Something about that opening line too. Originally Plies’s verse had started differently, with the backend part Walked in the club, pocket full of big faces. But Fatboi had moved the white-boys line to the beginning. It captured the essence of the song. Plies needed to be on this record.
The solution to that problem, as well as my issues at the label, came by way of my guy Todd Moscowitz. Todd had been promoted from president and CEO of Asylum to executive vice president of Warner Bros., a sister label of Atlantic. Todd had fought for me since day one and he was still fighting for me. He brought me over to Warner Bros. with him. Right away I started getting the support from the label I’d always wanted.
I now had my own imprint, 1017 Brick Squad, which I named after my childhood home in Bessemer. The formation of 1017 meant the dissolution of So Icey Entertainment, which meant the end of Deb’s stake in my label. I was still rolling with Deb, but I was pleased she no longer owned a part of my label after the whole situation with OJ.
I made Waka my first sign to 1017 Brick Squad. Deb wasn’t happy, but she couldn’t do shit about it. She had to accept that one. Waka and I were inseparable and he was fiercely loyal. Even though it involved his momma, Waka knew what Deb and Juice did was a suspect move. He told me he would never do something like that. I knew he meant it. There was no way at that moment in time that Waka was signing to anyone but me. It just wasn’t going to happen.
“Wasted” wasn’t the only song I had making noise. Shortly after I came home I’d spent some time working with Sean Garrett, the songwriter and producer known for Usher’s hit “Yeah!” Sean had this song he’d written for Mario, another R & B singer, called “Break Up” and he asked me to get on there. I did and after Greg Street from V-103 premiered the record on the radio a few weeks later, “Break Up” was outta here. Gone. I’d had hit records, but “Break Up” ended up being a pivotal crossover moment in my career.
Ever since what happened with “So Icy,” I had a bad taste in my mouth when it came to collaborating with other artists. It wasn’t something I did a lot of. Hard to Kill had some features from La Chat and Gangsta Boo, but those were exceptions to the rule. I’d just always been such a fan of Memphis rappers that it was special for me to get to work with them. The features on Back to the Trap House had been collaborations set up by the label.
And other artists weren’t lining up to work with me either. I’d been blackballed in the industry. A year or so back I was supposed to be on Usher’s song “Love in This Club,” and then when I heard it on the radio I wasn’t on there and Jeezy was. Incidents like that had kept me away from collaborating for a long time.
After “Break Up” the floodgates opened. There was Trey Songz’s “LOL :),” Omarion’s “I Get It In,” Jamie Foxx’s “Speak French,” and a lot of others. Suddenly I was the go-to guy to get a verse from. Every song I touched was hitting the Billboard charts.
I knew I was something serious when I got the call that Mariah Carey wanted me on the remix to her song “Obsessed.” This was beyond rap. This was pop.
I flew out to New York City to meet her, but when I got to the studio, Mariah wasn’t there.
I was thinking that this was a waste of time. I could have easily done this from Atlanta. I was readying to leave after I finished my verse when the studio engineer told me to wait because Mariah wanted to hear the finished product. Then, out of nowhere she magically appeared, like she’d been there the whole time waiting for me to finish. I couldn’t make sense of that, but the good news was she loved my verse. Not only that, she wanted my advice on some of the other songs she had for her upcoming album. She played me this Jermaine Dupri rework of an old hit out of Atlanta called “Swing My Way,” which was originally by K.P. and Envyi.
“Who do you think I should get on this?” she asked me.
I told her put Juice on there. Mariah wasn’t familiar with OJ but she valued my opinion and off my cosign he ended up on a Mariah Carey album. I got on it too, and then Jermaine Dupri got Big Boi from OutKast to do a verse for it. Coming all the way up to New York hadn’t been a waste of time after all.
With “Wasted” on the rise and all these features on the airwaves, it was the perfect time to get an album out for Warner Bros. I’d decided to title it The State vs. Radric Davis.
This was when I reconnected with a former acquaintance, Coach K. Coach was working with a girl he brought to Deb with the hope that she could help get her career off the ground. Nicki Minaj had just put out Beam Me Up Scotty and Deb was getting a lot of credit for her success, so a lot of girls at the time were going to Deb thinking she could do something for them.
When I first saw Coach over at Deb’s office, my attitude was Fuck this guy. He’d been on the other side of my war in 2005.
But Coach wasn’t riding with that dude anymore. Something had gone down and they’d fallen out. Deb thought Coach could be an asset and he proved himself to be one when he lined up a batch of high-paying features for me. I was always down to make some money, so I dropped the grudge. More than that, Coach knew his shit when it came to the music game, much more so than Deb, who had always been more of a motherly figure to me than an experienced manager. The stakes had never been higher going into the making of The State vs. Radric Davis. I realized I needed the expertise of someone like Coach, so he and I began working together.
?
I was spending a lot of time in Las Vegas that summer. I’d always been a gambler. My father had been letting me in on his dice games since I was ten. Now that I had big money coming in, I was getting out to Vegas as often as possible. My game was craps and my spot was the Palms, where I stayed in the twenty-five-thousand-dollar-a-night Hugh Hefner Sky Villa, a two-story, nine-thousand-square-foot suite with an elevator and a glass-wall jacuzzi that overlooked the Las Vegas Strip. Downstairs was an eight-thousand-square-foot recording studio, so the place was like Disneyland to me.
During one of these trips Coach told me the producer Bangladesh was in town for UFC 100, which was supposedly the biggest UFC event ever. Bangladesh loved the UFC fights. He always talked about that shit. Bang was a year removed from the success of Lil Wayne’s “A Milli.” I wanted a crazy beat like that.
I was high as hell when I got up with Bang at the Palms’ studio. It was one of those nights and I was only halfway into it. I was feeling super cocky, I told Bang to play me the beat that every other rapper had passed on. Something nobody else could handle. That would be a worthy challenge for me. Bang said he had something for me.