by Gucci Mane
Just another nigga, just another clique
Just another girl, man you just another bitch
Just another day in the East Atlanta 6
You choosin’ me so you on the dope man dick
Yellow Corvette, that’s the dope man’s drop
Blue and white Jacob that’s the dope man’s watch
Bouldercrest Road, that’s the dope man’s block
“Dope man! Dope man! Can I please cop?”
Police tryin’ to tell the dope man “Stop”
The dope man thinkin’ “man, I gotta make a knot”
The trap kinda slow, I’mma make the trap hot
Waka Flocka Flame, tell bro to bring the chopper
I’mma throw, throw ya back, back, back to ’89
Moved to Atlanta, Georgia, I was just 9
Mountain Park Apartments, everybody on the grind
Then I moved to Sun Valley everybody had a 9
Went to school, 11, with a mothafuckin’ knife
When I was 13, I got my first stripe
Got my first stripe, it’s Gucci Mane LaFlare
Kush smokin’, Dro smokin’, put it in the air
Nigga this a Hood Affair, every hood, everywhere
When you hear this in yo car, you gon’ want to pull a chair up
Gucci Mane LaFlare, I be ridin’ in that Leer
I be so iced up, I be so kushed up
All I wanna do is be like Gucci when I grow up
All I wanna do is buy a pound and get dro’d up
All she wanna do is buy a ball and get snowed up
Tell her that I got her ’cause I know that she a shopper
Shawty want a 8-Ball, tell her call Waka
Shawty want a pound tell her Doe gotta her
I’m gonna serve her, chop her like a burger
Gucci Mane LaFlare and this track here murdered
—“East Atlanta 6” (2007)
I killed that shit! I’d just been trying to shake things up and do something different, but damn that came out hard. And I had so much fun doing it.
It wasn’t a calculated decision to switch my whole style up, but months later, with these new projects in the pipeline and deadlines to meet, freestyling proved to be a much quicker way for me to knock out songs. So that’s what I started doing and I did so relentlessly. I became a machine. I would record six or seven songs a day. Easily.
Even when I was writing raps down, my peers had trouble keeping up. That was something I’d first noticed in Zay’s basement years before. We’d start work on a song and I’d have three verses and a hook done before Zay finished the beat. When I started working with other artists and producers it was the same. I set a pace that few could match.
Now that I was freestyling, no one stood a chance of keeping up. I certainly wasn’t sitting around the studio waiting for anyone to catch up. One take. Play the next beat.
“Just track the drums and give me one sound,” I started telling producers. “That’s all I need.”
A lot of rappers need to hear beats for inspiration, but I never showed up to the studio with nothing to say. If anything I had the opposite problem. I was overflowing with ideas, which was why I was rapping on these unfinished skeleton beats, to get one batch of ideas out of my system and be able to move on to the next.
Sitting still in the studio killed me. I couldn’t do it. I always had something to get off my chest. I was always thinking about how I could phrase things in a way that would connect with folks. The producers could finish up the beats on their own time. You have no idea how many songs I made—big, well-known ones—that were nothing but a kick and a snare in my headphones when I recorded them.
My work ethic would pay off. With each mixtape I dropped, the disappointment surrounding Back to the Trap House faded away. I was getting hotter and hotter.
My mixtape run of 2008 would culminate with The Movie, with DJ Drama. Doing a Gangsta Grillz mixtape was always on my bucket list. But because of my issues with certain artists over the years I hadn’t pursued it. I had a lot of respect for Drama and I didn’t want to put him in a tough spot. Still, I always knew that we could put together something amazing.
Drama knew it too. He saw what was happening with my career. When the feds raided his studio in 2007 and he ended up in county jail for a night, niggas in there were telling him Gucci was the truth. Now every city he went to, people wanted to hear my music and he wasn’t going to be the one to stop them. And he had fallen out with Jeezy. So when Drama reached out about doing a tape I didn’t need to give it much thought. I’d been waiting on that call for years.
