The Autobiography of Gucci Mane

by Gucci Mane

  One producer I was excited to work with was Scott Storch, whom I met shortly after I got my deal with Asylum. Scott was one of the hottest producers in the game. He had just made Fat Joe’s “Make It Rain” with Lil Wayne, a huge hit. Word was Scotty was charging like a hundred thousand dollars a beat at the time, but because he really wanted to work with me he was only going to charge the label fifty thousand.

  I met Scott Storch at the famed Hit Factory studios in Miami. He was in a session with another artist when I came by so we didn’t get to any music that day. But we hit it off.

  “Gucci, you cool as hell,” he told me. “Why don’t you come over for dinner tomorrow night?”

  I’d heard Scotty lived lavish and liked to party, but I wasn’t prepared for what I saw when I pulled up to his house.

  Seventy Palm Avenue. Scotty was living in a ten-million-dollar mansion on Palm Island. Twenty thousand square feet. Nine bedrooms, seventeen baths.

  Behind the gates were his cars. A 2007 Bugatti Veyron, black, fully loaded. An ’05 Lamborghini Murciélago, white with red interior. A silver McLaren with butterfly doors. An ’05 Ferrari 575 Superamerica, the red one from the “Make It Rain” video. An Aston Martin Vanquish S. A Rolls-Royce Phantom, drop-top. Another Phantom next to it. That was the front of the house.

  To the side of the house were Scotty’s old-schools. A 1960 Bentley S2. A 1973 Jaguar XKE. I can’t remember them all. There must have been twenty foreign cars parked out there. Out back was Tiffany, his 120-foot yacht.

  This was early in my career, but to this day I haven’t really seen someone putting on the way Scotty was in that house. The guy was living like Scarface.

  Inside he had some friends over when I came in with my girl. We sparked up a blunt and got to talking. Then he introduced me to his buddies.

  “This is the guy I was telling you about!” he said excitedly. “The guy who everybody don’t like. You know, the one with the murder charge!”

  My jaw almost hit the floor. This was not the way I wanted to be introduced. I gave Scotty a look, hoping he’d realize his mistake and change the subject, but it kept going. He and his crew of yes men having their own conversation about my life while I was standing right there in front of them.

  What the fuck?

  I looked over at my girl and she looked equally taken aback, which let me know I wasn’t tripping over nothing. That was my cue to get out of there.

  “Hey, homes,” I interrupted. “I appreciate you having me over for dinner, but I’m out of here.”

  “What? What do you mean?” he said. “What’s going on?”

  He had no idea what he’d done to offend me. I later learned that there was a good chance Scotty was high as hell on the powder. I read somewhere he blew like thirty million dollars in six months on a cocaine bender for the history books. He ended up losing that mansion. Of course I didn’t know that then. I just thought the guy was lame.

  My mind was racing when I left that night and I wasn’t even thinking about what he’d said. A lot of people were saying stupid shit like that upon meeting me. This was just a bad one.

  Around the same time I met Rick Ross while I was down in Gainesville, Florida, for a show. A mutual friend of ours, a DJ by the name of Bigga Rankin, asked if I’d push back my flight home so that he could introduce us. Ross had just put out “Hustlin’ ” and was on his way to stardom. Bigga Rankin spoke highly of him.

  “He’s a smart guy, Gucci,” he told me. “You guys should meet.”

  The first thing Rick Ross said to me didn’t seem so smart.

  “If I was you, every time I rapped I’d say ‘I killed a nigga and got away with it.’ ”

  Listen, both Scotty and Ross ended up being cool as hell and people I consider true friends and partners in this industry. I tell those stories just to show how people were looking at me then. Like a killer. I was having encounters like that all the time.

  But again, I wasn’t even thinking about any of that when I was walking out of Scotty’s mansion. All I was thinking about was this house and this driveway full of cars and that yacht out back. I knew I needed to step my game up.

  XIII

  * * *

  THE SO ICEY BOYZ

  My major-label debut with Asylum would be titled Back to the Trap House. This is ironic because the album ended up being the total opposite of what I’d done with Trap House. Going “back to the trap house” would have meant locking back in with Zay and Shawty Redd. But despite its title, this album was meant to be something else entirely.

