Our brief meeting was interrupted by the flash of cameras. The media had arrived and Channel 2 Action News wanted to know what I had to say for myself.
“He’s not going to say anything, okay?” my attorney told them. “He’s a murder suspect and I’m his lawyer and I’m not going to let him say anything. Basically what happened, to make a long story short, he visited a young lady, went over to her place. She was there, he was there. At one point she opened up a door. Five guys come running in. One of them had green tape. One of them had a weapon. One of them had brass knuckles and hit him with the brass knuckles, hit him real hard. The other guy who had a weapon hit the other guy with a weapon. It became a situation where he defended himself. One of the five guys yelled ‘Shoot him,’ or something to that effect. He grabbed a gun that was nearby and opened fire. He defended himself. It was just him and a girl in there and five guys came in there to hurt him.”
“It sounds like he was set up, then?” a reporter asked.
“I talked to a detective,” my attorney told him. “The detective indicated he was set up. We have an independent witness we tried to give to the detective. The detective basically doesn’t want a whole lot more information. We have a witness, a man who saw the five men go in. A woman, the young lady whom he was with, basically said she set him up. We’re not sure of all the other facts yet.”
With that, I headed inside and turned myself in to DeKalb County police for the murder of some twenty-seven-year-old dude. They told me he was from Macon. They told me he was a rapper too. I’d never met the man or even once heard his name.
I was wearing a T-shirt with a photo of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on it. Above his image it read, “I Have a Dream.”
PART TWO
XI
* * *
DEKALB TO FULTON
“Round II”
?(written in an isolation cell in DeKalb County Jail)
I know I have my mother’s luv
I know she’s prayin’ 4 me
But all the things I took her thru
I know it’s hard 2 luv me
My older brother’s disappointed
My little brother’s scared
Been faced with trials my whole life
Yet still I’m not prepared
I always dreamed to be a rapper
Just like Big Daddy Kane
But all I got was jealousy
Since I took my daddy’s name
I once lost my sanity
With prayer I got it back
My granddad had a heart attack
And we can’t bring him back
I love my girl with all my heart
Though we both have made mistakes
Besides God no one’s perfect
No one will ever take her place
My homeboys truly miss me
I cry because I miss ’em
I know they all can feel my pain
Them being victims of this system
Now as I write this poem
Tears are rushing down my cheeks
I want to be a respected black man
Like Big Cat and Frank Ski
They say I’m not intelligent
Because I have a speech impediment
But all that is irrelevant
Because my words are heaven sent
They say that I’m a murderer
But I do not believe it
So pray tonight for Gucci Mane
And even pray for Jeezy
—by Gucci Mane
Five days later I walked out of DeKalb County Jail on a hundred-thousand-dollar cash bond. It was May 24, 2005. Trap House was in stores and it was time to promote. But nobody was interested in talking about the album.
While I was locked up, the in-house publicist at Big Cat implemented a “crisis management campaign,” issuing statements on my behalf.
“As much as I want to be celebrating my album release party rather than sitting alone in a cell where I don’t belong, I can’t feel sorry for myself because a man lost his life,” said one.
“As a God-fearing person, I never wanted to see anyone die,” read another. “I found myself in a predicament and even though there was an attack on my life, I truly never intended to hurt anyone, I was just trying to protect myself.”
I didn’t handle the questions as well upon my release, when I had to face them in person. I still hadn’t had time to process the events of that night let alone be able to discuss them with strangers.
“Ain’t too many people that got the motive to do some shit like that,” I told Mad Linx, a few weeks after everything went down, on Rap City. “I just look at it like a detective, who has the motive to do it, and this fuck nigga is the only nigga that have motive.”
“Jeezy?” Mad Linx asked.
“Yeah, straight up. I guess he’s scared of competition. I’m independent. He’s major. What the hell you beefin’ with me for? Why would you jeopardize everything you got going to beef with a nigga at an independent label? There’s something that I’m doing that he likes.”
In a lot of folks’ eyes I’d done some gangsta shit and people started rocking with me again for that. But I’d never walked around acting like I was hard. My music had always been fun because I’d always been a fun person. But now I had this reputation that I’d never sought out, something that was forced on me. And it wasn’t only that my reputation had changed, the experience changed me too. I felt different. I was doing my best to keep everything going but in reality I was shell-shocked.
But the show had to go on. Trap House’s success or failure didn’t only affect me. There was a lot on the line for a lot of people. So I carried on, hitting the road for my scheduled tour dates, doing performances in a bulletproof vest.
I knew when I walked out of DeKalb County after making bond that my newfound notoriety was going to be bad. Ultimately it was. To law enforcement and the press and the general public I would never catch a break on anything from that point on. But it wasn’t hurting the release of Trap House, which was exceeding all expectations of what an independent album could do.
Two months after I turned myself in for murder, I touched down in Miami for a performance that Cat and Jacob booked for me at the downtown club Warehouse. As soon as we pulled up and stepped out of the car, all hell broke loose.
Everyone standing outside the club—the bouncers, valet parking attendants, patrons—turned to us with automatic weapons drawn. Every single one of them. It was a scene out of a movie.
“ATF! FBI! DEA! Everybody on the ground!”
It happened so fast I didn’t have a chance to react. Before I knew it I was in the back seat of a black sedan, squeezed between four strangers. They hit the gas and sped off, without reading me my rights. Not a word was spoken. I thought I’d been kidnapped.
I realized I wasn’t when we got to Miami’s FBI headquarters minutes later. I was led to a conference room where the walls were covered with photos from huge drug busts, showcasing piles of seized bricks, guns, and money.
Two agents explained that they’d been made aware of death threats against me. Then they started asking about BMF and what I knew about the organization.