Trap music has taken over. In little more than 10 years, it’s gone from an underground chronicle of drug dealers in abandoned houses in Atlanta to the soundtrack of suburban teenagers on their way to school.
Gucci Mane has been at the forefront of all this. Like the genre he pioneered, the rapper — born Radric Davis — has gone mainstream as well; from selling drugs in bandos to selling verses on hits, and making hits of his own.
“To me trap music is just the music I grew up listening to, the music that I’m currently making, I guess it’s hip hop music but at the same time it’s like an inner city story, the story of like the hustler,” Gucci told 1A. “But you know, now it’s not the same. A lot of people who do trap music and now you know they never dealt drugs and know anything about that life. So I can say it used to be like that, but now it’s just kind of like its own unique sound.”
Gucci has always been forthright about the truth behind his lyrics — his struggles with addiction and his more than three-year sentence in federal prison. And he chronicles this in a new book, The Autobiography of Gucci Mane.
Gucci talks about what he knows. And his life reflects some of today’s biggest issues. The War on Drugs? Check. The prison-industrial complex? Check. Addiction? Check. Gentrification (of Atlanta’s neighborhoods and Atlanta’s music)? Check.
His lyrics have yin and yang, light and darkness: the brevity of a fun night at the club and the long heaviness of depression and personal demons. No matter what, Gucci has always been one to tell his own story.
Here’s Mr. Davis, in his own words…
This interview is condensed and edited from Gucci Mane’s interview with Joshua Johnson on 1A.
What inspired you to write your story?
Well, when I was in prison. I just had a lot of time to myself, and I was reading a lot of different literature and a lot of different autobiographies like Jimi Hendrix’s autobiography, Johnny Cash and Mike Tyson and Pimp C. And I was like, I want to tell my own story. You know, because a lot of those people are other people writing their stories for them once they pass. And I’m like, I want to tell my story, my way. I want to prove with, you know, my autobiography myself. And I just felt like while I got the opportunity, why not do it?
What aspects of your experience are you trying to convey with the music that you make? What kind of pictures are you trying to paint?
Just a realistic picture more than anything. I just want to make music that people — something that you can relax to, you can be entertained to. I guess if you never seen [this] lifestyle, it can be informative in a way. But at the same time when I go make music, it’s not even like I’m trying to make trap music, or put myself in a box. I just try to make music that I like, that I feel, and I feel that when I share with people, they’ll get something out of it.
We put out on Twitter that we would be speaking to you, and @sidechickpea asked:
I have no vision of the audience. Like I want anybody — because my fan base is different. I got suburban white kids, I got college kids, I got inner city street kids, I got grown people who grew up with me, who started listening to me when they were 23. Now they’re 37, 40-something years old. So there are so many different ages and so many different walks of life that likes my music and I hope all of them get the book and get something out of it and I hope that they just see that it’s a story of being resilient.
Keep striving for greatness. If you mess up, if you fall off, just shake it off and just keep pushing. That’s just been my philosophy and my strategy my whole life. And I just hope that people hear that and think if Gucci can do it, if he can, you know, take the good with the bad and no matter what, just stay focused. That’s what I want people to get out of this.
I know a little something about our [NPR] audience and I bet there are some people who are listening right now who are fans for sure of yours, but also some people who are kind of new to your work and who might even be thinking, “This guy sold drugs, made rap music about it, made a whole bunch of money and now we’re talking about it?” Why do you think a general audience, particularly one that may not be fans of rap music, should know your story?
I feel like every person in the world is important, and everybody has a story. But I just feel like honestly, my story is fascinating.
I feel like I’m a fascinating person, and it ain’t even about just one aspect or one thing to happened in my life. If somebody judges me based off of that one thing then you know they just missing out on a great story of being a great person.
Let’s back up a little bit from before you were Gucci Mane. You were born Radric Davis. Tell us about where you are from, where you grew up.
I was originally born in a small town right outside of Birmingham called Bessemer, Alabama. I moved to Atlanta, Georgia, in 1989, when I was like 9 years old, and I grew up in East Atlanta.
