—Daily Mail
“Gucci Mane’s latest tattoo—an ice cream cone with three scoops and the word ‘brrr’ across the right side of his face—has appeared all over the internet today. For the most part, people seem shocked and confused by the rapper’s unusual decision, and some have questioned whether his recent stay in a mental health facility was a bit too brief.”
—Rolling Stone
“Whatever they’re drinking over at 1017 Brick Squad headquarters, we’ll take two and call it a week, thank you.”
—Los Angeles Times
I knew the tattoo would get a reaction, but I couldn’t believe the magnitude of it. When I left the shop I’d been thinking about what the people back at Patchwerk would say when they saw me, not the New York Daily News.
People were talking a lot of shit, but the crazy thing is that the response had a positive effect on me. It kind of woke me up. I’d gotten so down on myself that I’d completely lost sight of how many people still cared about what I was up to. I was still a big deal in this industry.
I got back to work, locking in with Drumma Boy for The Return of Mr. Zone 6. The title meant something. I knew my stock had fallen and I knew what people were saying about me.
I didn’t give a fuck about people saying I’d lost my marbles, but I didn’t like that folks were calling The Appeal a sellout album, like I’d gone Hollywood working with Pharrell or Swizz or Wyclef. That was wrong. The Appeal was a great album with a piss-poor rollout. But how I felt didn’t matter much. I needed to remind everyone exactly who I was and where I came from.
Except The Return of Mr. Zone 6 wasn’t a return to my earlier work. The mixtape would mark the beginning of a shift in my sound. I’d always been the one who made trap music fun and colorful, but that Gucci, the one with the memorable ad-libs and different characters, that guy was gone. I couldn’t get back to that because it wasn’t who I was anymore.
I became so determined to get back into the winner’s circle that I lost sight of how making music was supposed to be fun. I was spending more time in the studio than ever before and I was definitely rapping my ass off, but the songs coming out were just different. I was angry. I was resentful. I felt like I’d been dealt a bad hand. I missed Keyshia. As much as I tried to bury those emotions with lean, weed, and reckless spending, they always ended up surfacing, especially in the music.
Damn I think I love her but I don’t really know her good
Know I wanna fuck her but really thinkin’ if I should
How can I believe her? I don’t even believe myself
Tell me how to trust her, I can’t even trust myself
But I can’t live alone, at the end of the day can’t fuck myself
I told her I’m confused and she told me to go fuck myself
Now I’m alone in this world, nothing left for me
But I was born all alone so I guess that’s how it’s meant to be
But she was sent to me and I didn’t recognize
And I blame it on my pride on the fact I’m sittin’ in silence
Eyes redder than a rose, heart bluer than a violet
My heart broke and I’m heartless and ain’t no need to hide it
—“Better Baby” (2010)
“Something darker,” I was telling all my producers. “Give me something darker.”
Darker was different, but it was still good music. The Return of Mr. Zone 6 was a tough album and sold twenty-two thousand copies in its first week with no promotion and a fraction of the budget of The Appeal. This was a step in the right direction, but so often in my life, one step forward was followed by two steps back.
?
Two weeks after the release of The Return of Mr. Zone 6, I was in Memphis for a show at a club called Level II. Coach came to my hotel and told me I wasn’t going to be able to perform. We had to go back to Atlanta, now.
“You’ve got a warrant out?” he asked. “Something about a girl putting out a battery complaint against you?”
It took a minute, but I realized what Coach was talking about. Back in January I’d pulled up on this chick outside of the South DeKalb Mall. She was leaving the Chick-fil-A and got all excited when she recognized me in my Hummer. She hopped in and we started driving around, talking, but I wasn’t much in the mood for talking. I asked her if she wanted to get a hotel room. She declined. Fine by me. It wasn’t going to be hard to find another girl to lay up with.
I told her I’d drop her back off at the mall, but this chick started demanding that I take her up to her job in Buckhead. She had some nerve. I wasn’t in the mood for that shit that day.
“Look, I’m not a taxi,” I told her. “I’ll either take you back to the mall or I can drop you off at the bus stop up here.”
This girl started cussing and screaming at me to drive her to her job. I’d had enough. I reached across the passenger seat and opened the door.
“You need to get out of my car.”
The arguing continued until I put that bitch out of my car, but let me be clear on this. I don’t think I put this girl in no danger. But she went out and got herself a lawyer and demanded fifteen thousand dollars, claiming that my car was in motion and she was tumbling down the street or something.
My lawyer said I should just pony up the money and be done with it, but I was already feeling like she played me. Fifteen thousand was petty cash but I didn’t want to give her a dime on principle. I should have swallowed my pride, though. Between lawyer fees, a sixty-thousand-dollar settlement that came later down the line, and my time, the incident would cost me a whole lot more than that.
I’d forgotten about the whole thing until Coach told me I couldn’t perform in Memphis. After three months, she’d filed a complaint.
I posted the five-thousand-dollar bail but was held for violating my probation in Fulton County. Then, for some reason, I was sent to the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson, a facility fifty miles south of Atlanta. I’d only spend three weeks there but these were three of the worst weeks I ever spent locked up.
Jackson State is a diagnostic prison, a waiting room. It’s a place where teams of prison officials, counselors, and medical professionals determine which of Georgia’s thirty-one state prisons an inmate gets sent to. Unless you’re on death row. Then Jackson State’s your last stop.
As soon as I got there I had my head shaved. Then I was made to strip naked alongside the rest of the incoming inmates in the intake room, with the COs watching us. After I bent over for a cavity search they sent me to the showers. I was given a small bottle of shampoo and told to apply it not only to my now bald head but to my pubic hair as well. It was lice-killing shampoo.