But before The Movie Drama and I teamed up for a mixtape called Definition of a G with Memphis rapper Yo Gotti. Definition of a G would serve as the announcement for the The Movie, setting the stage for something major to come. If Drama doing a tape with me wasn’t the nail in the coffin for his and Jeezy’s friendship, he made sure of it with a freestyle on the outro of Definition of a G where I rapped over the beat for “Put On,” a Jeezy song.
“You asked for it!” Drama boomed. “Gucci Gangsta Grillz on the way!”
I think I hit a new peak making The Movie. These were some of my craziest flows to date. I was in a special zone creatively.
Shawty hotter than a hippopotamus in the Sahara
With a rump like a rhinoceros just like Toccara
An ass like ass-trologist I need a telescope
I asked her what’s her Zodiac so I could read her horoscope
—“Bachelor Pad” (2008)
Drama did his thing on there too, sequencing the songs to put together one of my most cohesive releases. And he talked his shit throughout, sending little jabs and making The Movie a moment to remember.
You see, I used to be Sammy Jackson . . . Means I had too many snakes on my plane . . . But now, I’m Jack Nicholson . . . ’Cause I’m shinin’ on you niggas!!!
—“I’m a Star” (2008)
Unfortunately I’d miss that moment. One week before The Movie came out I went in front of a Fulton County judge for a probation violation hearing. I’d gotten arrested over the summer. After a late night I was driving back to Eagle’s Landing with a couple of girls when I hit a sobriety checkpoint. The officer said he smelled weed, which gave him probable cause to check the car. Before I knew it I was charged with possession of marijuana, DUI, and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.
I’d pissed dirty a couple of times too. So there was reason to revoke my probation at that hearing. But I couldn’t believe it when I heard my violation was that I’d only completed twenty-five of my six hundred required community service hours.
This was some bullshit. I had been doing the community service. My probation officer was this supercool white lady. She cared a lot about the kids of Atlanta and thought I could be a role model to them. So I’d been going to schools with her and talking to the young ones about staying out of trouble. We organized a shoe drive too.
What happened was her supervisor didn’t approve of the community service I’d been doing. This guy wanted me out on the highway picking up trash or something. Really what he wanted was for me to do something that would embarrass me, humble me, something that would knock me down a peg. But my probation officer had been there with me at all those schools. This was the one part of my probation that I’d been on top of. I couldn’t believe this shit.
“I promise you I’ll never do this again,” I told the judge at the hearing. “I will never come back to your courtroom again if I get just one more chance.”
He wasn’t hearing it.
“Mr. Davis, I’m going to revoke one year of your probation.”
All of those mixtapes. All the momentum I’d gotten back. It meant nothing. I was headed back to Rice Street.
XV
* * *
LEMON
The last time I was in Fulton County—before and after I got sent to the hole—I’d been placed in a segregated part of the jail because of my status as
a known rapper. But it was full of snitches and people with high-profile cases, as mine was. My placement there was at the request of my attorneys, who were convinced someone trying to make a name for themselves would target me. And they were right; I’d been targeted.
Regardless of whether it was a smart precaution, being in there was a problem. It did not sit well with me that I was this gangster rapper talking about hitting licks and moving bricks in my music, but then I was hiding with rats when I got locked up. I wanted to be treated like everyone else. So when I returned to Fulton County in the fall of 2008, I signed a waiver to be in general population.
There were daily fights, stabbings, and even a shooting during that stint. But as vicious as that place was, I never had any issues there after the incisor incident in ’05. For the most part I found that people respected me. Those who didn’t knew better than to test me. It would not have been a good idea. I was already fuming over getting locked up on some bullshit. If anyone tried to approach or handle me in any type of way, it would not have been a move that would end in their favor. If anything, niggas were doing their best to stay out of my way.
