by Gucci Mane
XXI
* * *
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA V. RADRIC DAVIS
I’d been brought to Grady Hospital for psychiatric evaluation after my arrest. By the time I sobered up and the sedatives wore off I was in DeKalb County Jail. The way the staff was looking at me, I knew I must have come in there like a man possessed.
I took in my surroundings. There was something different about this room. It felt emptier than the typical DeKalb County cell. Intentionally. There were no sheets on my mattress. The blanket was so stiff. Two nurses peered into my cell and walked away.
This is the mental health floor. You’re on suicide watch. These people think you’re a psychotic lunatic.
•
“Keyshia,” I mumbled through the phone a few hours later. “I’m in jail. Can you come get me?”
“You want me to come get you after everything you said to me?”
“Babe, I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
The details of my arrest were still a blur, but I did remember that when I got arraigned I was told I had a cash bond of $130,000. That meant as soon as Keyshia got here and put my bond money up, I was getting out of here.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll come.”
But Keyshia didn’t come.
•
I didn’t sleep that night. I couldn’t. I knew what was coming.
My mind had been warning me withdrawal was on the way, but it was my body that let me know it had arrived. This was not a mental craving for lean. I was familiar with that feeling. This was dope sickness.
My body was starving for lean like it was food. Screaming for it. I was in terrible pain—stomach cramps, sweats, shakes, vomiting, and diarrhea—alone in my cell.
As I sat on the toilet trembling, breathing heavy, my insides emptying out of me, I hung my head. I closed my eyes and wondered if I’d ever felt pain anywhere close to this.
The extradition from Miami to Fulton County in ’05 You were shackled in chains on that bus for two days straight.
I remembered how I got through that. How Big Cat had seen a look of defeat on my face as I was escorted out of the FBI office. How he told me to keep my head up. I remembered how his words carried me through that bus ride and so many other hard times in the years that followed.
I remembered that as low as my lows had gotten, I always had faith in myself. That I always knew if I could get past those temporary moments, eventually I’d be up again. Jail couldn’t beat me. Lean couldn’t beat me. No situation could beat me. I was the only one who could beat me.
I lifted my head. I opened my eyes. I’d made it through another round on the toilet.
I was still in the middle of opiate withdrawal. Still exhausted and somehow wide awake. Still aching. Still sweating. Still angry. Still anxious. Still alone. But I wasn’t hopeless. I was going to get through this.
•
A few days later I’d made it through the worst of withdrawal but the shits weren’t letting up. I’d been here a few days and spent more time sitting on the toilet than I had in years. I needed to see me a doctor. Something was seriously wrong.
“What is going on with me?” I asked a nurse.
“You’ve been using an opiate for a long time, Mr. Davis,” she said bluntly. “As a result of that your metabolism has slowed considerably. You’ve been constipated. Your body has been retaining everything. Now you’re losing that weight.”
The fucking lean. That’s why my stomach had gotten so fat.
•
Tweets from September 22, 2013
11:04 a.m.
Woke up the other day out this hospital bed & I’m so embarrassed & ashamed of my behavior that was brought to my attention. (Cont)
11:05 a.m.
I just wanna man up right now & take this time to apologize to my family, friends, the industry & most of all my fans. I’m SORRY! (Cont)
11:06 a.m.
I’ve been drinking lean for 10 plus years & I must admit it has destroyed me. I wanna be the first rapper to admit (Cont)
11:08 a.m.
I’m addicted to lean & that shit ain’t no joke. I can barely remember all the things I’ve done & said. However there’s no excuse (Cont)
11:10 a.m.
I’m currently incarcerated but I will be going to rehab because I need help. I wanna thank everyone that has stood by me (Cont)
11:11 a.m.
during this difficult time. Please keep me in your prayers. #GUWOP
11:31 a.m.
I wanna personally apologize to birdman ross & drake. Dem my niggas. I 100% regret my words & actions.
11:59 a.m.
Wrote sum new hard shit can’t wait to get out dis hell hole so y’all can hear dis shit
12:04 p.m.
Keyshia Dior Kaoir I’m sorry. Please forgive me.
•
“Why the fuck haven’t you come down here and bonded me out yet?” I screamed at Keyshia through the phone. It had been nearly two weeks since my arrest and I was still in the same DeKalb County isolation cell.
Keyshia had good reason to not want to help me out. I’d gone crazy on her, first privately on the phone when she’d tried to talk me off the ledge and then on Twitter. But that wasn’t why Keyshia hadn’t come to bond me out. She’d taken every one of my phone calls since my arrest. Her phone bill was ridiculous from all my collect calls. Despite everything, she still wanted to help me. But Keyshia couldn’t get me out of jail.
I had holds. One in Fulton County from my pending assault case from March and another one in DeKalb County for a probation violation. But nobody had said anything to me about these holds since my arraignment, so I’d been sitting there waiting, thinking I was about to get out any minute now. The reason I was still so aggressive and agitated was that I hadn’t started the process of mentally adjusting to being locked down again.
That process began on September 27, two weeks after my arrest, when I was sentenced to six months in DeKalb County for violating my probation.