  “We’re taking you in a new direction,” I was told. “This is what’s going to bring you to that next level.”

  The initial plan was to run with “Bird Flu” as the lead single. “Bird Flu” was a record Zay produced, and of the songs that made the final track listing, I felt it was one of the better ones. I liked “16 Fever” too, but that’s neither here nor there. “Bird Flu” was set to get a big push and for a minute it did. Then “Freaky Gurl” happened.

  “Freaky Gurl” was a song from Hard to Kill that was inspired by my new white Hummer H2, one of the first big purchases I made with rap money. I’d recorded it a while back, after the making of Trap House but before I caught my two cases. The hook was a play on Rick James’s classic “Super Freak.”

  She’s a very freaky girl, don’t bring her to mama

  First you get her name, then you get her number

  Then you get some brain in the front seat of the Hummer

  Then you get some brain in the front seat of the Hummer

  “Freaky Gurl” was not a song I’d given much thought to after recording it, so I was surprised to hear it was getting played on the radio, nearly two years after it was made.

  Everything about its rise felt off to me. It wasn’t organic. When “Black Tee” and then “So Icy” started buzzing in the city, I saw the impact of those songs. The way people would respond in the club when they came on, it was undeniable. I wasn’t seeing that with “Freaky Girl” but the radio spins didn’t lie and this old song was suddenly bringing me to that “next level” the folks from Asylum kept talking about getting me to. The streets embraced me after Trap House but “Freaky Gurl” was the song that got people’s mommas aware of me. It was the “Back That Azz Up” to Juvenile’s “Ha.”

  Now Asylum wanted “Freaky Gurl” but the song didn’t belong to them. Publishing rights were owned by Big Cat Records. After everything that went down in ’05, I had no interest in another squabble over the rights to a song. But behind the scenes this was a very big deal. A tug-of-war for the record ensued. Negotiations with Big Cat for the rights to “Freaky Gurl” went nowhere and the situation got even more complicated after “Pillz,” another song off Hard to Kill, started to pick up steam.

  Maybe the majors didn’t know how to handle me as an artist. Even with all their muscle behind it, “Bird Flu” was being overshadowed by old songs that a small independent label out of the South were pushing. And instead of going back to the drawing board and reconsidering the approach to my upcoming album, Asylum decided the solution was to piggyback on the success of “Freaky Gurl” and “Pillz” and find a way to get them for themselves. Which they did. I rerecorded “Freaky Gurl” and the label put Ludacris and Lil’ Kim on there. “Pillz” was renamed “I Might Be” and features from the Game and Shawnna got added on.

  When the time came to turn in Back to the Trap House, I submitted two different albums to Asylum.

  The first one was comprised of songs I’d done with the producers recommended to me as part of my deal with Czar Entertainment. I recorded most of those during a two-day visit to New York City. The second album I turned in had a bunch of superhard songs I’d made with Zay, Shawty Redd, and Fatboi, a producer from Savannah whom I’d started working with recently. This album had the songs “My Kitchen,” “Vette Pass By,” and “Colors.” Songs that today are considered my classics. But in 2007 Asylum didn’t like them.

  They said they soun
ded like mixtape tracks, that they wouldn’t make an impact beyond 285. They liked the album with all the other producers and the big-name features and commercial vibes. I didn’t agree but I was trusting the people overseeing this album. These were the folks who’d promised this release would make me a superstar. So I ended up going with the first one. Those songs I’d made during that two-day trip to New York would be the nucleus of Back to the Trap House.

  The album wasn’t due to come out for a few months, but I didn’t have to wait until then to enjoy my success. With “Freaky Gurl” climbing the charts, I was feeling more and more like the star I wanted to be. I’d gotten the Hummer. I’d spent seventy-five thousand dollars on an iced-out Bart Simpson chain. When someone from The Simpsons complained and we had to blur out Bart in the “Freaky Gurl” videos due to creative licensing issues, I went out and got an Odie chain. But man, folks were really going crazy for that Bart chain. Every city I’d hit the club, promoters would ask me if I could wear it when I hit the stage.

