Unfortunately I’d miss that moment. One week before The Movie came out I went in front of a Fulton County judge for a probation violation hearing. I’d gotten arrested over the summer. After a late night I was driving back to Eagle’s Landing with a couple of girls when I hit a sobriety checkpoint. The officer said he smelled weed, which gave him probable cause to check the car. Before I knew it I was charged with possession of marijuana, DUI, and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.
I’d pissed dirty a couple of times too. So there was reason to revoke my probation at that hearing. But I couldn’t believe it when I heard my violation was that I’d only completed twenty-five of my six hundred required community service hours.
This was some bullshit. I had been doing the community service. My probation officer was this supercool white lady. She cared a lot about the kids of Atlanta and thought I could be a role model to them. So I’d been going to schools with her and talking to the young ones about staying out of trouble. We organized a shoe drive too.
What happened was her supervisor didn’t approve of the community service I’d been doing. This guy wanted me out on the highway picking up trash or something. Really what he wanted was for me to do something that would embarrass me, humble me, something that would knock me down a peg. But my probation officer had been there with me at all those schools. This was the one part of my probation that I’d been on top of. I couldn’t believe this shit.
“I promise you I’ll never do this again,” I told the judge at the hearing. “I will never come back to your courtroom again if I get just one more chance.”
He wasn’t hearing it.
“Mr. Davis, I’m going to revoke one year of your probation.”
All of those mixtapes. All the momentum I’d gotten back. It meant nothing. I was headed back to Rice Street.
XV
* * *
LEMON
The last time I was in Fulton County—before and after I got sent to the hole—I’d been placed in a segregated part of the jail because of my status as a known rapper. But it was full of snitches and people with high-profile cases, as mine was. My placement there was at the request of my attorneys, who were convinced someone trying to make a name for themselves would target me. And they were right; I’d been targeted.
Regardless of whether it was a smart precaution, being in there was a problem. It did not sit well with me that I was this gangster rapper talking about hitting licks and moving bricks in my music, but then I was hiding with rats when I got locked up. I wanted to be treated like everyone else. So when I returned to Fulton County in the fall of 2008, I signed a waiver to be in general population.
There were daily fights, stabbings, and even a shooting during that stint. But as vicious as that place was, I never had any issues there after the incisor incident in ’05. For the most part I found that people respected me. Those who didn’t knew better than to test me. It would not have been a good idea. I was already fuming over getting locked up on some bullshit. If anyone tried to approach or handle me in any type of way, it would not have been a move that would end in their favor. If anything, niggas were doing their best to stay out of my way.
I spent my time smoking weed, writing raps, and keeping in touch with the outside world on a cell phone I’d managed to get, minding my business until I could go home. But outside the walls of Fulton County, there was shady shit going on.
?
There was this song called “Make tha Trap Say Aye” that was on my mixtape So Icey Boy. That tape dropped in April, five months before I was sent back to prison. “Make tha Trap Say Aye” was a song I’d made in Zay’s basement and gotten OJ on. It started to get a little buzz in the city over the summer.
Soon after I went to jail I started hearing the song made it to radio. This would have been great news if it weren’t for the fact that people were calling it OJ’s song. Originally, I’d had the first verse on it, but somehow now OJ did. I’d been moved to the second verse and OJ was closing things out with a new third verse. The whole dynamic of the song had changed. “Make tha Trap Say Aye” was now OJ da Juiceman featuring Gucci Mane.
The success of the song would land OJ a record deal at Asylum, which Deb facilitated. On the one hand I was happy for Juice. It wasn’t like I needed “Make tha Trap Say Aye.” I just didn’t like that he and Deb had backdoored me.
That was some bullshit. I had gotten OJ hot. Fuck the song. I promise you I didn’t care about some song. I had several of ’em going. What I cared about was that I’d been the one taking OJ on the road with me, introducing him to different markets, helping him build a fan base. Juice had never even left Georgia before he joined me on tour. I was all for him getting his chance to blow, but when it happened, I felt like I should have been a part of it.
One of the people on the outside I kept in touch with was DJ Holiday. Holiday and I had done the EA Sportscenter tape together, and as my release date neared he and I got to talking about doing another one as soon as I got out.
Holiday wanted to do a mixtape called Writing on the Wall, which I thought was lame as hell. I was sure people would clown me for naming my shit after a Destiny’s Child album. But Holiday had his mind set and he had a whole vision for the cover design.
“This is some jail shit!” he insisted. “It’ll be hard as fuck, like you were in there carving these raps into the wall!”
He talked me into it. I wasn’t thinking too hard about the title anyway. I had written hundreds of verses. I needed to get back into the studio and get things going again. Holiday told me I had songs that were killing the clubs, like “Bricks” and “Photo Shoot” and “Gucci Bandana” with Soulja Boy and Shawty Lo, but I still felt I’d wasted a lot of time being in jail.
Deb organized a homecoming party at Metronome Studios the night I got out. It was a big affair, with a whole bunch of important industry folks in attendance. The party was for everyone else, though. I was itching to work. As soon as Zay showed up I had him load up some beats to get the ball rolling.
A couple songs in, Zay waved me out of the booth. He had a request.
“Do something for me,” he said. “When I play this next one just go in. Don’t even think about a hook and don’t do any of those writtens. Let’s see what comes out.”
I had pages and pages of raps I’d written in jail, so those were the songs I started up with when I got back into the studio. I wanted to get them recorded so I could move on to new stuff. But I had no problem doing a freestyle for Zay. That was nothing. I liked an audience at the studio. A lot of rappers won’t freestyle in a packed room, but I thrived on that type of pressure. It pushed me to go harder.
I stepped back into the booth and put the headphones on. Zay played the beat and I was off to the races.
I’m starting out my day with a blunt of purp
No pancakes, just a cup of syrup
Baking soda, pot, and a silver fork
You already know it’s time to go to work
“Damn!!! That’s it!!!”
As soon as I let those four bars off, my buddies outside the booth went crazy. I lost my momentum. I looked out the window to tell Zay to start the beat over, but he’d already gotten out of his chair.