Three days after that I was transferred to Fulton County Jail, where my bond had been revoked from my March arrest. As part of the routine intake procedure they weighed me when I was booked at Fulton County. I couldn’t believe it when I stepped on the scale: 240 pounds. I was 265 when they weighed me at Grady Hospital. I’d lost twenty-five pounds in two and a half weeks.
•
When I was transferred back to DeKalb County later that week I was allowed to return to general population.
I now had a court date set for November, and while I still didn’t know exactly what I was facing, things weren’t looking good. This wasn’t going to be another three- or six-month situation. The six months on the probation violation I’d just received was only the beginning. They hadn’t even gotten to these new charges yet.
• Carrying a concealed weapon
• Possession of a firearm by a convicted felon
• Disorderly conduct for safety
• Possession of 1 oz. or less of marijuana
They were just getting started.
•
That was when I made a decision. As long as I was here I was going to put my energy into getting more of this weight off. It felt good dropping those twenty-five pounds but I had a long way to go. It wasn’t that I wanted to walk out of jail all brolic. That look had never appealed to me. But I did care about my appearance and I’d always fancied myself a dresser. With the way my stomach had gotten, for years I hadn’t been able to fit into a lot of the clothes I wanted to wear.
I started with a run up and down a flight of steps. It was all I could do and I was out of breath. Then I ran up and down twice. Then three times. The next day I did five. A week later I did twenty. Very quickly the routine became like another addiction to me and between that and barely eating the snack food they serve in county jail, the pounds started falling right off. I wasn’t the only one who noticed.
You looking good, Gucci.
Your skin looks
a lot better, Gucci.
You talking better, bro.
I looked different from the man in my September mug shot. And I felt different. Sharper. Stronger. More at ease. The exercise was helping me deal with stress. I wanted to push myself harder, transform myself further. When I did get out, whenever that was, I wanted to be able to go on tour and have the energy to put on a show for my fans. I wanted to be able to keep up with a hectic schedule without falling apart. I wanted to look good doing it. I wanted Keyshia to lose her mind when she came to pick me up. When that would be was out of my control, but I could control whether I was ready for that moment when it came. So I kept running up and down those steps.
•
On November 19, 2013, I was indicted by a federal grand jury on two counts of being a felon in possession of a firearm. My case had gotten picked up by the US Attorney’s office. Alongside the ATF and the Atlanta Police Department, they were going to prosecute it on a federal level as part of something they had going on called the Violent Repeat Offender Program.
“The indictment charges that on two separate occasions, this defendant, a convicted felon, threatened individuals, including the police and his attorney, with a gun,” said US Attorney Sally Quillian Yates. “This is how people get hurt, and we are committed to ensuring convicted felons not have guns.”
“When offenders such as this use firearms to threaten individuals, including law enforcement officers sworn to protect our community, ATF takes this very seriously,” added ATF Special Agent in Charge Christopher Shaefer. “ATF remains on the front line of preventing violent crime along with our law enforcement partners and will continue to pursue those who violate the law, regardless of their celebrity status.”
“The Atlanta Police Department has made it a priority to take violent repeat offenders off our city streets and see that they are held responsible for their actions. We are thankful for the cooperation with our partner agencies, especially the US Attorney’s office, in bringing Mr. Davis to justice. We cannot tolerate convicted felons ignoring the law by carrying firearms and endangering our citizens,” said Atlanta Police Chief George Turner.
This was bad. Very bad. I had two weapons charges. One from when I got arrested by the Kroger on Moreland and one from the incident the day before at my lawyer’s office. Each of those charges carried up to ten years in prison. Then I still had my open assault case in Fulton County to deal with. Between the feds and the state of Georgia I was facing thirty-five years.
Fuck.
I started doing the math. Thirty-five years meant my life would essentially be over. But what if they didn’t give me thirty-five. What if they settled for ten? Then my career would be over. And my story would be another one of wasted talent. It was time to make an example out of Gucci Mane, and I’d never been so afraid.
•
On the Friday after Thanksgiving I was transferred to the Robert A. Deyton Detention Facility in Lovejoy, Georgia. This was a holdover prison, a privately owned facility that made its money housing people awaiting the outcome of their federal cases. Most of the guys in there were Puerto Rican and a lot of them had never even been to the States before being flown out here after catching their cases. The place had a lot of Puerto Ricans and blacks fighting, but none of that ever involved me. I fucked with the Puerto Ricans and they fucked with me.
County jail was no picnic, but after a few bids I did have some familiarity with the place. In the feds I felt much more removed from the people and the world I knew. But there was one face I recognized at the Robert A. Deyton Detention Facility: Doo Dirty, my old partner from Savannah.
Doo Dirty had been here a few years now, trying to fight a twenty-year sentence he’d received after pleading guilty on drug conspiracy charges. The DEA had learned of his activities on a wiretap and after getting a few niggas to roll on him, his name was at the top of a forty-five-person indictment, accused of being behind the distribution of two hundred bricks of blow throughout the Savannah area.
