I had signed on to do Spring Breakers a year before. I was in Bloomington, Minnesota, for a show and was walking through the Mall of America when my cell phone rang. It was Mariah Carey.
Mariah and I had gotten cool when we did “Obsessed” in 2009, but she had never called me out of the blue before. I knew that she was pregnant with twins and supposed to be giving birth any day now, so I wondered what could be so important for her to be calling me.
“Gucci, do you remember Brett Ratner?” she asked me. “He’s the guy who directed the music video for ‘Obsessed’? He wants to put you in this movie. This could be a great opportunity for you.”
Brett Ratner wasn’t the director of Spring Breakers, though. It was a guy named Harmony Korine. Apparently he was a huge fan of mine. He’d asked Brett, a friend of his, to get in touch with me for this role. Harmony’s name didn’t register with me at first but then I found out this was the guy who made the crazy, fucked-up movie Kids in the nineties. I’d seen another film of his too, Gummo. Both those movies were some dark, twisted shit but I’d liked ’em.
Harmony wanted me in Spring Breakers so badly that he postponed filming until after my two little stints in jail in 2011, and he was going to pay me a whole bunch of money to play the role of Archie. Archie was the bad guy, the former friend turned foe of the main character Alien, played by James Franco. His name I knew. This was a major motion picture. I didn’t need to know much more. Sign me up.
I spent two weeks in St. Petersburg, Florida, filming Spring Breakers. Harmony got his money’s worth out of me. I had no idea making a movie would be so time-consuming. We were working twelve-hour days and then I was going out at night on top of that for shows and appearances.
The last scene I shot was my big sex scene and by that point I was exhausted. There had been pounds of this fake herbal weed on set, but that junk gave me a headache, so I stuck to smoking Kush and of course I was drinking lean too. It was four in the morning and even with these two naked bad bitches on me—one riding me while the other sucked my toes—I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I was knocked out, snoring in the middle of the movie set. Harmony kept having to wake me up for takes. Somehow I managed to wake up long enough to ad-lib what has got to be one of the best lines of that whole movie.
I feel like you’re playing Mozart on my dick.
Even though I was high as hell the whole time I did Spring Breakers, I got a lot out of that experience. To work with a director as talented as Harmony and play opposite James Franco in my first film was a blessing. I learned a lot watching James Franco do his thing. The whole way he approached his character was superimpressive. He was all in, fully immersed as Alien. He played the hell out of that role. He knew his craft like I knew the rap game.
Working with the girls was great too. Rachel Korine shared her husband’s love for my music and Ashley Benson wanted to take a photo with my chain on. Despite crazy rumors that came out that something happened with me and Selena Gomez, we never even met during the making of the movie. We didn’t share any scenes together. Regardless, I appreciated her part in it. The whole thing was just a positive working environment. A good vibe. Harmony was a hard boss but it made for a dope movie. And he also turned out to be a cool person. He became a friend for life during our time working together.
Spring Breakers inspired me to get on my Gucci Spielberg shit. Within a month of my return to Atlanta I started production on a hood comedy called The Spot, which I starred in and played producer on. I brought Boomtown on to direct it and had Rocko, Keyshia, and a bunch of local Atlanta comedians acting alongside me. I even got the two crazy white boys from Spring Breakers—the ATL Twins—to be in it.
After that it was back to music. In May I put out another tape, I’m Up, because that’s how I was feeling. I was the old cocky Gucci again. I’m Up had a bunch of bangers on there with features from Wayne, Rick Ross, and Chris Brown. And this was just for my mixtape. The label wasn’t paying for these features and it wasn’t costing me a dime either. These people just wanted to work with me. I even had T.I. on that tape and he and I hadn’t been cool for years.
I was in Patchwerk’s Studio A, putting the finishing touches on the tape. Meanwhile T.I. was in Studio B doing his thing. Between the two studios his bodyguard and one of my partners were shooting the breeze. They were longtime friends. Eventually my buddy brought Tip’s bodyguard to Studio A and a short while after that T.I. came in looking for his security.
T.I. and I had not spoken in a long time. We’d had our fair share of issues, but when we started chopping it up it was like the first day we’d met on the set of the “3 Kings” video a decade earlier. Like me, T.I. had gone through a lot in the years since. He had spent time locked up and experienced his own ups and downs. I sensed we were both over any beef.
We agreed to do a song together. Given our history, that would be something that would shock a lot of people. This was like what Jeezy and I had planned on doing but it hadn’t worked out. Maybe this time it would.
I played T.I. two songs but he said he wanted something bigger.
“Well, I do got a big record,” I told him. “But it’s already out.”
“Let me hear it,” he responded.
I played “Plain Jane” and then T.I. had me run it back and play it again. After the second run-through he was ready to go. He hit the booth and recorded a verse on the spot. I had already filmed a music video for the song with Rocko, Waka, and Mike Will, but it wasn’t out yet. T.I. said he’d be down to shoot a scene for his verse separately that we could put in there. The whole thing came together quick.
At the end of the summer I flew out to LA with Coach for a business trip. It was a crazy week. Harmony and I met up to do some last-minute voice-over work for Spring Breakers and he let me check out a raw cut of the movie. The shit came out amazing.
The next day I had an all-day photo shoot for the streetwear brand LRG, and this was not a typical photo shoot. The company rented out this mansion where they had me doing all sorts of wild stuff—fishing out of the bathtub, eating from a huge pile of burgers, shooting dice on the marble staircase. This collection was called “High-End Lowlifes.” The concept was to have me doing all this hood-ass shit in a crib that defined opulence.