“If I was you, every time I rapped I’d say ‘I killed a nigga and got away with it.’?”
Listen, both Scotty and Ross ended up being cool as hell and people I consider true friends and partners in this industry. I tell those stories just to show how people were looking at me then. Like a killer. I was having encounters like that all the time.
But again, I wasn’t even thinking about any of that when I was walking out of Scotty’s mansion. All I was thinking about was this house and this driveway full of cars and that yacht out back. I knew I needed to step my game up.
XIII
* * *
THE SO ICEY BOYZ
My major-label debut with Asylum would be titled Back to the Trap House. This is ironic because the album ended up being the total opposite of what I’d done with Trap House. Going “back to the trap house” would have meant locking back in with Zay and Shawty Redd. But despite its title, this album was meant to be something else entirely.
“We’re taking you in a new direction,” I was told. “This is what’s going to bring you to that next level.”
The initial plan was to run with “Bird Flu” as the lead single. “Bird Flu” was a record Zay produced, and of the songs that made the final track listing, I felt it was one of the better ones. I liked “16 Fever” too, but that’s neither here nor there. “Bird Flu” was set to get a big push and for a minute it did. Then “Freaky Gurl” happened.
“Freaky Gurl” was a song from Hard to Kill that was inspired by my new white Hummer H2, one of the first big purchases I made with rap money. I’d recorded it a while back, after the making of Trap House but before I caught my two cases. The hook was a play on Rick James’s classic “Super Freak.”
She’s a very freaky girl, don’t bring her to mama
First you get her name, then you get her number
Then you get some brain in the front seat of the Hummer
Then you get some brain in the front seat of the Hummer
“Freaky Gurl” was not a song I’d given much thought to after recording it, so I was surprised to hear it was getting played on the radio, nearly two years after it was made.
Everything about its rise felt off to me. It wasn’t organic. When “Black Tee” and then “So Icy” started buzzing in the city, I saw the impact of those songs. The way people would respond in the club when they came on, it was undeniable. I wasn’t seeing that with “Freaky Girl” but the radio spins didn’t lie and this old song was suddenly bringing me to that “next level” the folks from Asylum kept talking about getting me to. The streets embraced me after Trap House but “Freaky Gurl” was the song that got people’s mommas aware of me. It was the “Back That Azz Up” to Juvenile’s “Ha.”
Now Asylum wanted “Freaky Gurl” but the song didn’t belong to them. Publishing rights were owned by Big Cat Records. After everything that went down in ’05, I had no interest in another squabble over the rights to a song. But behind the scenes this was a very big deal. A tug-of-war for the record ensued. Negotiations with Big Cat for the rights to “Freaky Gurl” went nowhere and the situation got even more complicated after “Pillz,” another song off Hard to Kill, started to pick up steam.
Maybe the majors didn’t know how to handle me as an artist. Even with all their muscle behind it, “Bird Flu” was being overshadowed by old songs that a small independent label out of the South were pushing. And instead of going back to the drawing board and reconsidering the approach to my upcoming album, Asylum decided the solution was to piggyback on the success of “Freaky Gurl” and “Pillz” and find a way to get them for themselves. Which they did. I rerecorded “Freaky Gurl” and the label put Ludacris and Lil’ Kim on there. “Pillz” was renamed “I Might Be” and features from the Game and Shawnna got added on.
When the time came to turn in Back to the Trap House, I submitted two different albums to Asylum.
The first one was comprised of songs I’d done with the producers recommended to me as part of my deal with Czar Entertainment. I recorded most of those during a two-day visit to New York City. The second album I turned in had a bunch of superhard songs I’d made with Zay, Shawty Redd, and Fatboi, a producer from Savannah whom I’d started working with recently. This album had the songs “My Kitchen,” “Vette Pass By,” and “Colors.” Songs that today are considered my classics. But in 2007 Asylum didn’t like them.
They said they sounded like mixtape tracks, that they wouldn’t make an impact beyond 285. They liked the album with all the other producers and the big-name features and commercial vibes. I didn’t agree but I was trusting the people overseeing this album. These were the folks who’d promised this release would make me a superstar. So I ended up going with the first one. Those songs I’d made during that two-day trip to New York would be the nucleus of Back to the Trap House.
The album wasn’t due to come out for a few months, but I didn’t have to wait until then to enjoy my success. With “Freaky Gurl” climbing the charts, I was feeling more and more like the star I wanted to be. I’d gotten the Hummer. I’d spent seventy-five thousand dollars on an iced-out Bart Simpson chain. When someone from The Simpsons complained and we had to blur out Bart in the “Freaky Gurl” videos due to creative licensing issues, I went out and got an Odie chain. But man, folks were really going crazy for that Bart chain. Every city I’d hit the club, promoters would ask me if I could wear it when I hit the stage.
?
After years of always being the young nigga in the crew, I now had a bunch of young niggas under me. OJ and I were supertight then and at some point Deb had started bringing her son Waka around. Waka was not Waka Flocka Flame then. He was not a rapper. He was just a nineteen-year-old kid whose mother was really worried about him. Waka was not much of a hustler but he was gangbangin’ hard with his boys in Clayton County. They’re known for that kind of shit up there. Like getting into huge fights in the clubs and beefing with niggas they don’t even know over little shit or nothing at all. Just crazy, wild, stupid shit. That’s what Waka was up to. Deb had already lost a son under tragic circumstances, and the way Waka was going, it was only a matter of time before he got himself killed too. So I took him under my wing, along with his older brother, Wooh, and their cousin Frenchie. The So Icey Boys.