I hadn’t seen Doo Dirty in years and when he found out I’d ended up in Lovejoy he tried to get himself moved into my unit. He ended up in the one adjacent to mine. He and I caught up one day, talking through the door that separated our pods. We talked old times and had a few laughs.
It was good to see him, but after that first reunion we wouldn’t speak again. Soon after I was seen talking to him I was told by someone that Doo Dirty was a rat. He’d snitched on the Mexicans he dealt with after he got pinched. I had no bad feelings toward him but his decisions made it impossible for us to reconcile our friendship. There was no way I was wearing the jacket he had on and I couldn’t let inmates think I condoned what he did, because truth is I didn’t.
Whether it’s the feds, state prison, county jail, or the drunk tank, the quickest way to endanger yourself behind bars is to get people thinking you’re a rat or are even friends with one. When you let that happen you’ve taken a very serious risk. And where I was going, the consequences of those risks were unlike anything I’d ever known.
XXII
* * *
MAVERICK
I would always get a little stir-crazy when I was locked up, but this time was especially challenging. I was in a facility an hour outside of Atlanta where I hardly knew anyone and I didn’t know how long I was going to be there. I was keeping busy with the exercise but I needed something else. I needed to find a way to be involved with the world beyond this prison. I needed my name to still be in the mix.
For all of my problems, a lack of music was not one of them. The Brick Factory was now closed. I’d had everything moved out of the studio and into a storage unit across the street. But I had hard drives full of the unreleased songs I’d made there as well as a mountain of older shit from Patchwerk and other studios. So I kept releasing tapes from behind bars, delegating the task of rifling through the archives to Sean. He and I worked together to put out new projects from what we had in the vaults. Sean worked hard—I think he put out nearly twenty-five mixtapes while I was locked up.
The releases accomplished the goal of keeping my name active. And they were bringing in some money. But none of those songs would blow up in my absence like they had in years past. Still, somehow the legend of Gucci seemed to be growing stronger by the day.
This was because one by one, all the young guns I’d taken under my wing at the Brick Factory were blowing up. My fingerprints were all over their music and they were making their reverence for me known.
Migos, whom I’d handed off to Pee and Coach, had gotten themselves a deal with Todd and Lyor at 300. Metro Boomin had gone from a freshman at Morehouse to having a platinum plaque to his name. Peewee and Dolph were doing their thing. And then there was Thug. The one I signed to Brick Squad on a whim had become the hottest up-and-coming artist in the rap game.
There was now a bidding war for Thug’s contract. He wanted to go work with Birdman and Lil Wayne. The media blew that situation up to be bigger than it was because I never had a problem with it. Me being pissed at Thug or Bird would be like Michael Vick blaming the Falcons for drafting Matt Ryan when he got locked up. At the end of the day everyone’s got to do what’s best for themselves. When all was said and done Thug signed a deal at 300 too, which I was pleased about because I knew he would be in good hands with Todd. And I was compensated for my role in his career with an amount I felt was fair. Nothing else to it.
Listen, I shined the light on Thug and he and I got to make a ton of great music together, but his talent and work ethic got him to where he’s at. Whether it was with 1017 or Cash Money or 300, I always wanted to see him go as far as he could go. I never wanted to hinder him. And if for some reason shit didn’t work out for him, I couldn’t let myself be the cause of that. The idea that Thug could have blown up but Gucci had him locked up in a contract, that didn’t sit right with me. I felt like I’d been in that situation myself.
When I was in the streets I did a lot of dirt. A lot of slimy, shameful shit. But I take pride in that
I never gypped someone in the music business. Somehow I was able to draw a line there. When someone trusted me with their career, I valued that trust and always did my best to deliver on what I told them I was going to do for them.
Even when shit got sticky I was rooting for those guys. The rap game is a business I take seriously, but I take a liking to these artists personally too. We were all basically living together at the Brick Factory. We got a lot of work done, but there was a lot of gambling and watching ball games and enjoying each other’s company too. So it’s never just business. Sometimes situations need to get figured out, but I was always rooting for Thug. I was always rooting for Migos. For Scooter, for Dolph, for Peewee. No matter what happened I was always rooting for Waka and OJ to win. I still am. That’s the truth.
Even if my lane was just to get these guys hot, make a little money together, and then let them go do their own thing elsewhere, that’s not a bad lane to be in. Because I want the next generation—the young niggas after Thug and Migos—to see the role I played in those artists’ successes and want to come rock with me too.
And they did. As I bided my time in the feds, waiting on developments on my cases, I started hearing about the next generation of kids coming up. Fetty Wap, iLoveMakonnen, 21 Savage, Kodak Black, Lil Yachty, Dreezy. I hadn’t had a hand in any of their careers nor had I ever met them, but they were out here screaming “Free Guwop,” putting out music in my honor and calling me their biggest influence in interviews.
•
Young people are searching for the truth. It’s why little kids say some of the rudest shit sometimes. Like they’ll tell somebody they’re fat or ugly. Most of the time those people are ugly as hell. The youngins just don’t know yet that they’re not supposed to say those kinds of things. As they get older they learn to put on the mask and pretend.