I got two Ferraris back to back. First was the black 612 Scaglietti. It was Memorial Day weekend and I was in Miami. I was doing an interview at DJ Khaled’s radio station when they brought it to me. I walked outside and there it was, waiting for me on the tow truck. I wrote the man a check, they pulled that motherfucker off the trailer, and I hopped in and sped off. I remember my buddies were standing there in shock. I hadn’t told anyone I was getting it.
When I got back to Atlanta I copped the yellow 458 Italia. I was the first person in the States to get that car. I put it on twenty-two-inch Forgiatos and had the interior customized with yellow stitching. The two new pets cost me a quick seven hundred grand.
I loved the W Hotel in South Beach, and me and my boys would go down there and turn up. I’d be in the Mega Ocean View Suite. It had its own basketball court. We’d be out there wagering a hundred dollars a shot. The suite had a shower in the center. I’d be in the bed with two girls while I watched two other girls shower together.
During one of those Miami trips we had to cut the party short. A hurricane was coming so I chartered a jet to Atlanta. Once we were airborne I got up and went to the bathroom, rolled me a couple of blunts, and smoked ’em back to back.
When we touched down the pilot came out of the cockpit and he went crazy. He was so pissed. Unless I coughed up ten thousand dollars to clean the jet, he was calling the cops.
I paid the money and went on my way, but I couldn’t believe I was paying ten extra bands for a damn blunt. I hadn’t been trying to mess with the pilot. I just figured I’d be allowed to smoke, having spent this kind of money on a private flight. It hadn’t even occurred to me I was doing something wrong.
I was spending money like it was never going to stop coming. Why would it? Some nights I was making ninety thousand dollars. I was pulling in sixty thousand at these stadium shows, like Hot 97’s Summer Jam or Hot 107.9’s Birthday Bash, and then I’d do an after-party and bring in another thirty thousand. I had songs all over the radio. The royalty checks were flowing. It never occurred to me that any of this could be temporary.
And then “Gucci Time” leaked.
“Gucci Time” was one of two songs that I’d made with Swizz Beatz for The Appeal. I liked it—I still like it—but I’d never considered it as the lead single for my album. I thought the other song I did with Swizz, “It’s Alive,” was better, plus I had this dope-ass record called “Haterade” I’d made with Pharrell and Nicki Minaj at Chalice Studios in Los Angeles. I couldn’t wait for people to hear that one.
But Warner Bros. had been big on “Gucci Time” from the jump. They hired Chris Robinson to direct the music video. This was a Grammy-nominated director. His CV was iconic: Nas’s “One Mic,” Alicia Keys’s “Fallin’,” Jay-Z and Beyoncé’s “ ’03 Bonnie & Clyde.” I think Warner Bros. paid like two hundred thousand for the “Gucci Time” video.
When the song leaked they felt like they needed to move on it. The plans changed overnight and “Gucci Time” was positioned as the first single for The Appeal. It didn’t work.
“?‘Gucci Time’ is banal, a rehash of Jay-Z’s ‘On to the Next One’ with an unnecessarily shrill Justice sample. (Someone at Gucci HQ still hasn’t figured out that it was the artist’s untainted appeal, cf. ‘Wasted’ and ‘Lemonade,’ that made for his greatest commercial successes.)”
—Pitchfork
“The awfully ugly sounds he puts in for the synths are just terrible on the ears, though, and when Swizz comes in for his token verse about nothing, you realize how hard this song would be to listen to without Gucci on top of it.”
—Pop Matters
“The problem is that the leaked songs were ‘Gucci Time’ and ‘Weirdo,’ which both seemed like recycled themes (i.e. T.I.’s ‘Bring ’Em Out’ = ‘Gucci Time’)”
—iHipHop
That was what everyone was saying. Swizz’s beat was a throwaway and I shouldn’t be making that type of record to begin with.
I never really paid much mind to what critics said, but for some reason this response threw me for a loop. I didn’t think “Gucci Time” should be the single, but I did like the song. It never crossed my mind that the response would be negative. For so long it seemed like every song I made was outta here. I was used to songs I hadn’t thought twice about blowing up, so when the inverse happened I didn’t handle it well. I wasn’t prepared for that.
The Appeal was finished and turned in to Warner Bros. but the album’s release was still a couple of months away and there was work to be done to promote it. But I started to withdraw from that work. I started bailing on photo shoots and interviews. A fan would ask me for an autograph and I would tell them to step off. Todd and I were still talking but I became disengaged. Keyshia and I broke up. Worst of all, I started drinking lean again. Heavily.
It had been almost a year since I’d touched the stuff. I’d spent those three months in rehab, immediately followed by six months in jail, and when I got out, I steered clear of it. But as time went on I convinced myself that I could handle it. I was working so hard and this was my way of taking the edge off.
Except I couldn’t handle it. My tolerance was so low that when I started up drinking pints like I used to, it took a toll on my body. I was already spreading myself thin. The shows, the features, the videos, the interviews, my album. It was impossible to keep up after I reintroduced the drugs to my body. I needed to be focused and on point like I’d been before The State vs. Radric Davis came out. Instead I was self-sabotaging.
Looking back, I realize it was so unnecessary. The response to “Gucci Time” wasn’t as bad as I made it out to be. There was no reason The Appeal couldn’t have been a success. I’d felt good about that album. Really good. As far as the big picture, I was still a star. But I lost sight of the big picture. I couldn’t see it. I was in too dark of a place.
This was how these downward spirals in my life always went. Some stressful situation would arise and I would turn to the drugs to cope. Abusing the lean and weed and pills would end up with me sleeping and eating poorly. It would compromise my whole health and then I wouldn’t be on point to handle the original stressful situation right. I’d compound bad choices. That would lead to more problems, more stress, and more drugs. A cycle with no end. No good one at least.
After what happened in ’05 and all my scuffles in the streets, I already had serious issues with paranoia. I would use the drugs to numb those feelings but really they magnified them. People have called me bipolar or that I suffer from depression, but I always identified most with the symptoms of someone with PTSD. Like a soldier who came home still dealing with the effects of being in a war zone.
It would always be a domino effect, with each fallen domino sending me deeper and deeper into despair until I crashed,