?
In September I pleaded guilty to misdemeanor battery in the incident with the girl in my car. Even though I felt I’d done nothing wrong, my lawyer advised me against trying to fight it. After the year I’d just had I knew he was right. I was the boy who cried wolf by that point. Telling my side of the story would have just pissed off the judge.
I was going to have to do a few months in DeKalb County again. This would be my fourth consecutive fall spent behind bars. Truthfully I was more bothered by the three years’ probation they were giving me for this. Almost exactly six years after I was first given six years’ probation in Fulton County, they were giving me three more in DeKalb County.
Michael Corleone put it best. Just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in.
PART THREE
XVIII
* * *
I’M UP
I hadn’t been home a week when I heard the news that Dunk had been shot and killed.
Dunk was supposed to be with Waka that night but ended up coming to meet me at a recording studio in East Atlanta where we were going to shoot a video for “Push Ups,” a song off BAYTL he was featured on. I hadn’t arrived yet when he got into it with some nigga, who pulled out a strap and shot him. I hated that it happened like that. I hated that Dunk was there that night because of me.
Everybody knew Dunk as Waka’s best friend and he was, but he and I were close too. Nobody knows this, but whenever Waka and I were having our problems, Dunk was always the one to get us to patch shit up. He was the bridge between us. The mediator.
I’d left DeKalb County earlier that week, determined to get my career back on track after more than a year of what had been one setback after another. All of that hadn’t broken me, though. I was ready to bounce back, but the sudden loss of Dunk could have easily sent me into another downward spiral.
Someone who deserves credit for keeping me on track is Mike Will, whom I’d linked back up with shortly before I went back to jail.
Everybody knows Zay is my go-to producer. The thing is since day one, Zay and I have been each other’s biggest fan. I’ll rap over whatever beat Zay plays me and whatever I do on there, Zay thinks it’s hard as hell. That’s just how it’s always been with us.
Working with Mike Will is different. Even though he’s nearly ten years my junior, Mike Will is highly opinionated with his ideas. He lets you know what he thinks should be happening on any given album, song, verse, or hook. He’s a perfectionist. Mike Will will get up from behind the boards and walk into the booth to tell me what he thinks I should be doing differently. I remember Coach told him not to do that when we got back to working together, but Mike Will didn’t pay him no mind. The guy has confidence and is an asset in the studio. He pushes me.
The week I came home Mike Will and I locked in at Patchwerk for the making of Trap Back The Return of Mr. Zone 6 and Free Bricks had been steps in the right direction, but I had hiccups having to go back to jail. This one was going to be my comeback mixtape.
I’d written a bunch of raps in jail and started up recording those, but after a few songs Mike Will told me to throw that shit away and get back to freestyling like we’d been doing over the summer. Zay would never say something like that to me.
The other difference between the two is that Mike Will would stay in the studio all night. From day one Zay has always been family first, so if we’re not working out of his crib, he’s doing a few songs, then going home. Zay doesn’t smoke, drink, or shoot dice and he’s not about sticking around while I record over other producers’ beats. If it was up to him, I’d be recording exclusively over his shit. Mike Will’s not like that. He’ll be there the whole night, regardless of whether it’s his beats I’m rapping on or Zay’s or Drumma Boy’s or Sonny Digital’s or whoever’s. And he’s always got an opinion on what’s going on.
“Man, I don’t really like how you did those ad-libs,” he’d tell me. “You really need to do those over.”
“I know you can make something harder than that. Let’s get back to the old Gucci.”
There are not a lot of folks comfortable talking to me like that and truthfully I like it that way. Mike Will has me feeling like this shit is a job sometimes. Recording is supposed to be fun, and redoing verses and ad-libs is not my idea of a good time. It’s not something I typically do. But when we were working on Trap Back I could tell that Mike Will wanted to see me come back and win just as bad as I wanted it. He knew what time it was. When the tape dropped a month later the hard work proved to be worthwhile.
“Trap Back is easily the strongest release from Gucci Mane since, possibly, 2008. On this project Gucci sounds clear, concise, and back focused on his career.”
—AllHipHop.com
“With Trap Back, Gucci Mane is back in his element. He’s removed himself from the curiosity of BAYTL and returned to the vice-indulging-laced lyrics and the system-shattering soundscapes that fueled his initial ascent. Bundle up.”
—XXL
“The other reason Trap Back is great is the increasingly prominent Atlanta producer Mike Will Made It, who continues to demonstrate that he has an ear for the smallest details that make a simple rap song a great rap song. His sound is like a Flubberized blending of Zaytoven’s 8-bit pings and Drumma Boy’s funeral marches: it’s menacing and playful all at once, which means it’s a perfect match for Gucci’s style. In a development that really shouldn’t have taken this long, he flips the Tetris theme into trap music for Gucci to rap on for ‘Get It Back.’ The instrumental could serve as a neatly boiled-down synopsis of Gucci’s style: simple, deceptively absorbing, maddeningly addictive, frantically paced. Drumma Boy also swings by, and Zaytoven contributes some of his gangsta tinker-toy productions. The result isn’t a revelation exactly, but it’s the most recognizably Gucci-ish Gucci release in some time.”
—Pitchfork
It was true. For the first time in a long time, I was starting to feel like me again.
The biggest record on Trap Back was “Plain Jane,” which Mike Will produced and Rocko was featured on. This shit killed the streets. The love I was getting from the critics was great, but I was seeing the impact of “Plain Jane” in Atlanta and every other city I went to. It was fucking people up. It never got serviced to radio or made an official single, but to this day I can’t do a show without performing “Plain Jane.” It became an immediate fan favorite.
The response from “Plain Jane” and Trap Back on the whole got me going again. I wasn’t where I wanted to be but I was on my way. Shit just felt like it was getting back. On top of the music I had gotten an offer to be in a movie.