After the shower I was given a white prison jumpsuit, photographed for my prison ID, and brought to “H House,” solitary confinement, where I spent the remainder of my time at Jackson State.
Being in the hole again was horrible. It was sweltering in there. No air circulation at all. And the rats . . . I hadn’t been in my cell five minutes when I saw one scurry by with a tail that was longer than me. I swear the rats were the size of cats in that place. I never thought I’d be so happy to be back at Fulton County when I was transferred back three weeks later.
I’d spend another month in county jail before I was freed. Again, I felt like I’d missed a lot. Even though I was only gone for three months—my shortest stretch since my sixty days in DeKalb County a decade earlier—a lot had happened. On the music front, there were two new guys in the city making a lot of noise: 2 Chainz and Future.
I’d known 2 Chainz for fifteen years. He’s actually BP’s cousin. I knew 2 Chainz from when he was Tity Boi and he was rolling with Ludacris in the nineties. He’d had a taste of fame in 2007 with a song called “Duffle Bag Boy,” but he and Dolla Boy, the other nigga in the group Playaz Circle, weren’t able to follow it up. But Tity Boi was on his own now and he was going by 2 Chainz. And shit finally seemed to be working out well for him.
Future, on the other hand, was someone I’d met only recently. He was from East Atlanta by Kirkwood, an area they call Lil’ Mexico. It’s nearby, but in Atlanta you can be two streets over and you’re in a totally different neighborhood. He was a few years younger too, so we’d never crossed paths coming up.
Future was the cousin of Rico Wade, from the legendary production team Organized Noize. He’d come up in Atlanta’s fabled Dungeon Family, around OutKast and Goodie Mob and Bubba Sparxxx. Back then he was rapping under the name Meathead but now he was Future, and he was rolling with my partner Rocko.
Rocko had introduced us earlier that year at Patchwerk. He had just signed Future to his label A1 Recordings and was adamant about this guy’s talent. He told me I needed to fuck with Future’s new mixtape Dirty Sprite, which he’d just put out. I never got around to doing that. I met Future in the aftermath of everything that happened at the end of 2010 and beginning of 2011, so I had a lot of other stuff going on.
Future had picked up a lot of steam by the time I came home in July. The DJs at Magic City and other Atlanta strip clubs were pumping his music heavy. Drake had just gotten on the remix of his song “Tony Montana.” Another song Future was featured on, “Racks,” was killing the radio and that was a song Future had written. Rocko was right about the dude.
Behind 2 Chainz and Future’s big songs was an up-and-coming beatmaker by the name of Mike WiLL Made It. I knew Mike Will very well. I met him in 2006 when he was a sixteen-year-old Marietta High School junior, trying to shop his beats outside of Patchwerk.
Years ago I’d paid him a stack for a batch of ’em and for a while after that Mike Will was hanging around regularly, cutting his teeth at the studio, honing his craft. You can see a young Mike Will in that 2007 Hood Affairs documentary I did when we were working on “No Pad No Pencil.”
At some point Mike Will had a falling-out with Deb. I think she tried to sign him to Mizay and for some reason it didn’t work out. But after that Deb had made it a point to keep us from working together, and truthfully she filled my head with all sorts of junk about him too. So I’d kind of been on the “Fuck Mike Will” tip myself. That’s why there’s a four-year gap when we didn’t work together.
Mike Will did well for himself, though. Not only was he playing a major role in the rise of 2 Chainz and Future in Atlanta, but he’d also done a song for Rick Ross and Meek Mill called “Tupac Back” that was big too.
His new moniker, Mike Will Made It, was a throwback to our first days of working together. I’d rapped it on a track called “Star Status”:
I be freestylin’, not using no pencil
Gucci Mane LaFlare I’m flowin’ on this instrumental
Mike Will made it, Gucci Mane slayed it
Star status nigga, everybody upgraded
Coach arranged for Mike Will and I to get back into the studio together. But there was still lingering tension. Making matters worse was that niggas in the studio who knew about our past were cracking jokes and making comments. It kept the vibe fucked-up.
It wasn’t until one day when it was just me and Mike Will at Patchwerk that we got back to solid. After that we were in sync. Mike Will had really stepped his game up since ’07 and he was giving me some of his hardest beats.
His ringtone was “Ain’t No Way Around It,” one of the big songs he had with Future.
“You gotta give me some shit like that,” I told him.
“Yeah? Well, go in on this,” he told me, loading up the next beat.
That song became “Nasty,” which Mike Will came up with the hook for. After doing my verse I stepped out of the booth and asked him who else we should get on it.
“Future, bro,” he told me. “Future would snap on this.”
“You love you some Future, huh?”
The next day Future came through and hopped on “Nasty.” A couple of hours later 2 Chainz pulled up and the three of us did another song called “Lost It.” Afterward, Future and I were talking and he asked me what I thought about us doing a whole mixtape together.
“Cool,” I told him. “Let’s do it.”
Future couldn’t believe it was that easy.
“That’s why I fuck with you, Gucci,” he said. “Ever since I got in this game shit’s never been that simple. But I asked you straight up to do a mixtape and you were down. Simple as that.”
“No problem,” I told him. “We’re already here.”
Not only did I fuck with Future’s music, but he was certified Zone 6 and that made me even more inclined to work with him. Also I liked what a studio rat this dude was. I recorded every day but I also hit the clubs at night and enjoyed myself. Future didn’t leave the studio. All he did was record.
This guy’s work ethic was giving me a run for my money, so I knew the two of us would knock out a mixtape in no time. That’s exactly what we did. Free Bricks was out three weeks to the day I came back from jail.
The tape with Future was a natural move. As was my next release, Ferrari Boyz, a joint album with Waka that we’d recorded earlier in the year. It was the collaboration I did after those two that would have people scratching their heads.
I’d been approached by Joie Manda with the idea of doing a joint mixtape with this white chick from Oakland. V-Nasty. I didn’t know a thing about the girl, but when Joie told me these folks wanted to pay me a couple of hundred grand, I didn’t need to know anything about her. She flew in and we knocked out the mixtape in like three days.
V-Nasty turned out to be a controversial artist, being a white girl who said “nigga,” but I thought she was cool and I enjoyed doing that tape. All I did was freestyle over twelve Zay beats. Business as usual. Easy money.