I spent my time smoking weed, writing raps, and keeping in touch with the outside world on a cell phone I’d managed to get, minding my business until I could go home. But outside the walls of Fulton County, there was shady shit going on.
•
There was this song called “Make tha Trap Say Aye” that was on my mixtape So Icey Boy. That tape dropped in April, five months before I was sent back to prison. “Make tha Trap Say Aye” was a song I’d made in Zay’s basement and gotten OJ on. It started to get a little buzz in the city over the summer.
Soon after I went to jail I started hearing the song made it to radio. This would have been great news if it weren’t for the fact that people were calling it OJ’s song. Originally, I’d had the first verse on it, but somehow now OJ did. I’d been moved to the second verse and OJ was closing things out with a new third verse. The whole dynamic of the song had changed. “Make tha Trap Say Aye” was now OJ da Juiceman featuring Gucci Mane.
The success of the song would land OJ a record deal at Asylum, which Deb facilitated. On the one hand I was happy for Juice. It wasn’t like I needed “Make tha Trap Say Aye.” I just didn’t like that he and Deb had backdoored me.
That was some bullshit. I had gotten OJ hot. Fuck the song. I promise you I didn’t care about some song. I had several of ’em going. What I cared about was that I’d been the one taking OJ on the road with me, introducing him to different markets, helping him build a fan base. Juice had never even left Georgia before he joined me on tour. I was all for him getting his chance to blow, but when it happened, I felt like I should have been a part of it.
One of the people on the outside I kept in touch with was DJ Holiday. Holiday and I had done the EA Sportscenter tape together, and as my release date neared he and I got to talking about doing another one as soon as I got out.
Holiday wanted to do a mixtape called Writing on the Wall, which I thought was lame as hell. I was sure people would clown me for naming my shit after a Destiny’s Child album. But Holiday had his mind set and he had a whole vision for the cover design.
“This is some jail shit!” he insisted. “It’ll be hard as fuck, like you were in there carving these raps into the wall!”
He talked me into it. I wasn’t thinking too hard about the title anyway. I had written hundreds of verses. I needed to get back into the studio and get things going again. Holiday told me I had songs that were killing the clubs, like “Bricks” and “Photo Shoot” and “Gucci Bandana” with Soulja Boy and Shawty Lo, but I still felt I’d wasted a lot of time being in jail.
Deb organized a homecoming party at Metronome Studios the night I got out. It was a big affair, with a whole bunch of important industry folks in attendance. The party was for everyone else, though. I was itching to work. As soon as Zay showed up I had him load up some beats to get the ball rolling.
A couple songs in, Zay waved me out of the booth. He had a request.
“Do something for me,” he said. “When I play this next one just go in. Don’t even think about a hook and don’t do any of those writtens. Let’s see what comes out.”
I had pages and pages of raps I’d written in jail, so those were the songs I started up with when I got back into the studio. I wanted to get them recorded so I could move on to new stuff. But I had no problem doing a freestyle for Zay. That was nothing. I liked an audience at the studio. A lot of rappers won’t freestyle in a packed room, but I thrived on that type of pressure. It pushed me to go harder.
I stepped back into the booth and put the headphones on. Zay played the beat and I was off to the races.
I’m starting out my day with a blunt of purp
No pancakes, just a cup of syrup
Baking soda, pot, and a silver fork
You already know it’s time to go to work
“Damn!!! That’s it!!!”
As soon as I let those four bars off, my buddies outside the booth went crazy. I lost my momentum. I looked out the window to tell Zay to start the beat over, but he’d already gotten out of his chair.
“You know you’re killin’ this right now?” he said.
Killing what? I’d only rapped four bars. I wasn’t sure what Zay was talking about, but he wasn’t alone in his thinking. We’d already made a bunch of songs and nothing had gotten a reaction close to this. Zay started up the beat again and I regained my focus and finished the freestyle.
