“Let me get forty of those,” he said.
Chicken Talk got my buzz going again. Not only in Atlanta but through the South all the way up to the Midwest, where I developed a loyal following. Its success started getting me booked for shows in Detroit, Chicago, Pittsburgh, and every big city in Ohio. It gave me a needed boost, pushing me back on track.
Now I needed to find replacements for Cat and Jacob. Ever since that day at the trap house, Deb had begun loosely handling my business affairs and over time we became very close. She went from being Deb Antney to Auntie Deb. She had a nurturing way about her and she was protective of me during a time when I was still dealing with the aftermath of what happened in ’05.
I knew Deb didn’t know shit about the music business. I probably knew more than she did just from my dealings with Cat. But she had convinced me that she had my best interests at heart. At the time that’s what I was looking for. Someone I could trust.
We both wanted to get me out of my deal with Big Cat, and Deb claimed to know someone who could make that happen. We took a trip to New York City to meet him.
James Rosemond, better known as Jimmy Henchman, was the CEO of the artist management company Czar Entertainment. His client list included the Game, Akon, Brandy, and Salt-N-Pepa. A couple of years back he’d negotiated the terms of Mike Tyson’s fight against Lennox Lewis, one of the highest-grossing events in boxing pay-per-view history. Years later Jimmy was convicted of running a multimillion-dollar drug ring. He’s now serving life. But at the time of our business I didn’t know about any of that. I just knew his name held weight in the music business.
For a finder’s fee, Jimmy could get me a new deal with one of the major labels and figure out a way to end my obligations to Cat. To oversee that he set me up with a new lawyer, Doug Davis, the son of the legendary music executive Clive Davis.
Meanwhile Big Cat had just released Hard to Kill, which was doing well despite its CEO being locked up and my lack of promotion. But “Go Head” was killing it in the clubs, and “Stupid,” a song from Chicken Talk, was making noise too.
Two months after Hard to Kill dropped, Atlantic Records reached an agreement with Big Cat to buy out my contract. There’s a lot more to that story, but the truth is it belongs more to the people who were heavily involved in the negotiations behind the scenes. All I knew was that I would be a major-label artist on Asylum Records, a subsidiary of Atlantic. And I’d have my own imprint, So Icey Entertainment, of which I’d own 66 percent and Deb would own 33 percent. Todd Moscowitz had finally gotten the artist he’d wanted and all ties were severed with my former label. At least I thought they were.
Part of going through Jimmy to get the deal at Asylum was that I’d work with a group of producers whom Czar Entertainment set me up with for my major label debut. These producers included Reefa, the guy who did the Game’s “One Blood,” Polow da Don, and a bunch of others I was unfamiliar with. They weren’t my go-to producers. I wasn’t thrilled about the arrangement, but I viewed it as a necessary sacrifice to get the new deal done.
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.