Jeezy and I hadn’t looked each other in the eye in over four years. The only reason nothing popped off in the years since everything went down was that we hadn’t seen each other.
For years people had kept us separate. We’d recently been booked on back-to-back shows—102 JAMZ’s SuperJam in North Carolina and Hot 107.9’s Birthday Bash in Atlanta—but the radio folks had me perform and then leave before Jeezy got there, and vice versa. No club would dare have us appear the same night. They knew some shit would go down. We were always positioned so that we weren’t around each other. Now here we were. Face-to-face, standing outside of Houston’s.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“What’s happening?” I responded.
Jeezy and Coach had unresolved issues of their own so they took a stroll, leaving me standing with Jeezy’s boy. This nigga had a stupid look on his face like he was getting ready to do something. Polow told me he had my back and I laughed, assuring him I had my own back. Even though I was laughing, mentally I was bracing myself for an altercation.
A couple of minutes later Jeezy and Coach came back. Jeezy asked if he and I could talk. I agreed. We took a walk and then something strange happened—the tension wasn’t there. There wasn’t even a bad vibe between us.
“I wanted to chop it up,” he told me. “Those young boys you’re running with are causing trouble out here.”
Here was the situation. Waka and his best friend, Slim Dunkin, had been getting into it with niggas in Jeezy’s crew. This would all become public a year later when Waka and Jeezy’s boy Slick Pulla got to fighting at Walters Clothing and Dunk knocked out some other CTE guy at a flea market, but all of that had been brewing for a while. None of this had anything to do with me. This was Waka and Dunk being young and crazy.
“I think we should get the young boys to chill,” Jeezy suggested. “Ain’t nobody gonna get hurt but one of them.”
He had a point. I was in rehab and Jeezy wasn’t in the streets anymore. If anyone was going to get hurt, it was going to be one of them and I didn’t want anything happening to Waka or Dunk.
“You’re right,” I told him. “I can talk to them.”
I realized in that moment that Jeezy knew he had blood on his hands from everything that had happened. Now he was trying to prevent another bad situation from happening. I couldn’t argue with that. I agreed with it. Jeezy didn’t know this but I’d just made “My Worst Enemy.” On that track I more or less said I was ready to move on from all my beefs. So it was a crazy coincidence that we were sitting here looking to do what I’d written about in that unreleased song.
We met again the next day. We sat down, agreed to a truce, and said we’d put our history behind us. We even agreed to work on music. Jeezy had just done a song with Zay called “Trap or Die 2.” That was a problem for me when I heard about it. I didn’t like Zay working with Jeezy but the song was so hard. After we established the truce, Jeezy told me to hop on the remix. At the same time I’d just made “Heavy,” which was produced by Shawty Redd, and I told Jeezy he should get on there with me. We both had these songs with each other’s go-to producers and now we were going to swap. This would be a moment people would care about. Our beef had affected so many more people than just us over the years. This would unite the city.
?
Toward the end of my stay at Talbott I was granted another two-day break and I needed it. It was crunch time for my album and there was work to be done.
I had an unfinished record called “Bad Bad Bad.” This was a song Fatboi produced and we were waiting on a feature from Keyshia Cole, who had already signed up to sing the hook.
Coach and I booked a flight to Houston to meet up with Keyshia and finish “Bad Bad Bad.” Talbott didn’t permit travel so this was a risky move, but it was one I felt I had to make.
Coach and I boarded a flight to Houston. We were forty-five minutes from our destination when the boom of thunder shook us out of our seats. Moments later the strike of lightning pierced the black sky. That’s when I saw it: a tornado ripping its way through the night. The plane shook as the pilot announced that we were flying through a severe storm. We were told to brace for turbulence.
I turned around to find passengers in prayer, flight attendants included. The storm bellowed as I heard muted crying. I looked at Coach. We didn’t exchange any words but I knew we were thinking the same thing. Maybe this was it. We bowed our heads and all I could think of was my son.
I know what you’re thinking. What son? Truth is I didn’t know him all that well either. I’d only learned I had a child a year before. He was already ten months old. A girl I used to see had a baby and people were saying it looked like me. I hadn’t even known she was pregnant. I reached out and asked her if it was mine. She was unsure. I took a blood test and sure enough, I was the father of a little boy.
The circumstances under which I’d learned I was a father weren’t ideal—almost a year after his birth, to a woman I wasn’t in a relationship with or in love with. Still, I was happy. I’d always loved children.
I hadn’t been able to embrace my new role as a father. Between getting sent back to jail, my career being busier than ever, and the drugs, I hadn’t been in my son’s life as much as I should have. But in that moment, with the plane shaking, he was all I could think about.
The storm wasn’t letting up but I found peace knowing that if this was it, I wouldn’t be leaving my boy empty-handed. I’d made enough to give him a start, enough to give him a chance to follow whatever it was he wanted to do with his life, without having to take the same risks that his father did.
With clenched fists, we were relieved to hear we’d soon make an emergency landing in Houston. But this airport only housed American Airlines. Our Delta flight couldn’t deplane here. The pilot announced we were to wait until the storm passed, at which point he’d bring us to our original destination. How long that would take, he didn’t know. For me time was of the essence. Coach and I demanded to be let off the plane. After an argument with the crew, they gave in. We exited out of the rear of the plane, where we took a car service to the studio to wrap up “Bad Bad Bad” with Keyshia.
I kept the whole story of our flight a secret after we returned to Atlanta the next day. I could have been rearrested for traveling without a permit. Even though I’d never speak about it again, the dramatic experience stuck with me. I really thought it was over.
?
My time at Talbott was nearing an end, but I needed the staff there to do me one last favor. The BET Hip Hop Awards were approaching and I was being given the opportunity to perform three times that night. I’d do “Pretty Girls” with Wale, “Gucci Bandana” with Soulja Boy and Shawty Lo, and then I’d have my own set where I’d bring out Plies for “Wasted” and Mario for “Break Up.” This was a big look. I needed to attend this.