I’m back up in the kitchen workin’ with a chicken
You get 63 grams for like $1,250
50 pounds of purp, 50 pounds of midget
As soon as it’s gone I sell another 60
My baby need some shoes, my aunty need a purse
Summer coming real soon so I need a vert
I hop up out that van with that duffle bag
And if a nigga try me I’ma bust his ass
I’m countin’ up money in my living room
Birds everywhere, I call it the chicken room
Pills in the cabinet, pounds in the den
Attic full of good, basement full of Benjamins
Two AK-47s and a blowtorch
Couple junkies knocking hard on my front porch
A couple old schools in my backyard
If I don’t know ya I’ma serve you through my burglar bars
Gucci back bitch, yeah I’m back bitch
Did you miss me or miss my raps bitch?
This that new shit, that county jail shit
That seventh-floor Rice Street straight-out-a-cell shit
You on my shit list, I’m on the Forbes list
Since I’m a rich nigga, I need a rich bitch
I got a sick wrist, it cost ’bout six bricks
I’m on that slick shit, that Zone 6 shit
When I exited the booth every person in the studio had their eyes on me, looking bewildered. Zay had goose bumps. Holiday looked like he just watched me walk on water.
It was like I’d just spit the hardest shit these people had ever heard in their lives. I loved it. The song became “First Day Out.”
Making that song is one of those moments I’ll always remember. After what happened with “Make tha Trap Say Aye” while I was locked up things were feeling kind of funny between me and Deb, OJ, and even Zay. These were supposed to be my closest allies and I was unsure of where I stood with them anymore. The strain on those relationships went on for a while with Deb and Juice but when I made “First Day Out” with Zay, it reminded me this guy was my partner that I came in the game with. We were still here. I wasn’t about to anything change that.
Later in the week I was back at Metronome working with Fatboi, and for some reason I kept thinking about this line I’d laid down the night before while I was working with Drumma Boy at Patchwerk. I was stuck on it.
Rock-star lifestyle, might don’t make it, living life high every day clique wasted
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“What you think about doing a song called ‘Wasted’?” I finally asked Fatboi.
“Wasted? Hmm. Isn’t that something white people say?”
Exactly.
I always found it funny when white people said they were getting “wasted” instead of drunk or fucked-up or whatever term that black folks used.
Fatboi saw the vision immediately. He ran with it. If we could take this suburban white slang and flip it and make it hood—that could be big. Then white America would pick it up and it’d bounce back into suburbia and we’d make this phrase hot again.
That line—Rock-star lifestyle, might don’t make it, living life high every day clique wasted—had been part of a verse the other night, but maybe it could be the hook. I started rapping it to Fatboi and he got to making a beat. By the time he laid the groundwork for it and I made a verse to go with the hook, “Wasted” was sounding good.
I called up Plies, another artist I’d kept in touch with during my time in the county. I told him I wanted him on the song. He was all for it, so Fatboi sent him the track. Five minutes later my phone rang. It was Plies.
“Gucci, this is gon’ be a number one,” he told me. “I’m ’bout to do my verse and send it right back. Go record a third verse for it, okay?”
I laughed. “Wasted” was shaping up to be a cool song, but Plies and Fatboi were a little too much with all this talk of a number one smash hit. So Fatboi and I got to work on another song. Then Plies called again.
“You do the third verse yet?” he asked impatiently. “I thought I told you this shit is out of here!”
I did the third verse and went on with my life. “Wasted” was hard and I’d definitely put it on the Writing on the Wall tape with Holiday. Beyond that I wasn’t thinking much about it.
Two months after I got out, I released Writing on the Wall. Two weeks after that I was performing at a club in Jacksonville, North Carolina, when the crowd started chanting for “Wasted.”
“Wasted, Wasted, Wasted!”
I didn’t even remember the lyrics to “Wasted.” I hadn’t recited it one time since the night I recorded it at Fatboi’s studio. But Holiday had it on his laptop and when he played it the crowd went fucking crazy. I fumbled through the performance, trying to remember how the damn song went.