  •

  After years of always being the young nigga in the crew, I now had a bunch of young niggas under me. OJ and I were supertight then and at some point Deb had started bringing her son Waka around. Waka was not Waka Flocka Flame then. He was not a rapper. He was just a nineteen-year-old kid whose mother was really worried about him. Waka was not much of a hustler but he was gangbangin’ hard with his boys in Clayton County. They’re known for that kind of shit up there. Like getting into huge fights in the clubs and beefing with niggas they don’t even know over little shit or nothing at all. Just crazy, wild, stupid shit. That’s what Waka was up to. Deb had already lost a son under tragic circumstances, and the way Waka was going, it was only a matter of time before he got himself killed too. So I took him under my wing, along with his older brother, Wooh, and their cousin Frenchie. The So Icey Boys.

  Deb purchased a big house in a subdivision of Eagle’s Landing. For a while I stayed there too. I became a part of that family. There were good times and bad times in that house, but there was definitely a lot of love. Eventually I got my own house down the street and the boys came with me. There were a lot of good times there too. The So Icey Boys clubhouse.

  Out of all ’em Waka was always the one who stood out. He wasn’t from Atlanta, so people started wondering, who is Gucci’s new goon? He started hangin’ around me so much that people identified him with me, expecting him to always be by my side. Everyone called Waka my shooter, and he was, but he was a lot more than just muscle. He and I became incredibly close. Inseparable. Like brothers.

  I remember Waka was in the studio with me while I was finishing up Back to the Trap House. I was working with Polow da Don on a song called “I Know Why.” Waka had never rapped a verse in his life, but for some reason Polow gave him a look up and down and then turned to me.

  “That dude who with you, Gucci,” he told me. “I think he could be a star.”

  “You know what, Polow?” I said. “I been thought that.”

  XIV

  * * *

  MAKING THE MACHINE

  Back to the Trap House debuted at number 57 on Billboard’s Top 200, selling fewer than thirty-two thousand copies in its first week. My major-label debut was a dud. I knew those beats were not suited to my style. I’d taken too much outside advice. I should have stood up for myself and put out the album I wanted.

  The label planned on following the “Freaky Gurl” remix with “I Know Why,” featuring Pimp C, Rich Boy, and Blaze1—the song Polow and I had been working on when he said Waka was going to be a star. But two weeks before the album came out Pimp C died. Something about a sleep apnea disorder, compounded by drinking lean.

  My own habits with the stuff had gotten bad. Over the years there had been times when I’d gone too hard with the X pills, but that had always felt recreational. With the lean I’d developed a dependence. It became something I needed. My life was moving fast and this drink helped me slow everything down. I was now on the road nearly every weekend, which meant long bus rides of smoking weed and sipping lean to pass the time. I just wasn’t as outward with my usage as a lot of other rappers were with the Styrofoam cups because I was still on probation.

  In the beginning lean had been something special, a vice I enjoyed. An indulgence. Now it was something I required to operate. My fame was at an all-time high and these pints helped me calm down and relax in situations where I would otherwise feel anxious, like a big performance or a radio interview where I knew I’d get asked about some shit I didn’t want to talk about.

  A known side effect of codeine is constipation and all the drank sitting in my stomach had given me a gut. I didn’t give a fuck. My little potbelly wasn’t stopping these beautiful women from wanting to fuck me. The lean would have me so nonchalant and relaxed, it would only make them want me more.

  After Pimp C died the label stopped pushing “I Know Why” as a single and after that the whole album fizzled out.

  Things weren’t all bad. Ever since the success of “Freaky Gurl” and “Pillz” I was getting booked for shows across the country. My fee was up to thirty thousand dollars a performance.

  In December 2007, the weekend before Back to the Trap House came out, I was in Columbus, Ohio, opening for Lil Wayne on his Best Rapper Alive tour. I had my own tour bus by this point, but for whatever reason we were in a ten-passenger Sprinter van that day when we pulled into the parking lot of the Veterans Memorial Auditorium. Wayne had two huge tour buses parked nearby.

