking the spotlight.
She’s known among Capitol insiders for her dry wit during legal briefings and her unflinching command of the law. But outside that circle, few realize just how deep her story goes.
Because beneath the reserved exterior lies a past rooted in hip-hop that’s remained buried—like a lost Wu-Tang deep cut, pressed once and passed hand to hand, known only to insiders.
She was known as Mama Wetsuit—a nickname born from her lifelong love of scuba diving and the kind of bone-dry humor that could surface at the most unexpected moments. The name was whispered backstage, scribbled in the liner notes of unreleased mixtapes, and mentioned once (and only once) in a bootleg RZA freestyle that was later pulled from LimeWire.
Some say she gave Ghostface Killah a crash course in constitutional law before a custody battle. Others recall her quietly negotiating Method Man out of a sketchy licensing deal using nothing but a sticky note.
Her name would come to mean different things to different people. But its origin, like most things with her, ran deep.
A Star is Born
Ness was born in Minot, North Dakota—a place more known for its windchill and Air Force base than its hip-hop scene. But even there, the cold seemed to produce heat. Wiz Khalifa would eventually rise from the same soil to top charts. Josh Duhamel, another Minot son, would marry Fergie of the Black Eyed Peas. Somehow, this frozen northern outpost kept brushing up against the edge of music royalty.
And Claire Ness? While others were shoveling driveways and heading to youth group, she was buried in liner notes, memorizing the legal disclaimers at the bottom of CD jackets, studying beats like case law. Even then, she was preparing—watching, absorbing, annotating the world around her.
Ness later graduated magna cum laude from Vanderbilt University with a double major in History and Biology—an unlikely combination that colleagues say gave her both analytical range and an encyclopedic recall of obscure cases. While in Tennessee, she reportedly spent weekends in Nashville—soaking in the local music scene and, according to one source, “occasionally ghostwriting legal disclaimers for unsigned artists.”
From there, she attended the University of Michigan Law School, where she wrote citations by day and absorbed mixtapes by night—sharpening her legal mind in the long shadow of the Motor City’s emerging underground hip-hop scene.
In the spring of her second year at Michigan Law, Ness was preparing for a high-stakes mock trial that pitted her against three upperclassmen and a visiting judge with a reputation for grilling students into silence. Calm and precise, she retreated to a quiet corner of the library and began drafting a personal reflection—part internal briefing, part lyrical therapy. What began as trial prep would unknowingly lay the foundation for one of rap’s most iconic verses and forever shake the music industry.
She scribbled the lines in a narrow-columned yellow legal pad, using the kind of block lettering typical of case citations. She tucked it away and moved on.
But the notepad didn’t stay hidden.
About a week later, it turned up in a cracked leather booth at Stanley Hong’s Mannia Café—a Googie-style Chinese restaurant in Detroit’s New Center neighborhood. The café, already a fixture in the underground hip-hop scene, was known for its open-mic night, The Rhythm Kitchen, where freestyles spilled onto placemats and lo mein mingled with 808s.
Ness had been there that day for lunch—just a quick break between evidence outlines and constitutional hypotheticals. When she left, the notebook stayed behind.
The story goes that the notebook exchanged hands with a regular—a hungry, unknown rapper.
That rapper? Marshall Mathers.
No one exactly knows the connection between Ness and the now infamous Eminem. Some say they bonded over shared struggle—he with his rhymes, she with her outlines. Others claim they had mutual friends in the DJ scene. A few insist she offered quiet legal advice on a licensing dispute involving one of his early demos.
Whatever the truth, the pad changed hands. But the words inside changed everything.
The original draft, reportedly titled “Pretrial Motion (Lose It),” reads:
Her palms are sweaty,
Briefcase heavy,
Client signed quick, draft’s still messy.
She’s nervous,
But on the surface calm and ready
To drop writs,
But she keeps on forgettin’
The statute she wrote down...
It continues in tight, metered language—part procedural prep, part therapeutic release. There’s no direct mention of Eminem, and Ness has never confirmed authorship. But to those who know, the resemblance is uncanny.
“That wasn’t a rap verse,” said one former Michigan Law classmate. “It was legal adrenaline. I saw her write it. I saw the look in her eyes. That wasn’t about a mic. That was about a motion to suppress.”
Eminem would go on to release Lose Yourself just a few years later, a track that would define his career and music history forever. Ness returned to her studies, graduated, and joined a high-profile law firm.
The Latham Years: A Lawyer’s Ghostface
After graduating, Ness took a high-powered job at Latham & Watkins, one of the largest firms in the world. Officially, she advised global pharmaceutical and corporate clients on regulatory compliance. But colleagues recall something different about her caseload.
“Claire wasn’t chasing billables,” said one former Latham associate. “She was resolving unresolvable royalty disputes in the hip-hop world. Off the books. Rapidly.”
Rumors persist that she was flown out to Los Angeles during a particularly tense dispute between two rival hip-hop labels and returned with a napkin settlement written in verse. Others say she had a hand in drafting the original legal structure for what would become the Wu-Tang Clan’s infamous single-copy album deal—Once Upon a Time in Shaolin.