In Alabama, it was my mother’s side and father’s side of the family. It was just a tight-knit community. All about family, you know. We don’t got a lot; just pool all our resources together. When I moved to Atlanta, [it was] just my mother and my brother. So we had to kind of fend for ourselves and learn a lot of different things. And I feel like both of them — both of those different dynamics were what molded me into the person that I am today.
The name Gucci Mane — where does that come from?
That’s my father’s nickname and I guess my grandparents gave him that name and I took that moniker as my rap name.
Tell us about your father.
My father was a good man. He tried hard. He was a hustler. He actually was a, he was a street guy. But he was a fascinating person. I learned a lot from him, from just watching him. His mannerisms, just the way he dealt with people.
He didn’t teach me anything bad, but a lot of the good things and bad things that he did — me, just being a child, I was impressionable. I imitated that.
What were some of the things you imitated?
Always kind of trying to read people or trying to sense when danger was coming. He always was on point, he always was watching. He was just super observant, period. I tried to just adopt this strategy. Just observing people by their language and what they say, or even what they don’t say.
In the book you talk about how some of that kind of street savvy, those street smarts played into your life in drug dealing. How did you get caught up in that way? How did you get into dealing drugs?
As a child I was just — you gotta think, I started doing this and I was in, like, 7th grade. I was just young, naïve, impressionable. At the same time, when you’re young, sometimes you make decisions that, I guess when you get older, you got hindsight. You look back at them and you ain’t proud of them. You may even feel like you even made a wrong decision, but at the time it seems like it was the right decision. So it’s just youth. Childish immaturity.
Was there ever a point at which you thought maybe that this was not the right thing for you to be doing?
Yeah. When I got arrested when I was, like, 21 and I started saying I’m going to try to be an entertainer, try to become a rapper. You know, change my life. It took me that one time to get in trouble to say, “Hey, I want to do…” So I made a decision. I don’t want to do this for the rest of my life, I eventually wanna do something else. I want to be a businessman. I want to be a record label executive. I want to be a professional recording artist.
Who were some of the big names that you saw and you thought I want to be like that?
Easy E. Project Pat. Pimp C. LL Cool J. That’s just out the top of my head.
What was it about them that you wanted to emulate?
I just was a fan of their music. I felt like they had the confidence and the swagger. You know, I respected and admired that they had a so much control. Like, control over the crowd. Control over their music. Control over their image.
Can you give us a sense of the first time that you rapped and thought to yourself: “Dang. I’m good at this. I can make a career out of this.”
It was the first time I recorded my voice. I was really self-conscious about how I sounded, so I wasn’t like, “oh this is the best stuff ever,” but after recording my first complete song by myself, and I played it for a couple of people and they were like, “wow this is a good.” That right there just, you know, solidified what I thought. Like, maybe I got a chance at his. And I kept recording until I got better and better.
As you describe it in your book, you didn’t stop dealing in the drug trade to start making rap music. They overlapped. How did you keep those straight?
I was always trying to be a rapper. That was my whole goal. So it wasn’t like I was trying to balance the two things. Anything that I did [related to dealing], the outcome was to not have to do that anymore. I knew that I wanted to be a professional rapper. I knew that I wanted to be an executive, but I just had to go through it. I had a lot of growing pains trying to get there and it was a challenge. It was an uphill battle. It was a lot of hurdles and at the same time some of the stuff that I did, you know, I’m not proud of. But I did it.
How do you write a rap song?
I don’t write it actually. I record off the top of my head.
Purely freestyle?
I wouldn’t say freestyle, but hearing the beat and brainstorming and then piecing together what I’m going to say, and then recording.
Can you take us through that process?
Before I go to the studio, I try to make sure I’m scheduled with somebody who me and them have a chemistry. They know my sound and I know what to expect from them. So once I’m hearing the beat, it’s kind like I channel it into my life, even if I’m describing something that already happened. Or, [I] might even describe how I’m feeling, or maybe something that I want to experience or a goal I want to reach.