  I hopped out of the van and was making my way toward the venue when I saw this pretty girl get off Wayne’s bus and start running toward us. She was small, no taller than five-two, but right away I saw a big personality.

  “Gucci! I always wanted to meet you,” she said. “I’m Nicki, I’m here with Young Money.”

  She told me she was a fan and had even put out her own remix to “Freaky Gurl.”

  “Why would you put a bitch from Brooklyn on there, though?” she asked, referring to Lil’ Kim. “I know you got people in Queens. You supposed to have a bitch from Queens on there.”

  For her to know my connections to Queens, she really must be a fan, I thought. This girl was cool. We exchanged numbers and I went inside to perform.

  After the show I was back on the van, telling Waka and Frenchie about the interaction. Turned out they knew of her. Nicki Minaj. They’d seen her on one of The Come Up DVDs. They thought she was rolling with this New York dude Fendi and signed to his label Dirty Money Records. Apparently she was rolling with Young Money now.

  I kept in contact with Nicki and over the next few months she started driving to Atlanta in her white BMW to work on music. Then I started flying her out, putting her up in hotels, until she eventually got a spot of her own.

  Nicki had gotten a big look from her feature on Wayne’s Da Drought 3 mixtape, but outside of that she felt like the label wasn’t taking her seriously. She wasn’t happy with her management either. So I introduced her to Deb, who ended up signing her to her management company Mizay Entertainment. Later on I put her in touch with my partner DJ Holiday, who a year later would host her Beam Me Up Scotty mixtape, Nicki’s breakthrough release.

  People think I dropped the ball not signing Nicki, but from the day we met my understanding was that her loyalty was with Young Money and Wayne. I just saw a lot of talent, enjoyed working with her, and wanted to help any way I could.

  Speaking of Wayne, all my young niggas were always bringing his new mixtapes on the tour bus. It seemed like Wayne was putting out new shit every week. I fucked with Wayne’s music but there was a part of me that didn’t like that my protégés were on my bus, vibing to another nigga’s music. They should’ve been listening to me. Except I wasn’t recording like Wayne was, so I didn’t have a whole lot of new songs to be playing on the long trips.

  The disappointment of Back to the Trap House already had me feeling like I had something to prove. So I made up my mind. I would flood the streets with music too.

>   I hit up every DJ I knew and told them I wanted to do a mixtape with them.

  EA Sportscenter with Holiday, Mr. Perfect with DJ Ace, So Icey Boy with Supastar J. Kwik, Ice Attack with Dutty Laundry, WILT CHAMBERLAIN with DJ Rell, Gucci Sosa with DJ Scream, From Zone 6 to Duval with Bigga Rankin.

  I made plans to do all these projects, which meant I needed to start recording like hell. And that’s what I did. When I wasn’t on the road I was at Zay’s house first thing in the morning. If I wasn’t at Zay’s, I was at Shawty Redd’s. If I wasn’t at Shawty’s, then I was at Patchwerk with Drumma Boy. If I wasn’t at Patchwerk, then I was at Fatboi’s. The studios switched up but one thing remained constant: I was recording nonstop.

  My decision to do all these mixtapes would change my entire approach to making music. Until that point I’d mostly written down my raps. Even when I was “freestyling” on the radio or how I did on Rap City back in ’05, it was always me reciting something I’d written.

  It was actually a few months before Back to the Trap House that I first experimented with changing things up. I was doing a mixtape called No Pad No Pencil with Supastar J. Kwik. As its title indicates, No Pad No Pencil had a bunch of freestyles on there.

  At the time I was working on it I was also shooting a documentary with Hood Affairs. I thought it’d be a dope idea to shoot me in the booth, hearing beats for the first time and just going in on them off the top. I was working with a young producer by the name of Mike Will and I told him to keep feeding beats into my headphones. Then I got after ’em . . .

  Let me tell you like . . .

  It’s just another day in the East Atlanta 6

  Just a young nigga in the hood selling bricks