“We didn’t know who she worked for,” said one former label executive. “But when she walked in, everyone got quiet. She’d ask one question—usually something like, ‘Does this contract account for transmedia licensing in perpetuity?’—and suddenly, grown men who’d been yelling about masters (recordings) were taking notes.”
What began as legal consulting soon evolved into something else. Ness wasn’t just settling disputes. She was shaping outcomes—aligning artists, rewriting clauses, and protecting what one producer called “the soul of the work.” She earned a reputation both as a fixer and a contractual strategist—a rare hybrid of legal mind and cultural purist.
“People give credit to the emcees. To the labels. The producers. But they don’t talk about the contracts,” said iconic producer and entrepreneur Dr. Dre, reflecting on Ness’s influence. “Without Mama Wetsuit, half the industry would’ve drowned in bad deals. The truth is—hip-hop didn’t just survive the early 2000s. It got airtight. That was her.”
The 37th Chamber
Though never officially listed among Wu-Tang’s core or affiliate members, Claire “Mama Wetsuit” Ness occupied a role few understood—but all respected. She was a core member of the group’s inner circle, referred simply as “The 37th Chamber”—a nod to the Clan’s martial-arts mythology and the belief that there was always one more level: hidden, protected, unknowable.
“Wu-Tang didn’t let outsiders in,” said someone close to the Clan. “But Mama Wetsuit wasn’t an outsider. She was... necessary.”
She didn’t perform. She didn’t record. Her name never appeared on album credits. But behind every critical release from 2004 to 2009, someone always seemed to be cleaning up the rights, protecting the samples, and securing the equity.
And when contracts went sideways, venues breached agreements, or a DJ played the wrong cut during a Clan show in Milwaukee, it was Mama Wetsuit they called.
“She didn’t solve problems with words,” one Wu-Tang associate recalled. “She solved them with presence. She’d just walk into a room and suddenly people would remember what was in the fine print.”
She traveled under aliases—C. Note, L.C. Ness, and once as “Jacque Costeu.” Always one step ahead of litigation. Always in the back row of the van. Always with a dive watch and a red-lined contract in her coat.
Her affinity for her lifelong passion of scuba diving provided her with the discipline and cool-headed disposition needed to navigate the music industry. Ness was quiet, tactical and unshakable.
“Everybody else gaspin’—she steady. Like she was built for deep water,” one Wu-Tang Clan member reportedly said.
She didn’t flinch when deals fell apart mid-tour. She didn’t blink when tempers flared over sample clearances. She just moved—fluid, neutral, unshakable.
In photos from that era—blurry Polaroids, backstage candids—she’s rarely centered. Always in the periphery sporting sunglasses completely unfazed by her surroundings.
To the Wu-Tang Clan, she was more than counsel. She was ballast.
When disputes over name rights arose, Mama Wetsuit drafted protection clauses with surgical precision. When a producer’s ex threatened to leak demos in exchange for publishing credits, she didn’t negotiate—she drafted a cease-and-desist so airtight it was later used as a case study in an NYU entertainment law seminar.
“She once filed a copyright claim in under four minutes,” said a tour manager. “That was her record. She never beat it. Didn’t have to.”
But like all legends, her presence began to fade just as the industry began shifting—first to digital, then to streaming, then to chaos. Some say she left on her own terms. Others believe she was quietly reassigned—her work complete, her mission fulfilled.
Either way, one day she was just gone.
No press release. No tweet. Just a closed file folder labeled: “37th Chamber – Final.”
Return to the Surface
Claire Ness resurfaced in North Dakota sometime around the early 2010s. No public announcement. No welcome home. She simply appeared—her name listed discreetly in government directories, her title modest, her presence unassuming.
Now Deputy Attorney General, she operates deep within the halls of the Capitol, far from the cyphers and club basements of her past life. To her colleagues, she is thoughtful, widely respected, professional, dryly funny, and—more often than not—the smartest person in the room. The kind of legal mind that doesn’t miss a word—because she already read it, annotated it, and quietly improved it.
She says little about her time on the coasts. Even less about music. But those who’ve worked beside her sometimes notice the way she reacts when someone samples the wrong track during a legislative slideshow. Or the way she reads an NDA like it’s a diss track.
She never left the game. She just went deeper.
“Every once in a while, on a quiet winter’s night,” said Attorney General Drew Wrigley, “long after everyone’s gone home, you can sometimes hear the faint beat of ‘Protect Ya Neck’ echoing through Memorial Hall. But no one ever mentions it.”
The only nod to her past, besides her subtle and weathered Wu-Tang Clan belt buckle, nestled between volumes of the North Dakota Century Code is a copy of Federal Practice and Procedure—its spine cracked, its margins dog-eared. On the inside cover, written in bold black ink:
“To Mama Wetsuit: For when the system needs bars of another kind. — The Notorious RBG”
Some say it’s a forgery. Others swear it’s real.
Either way, Ness has never commented. The book remains on the shelf—silent and steady, like its owner.
And when asked directly about it, she just smiles.
The Flickertail Times is a satirical blog. While some individuals and institutions depicted in our stories are real, the events described are fictionalized for humorous commentary and should not be taken as factual.