So the beat is kind of like a canvas for me to express the things that are in my head.
I find a pocket; that’s the best way I can describe it. It’s like the beat has pockets in it. And I get the time and cadence and the rhythm and I try to put whatever I’m thinking about and whatever I want to happen I try to put it in the pocket of that cadence and that time and that beat.
How much do you rely on a good producer to help you do what you do as a lyricist?
The producer I rely on a lot. They’re hella important. As for the chorus, I write all my own music. Nobody really never has ever wrote anything for me, but sometimes, you know, I collaborate with different artists and they might bring the chorus. We might bounce ideas off each other, but the producer is the most important person. That’s all I need is a good beat and I got it from there.
I want to talk to you more about the time that you spent behind bars. You talk about not only time that was related to weapons charges, but also time that you spent just kind of trying to dry out from some of the controlled substances you were using. You describe how you got hooked on something called lean. What exactly is lean and how did you get hooked on it?
Lean is a prescription cough syrup. And I was mixing it and drinking it with soda. It started off as a recreational thing I was doing maybe early 2000s, and ended up into like a 10-year addiction.
You talk about how lean messed with your body, messed with your metabolism. There had to have been a moment in your life where you said to yourself, “I’m rich, I’m famous, I’m successful. What the heck am I doing addicted to cough syrup?”
I don’t think I really had that moment, which you’re talking about. Maybe once I was in prison and away from the drugs I could look back, then say: okay…this is some of the reasons that got me here.
But at the time, I was just so caught up in the lifestyle was doing I didn’t even blame lean. It took for me to actually get arrested that last time for me to sit back and reflect what all landed me [there]. That was one thing I had no control over was the lean. I totally let that consume a lot of my time.
Paint me a picture of that lifestyle. I think we have a stereotype of the rock and roll lifestyle, fancy cars and lots of jewelry and you describe some of that in your book. Was it the money and the power and the status that kept dragging you back in or making it hard for you to see these addictions or was it more than that?
I think it was, with me, it was just drug use. It wasn’t even power. I guess the money afforded me to consume even more drugs than I should have been taking, but the whole time, it was just like a loss of control and just overboard you know. So I won’t say it was the money, power, status. It was a drug problem.
What was the last straw for you?
Being imprisoned. The last straw was sitting in prison three or four months in, knowing that I was facing up to maybe 15 or 20 years before I got sentenced to the three years.
That was the time when I was like, I’m changing a lot of things. Not just lean — it was definitely one of the best decisions I’ve made, not to drink lean again.
I used to deal with individuals I used to do drugs with, I used to do lean with. I was like: When I get out, I can’t even go around that environment or go around this crowd because I don’t ever want to be in a situation again. I never want to go back to prison, so I was really willing to change. Whatever it took to change to ensure that never happened again.
How did the turnaround begin? What was your first step?
My first step was working out, just making a conscious decision to myself that you just try to make the next day as positive as possible. And after you string a week of them together, you try to go to a month. Once you do that, you look back on it, man, you know, you got 4 or 5 years under your belt.
How much did your fans react positively or negatively to the changes that you had gone through. I mean, part of why I think a lot of people gravitated to your work and still do is because you’re rapping from an authentic place. They know that you are speaking about that which you have lived, but you don’t live that anymore. How have your fans reacted to that?
You know, I have had more success in the last year out than I ever had. I had more hits songs in the last year than I ever had in my whole 12-year career, so they’ve embraced it because it’s authentic. It wouldn’t be authentic for me to rap about things that I don’t do, so I just rap about what’s going on. What I’ve been through, what I’m doing and what I strive to be. And they’ve been supporting me.
What about the creative process? I imagine it’s very, very different trying to write rap ,trying to be lyrical trying, to freestyle when your brain is in different states, when you are on lean versus off it. How have you adapted to try to work without those drugs in your system?
To me, I don’t know, maybe it’s easier. This is my fourth album in the last 14 months and I done did three mixtapes. I done dropped seven projects in the last 14 months. So my whole thing is, I still got a lot to say. I got so much on my mind and so much I want to share.
Can we talk a little bit about your work ethic — four albums in 14 months? I don’t know anybody who cranks out music at that rate. How are you turning out albums so fast?
I love to record and I like I said, I really got a lot on my mind. I just love to record. It’s a way for me to express myself. It’s fun to me. It’s like it’s almost like you get paid to do something that you love to do, so why wouldn’t I want to make CDs? Why wouldn’t I want to record music? I feel like I’m the dopest artist ever, so I’m always ready to go to studio and try to make another hit song.
You’ve also been doing a lot of crossover work through different genres. You’ve worked with Fifth Harmony and you have a song out now with Selena Gomez. How did that come about?
I met Selena when was filming this movie called “Spring Breakers” in, maybe, 2012 and that’s when we established a friendship from there. And once I got out, it was a honor for her to even ask me to get on a song. She sent it to me and I was like, “wow—this is a hit.” And I couldn’t wait to go in the studio.
When you contribute a verse to a song like this, when you collaborate with an artist like Selena Gomez, what is it you’re trying to add to that song? What do you see as your role?
Every time I rap, I want people to be like, wow, man. Like, damn he’s slick, or damn, it sounded good. My whole thing is that you want to keep it going. I always want people to be like I crush my verses.
Any time I get an opportunity to be on a song, I’m trying to make the coldest verse I ever wrote.
How do you feel about having this crossover appeal? Was there ever a period where you were wondering why people in that particular end of the music business, or in this demographic of the public were interested in your work?
It’s exciting more than anything. It’s exciting and it’s a honor to have somebody who has as much success as Fifth Harmony and Selena Gomez even want to do a song with you.
But at the same time, [it’s] like a challenge. Because you want to put out a verse that is to the caliber of the song they asked you to feature on.
Trap is making its way into other genres as well. What do you think it is that has attracted other artists from other genres to various styles of southern rap music? Why would Katy Perry want to put it in her single?
I just think rock and roll artists, pop artists, they’ve just always been fascinated with black music and urban culture, going way back before hip-hop.
They’ve always been been covering, remaking what all the black artists make. It’s just going on now. It’s nothing different than what’s been going on since the beginning of time.
Are there certain kinds of collaborations you will not do?
I’m open to do something on anybody who I feel like we could potentially make something that’s dope.
You paint a picture of Atlanta as this city where your music was able to flourish on local radio stations, at big events, parties, strip clubs, where people would request your music. What is it about the city that makes it fertile ground for your kind of hip hop music, for your brand of rap music?
It’s a huge urban nightlife scene in Atlanta … I haven’t seen anywhere quite like that, especially now with the hip-hop, trap music. It’s so many clubs. Then you got the AUC with all the different historically black colleges.
Spelman and so on. Morehouse and Spelman Colleges…
You know, even Clark [Atlanta University] and Georgia Tech. All these colleges are just great minds, just up and coming with some of the best photographers and DJs, artists and producers and magazine journalists.
Atlanta is changing a lot, gentrifying pretty fast. How is that affecting you and the business that you’re in?
Well, like they say, you know rap music is bigger than it ever been. It’s the biggest genre of music right now. I feel like everything that’s happened is just helping hip-hop and rap music get bigger and bigger. It’s still getting bigger.
Your next project, called Mr. Davis, comes out on October 17th. That is also your wedding day to Keyshia Ka’oir. As I understand it, it is scheduled to air on television, on BET. You talk about that momentum. You’ve talked about the life you used to live and the life you came from. You seem to be doing well now, but people backslide. They fall off the wagon all the time and, you know, the impacts of what it would mean if you fell off…what, for your fans, what would you say to them to convince them that this is for real? That the momentum is forward and you’re not sliding back to doing the things that you did in the trap? That you can do trap music without getting trapped again.
My whole thing is, I’d rather show you more than try to convince you. Just watch me.
This conversation was condensed and edited from the September 20 edition of 1A. You can listen to the full interview here.
