I decided I was going to double dip on this mansion. I’d made this song “Fuck Da World” with Future and I had a good feeling about it. I was hot again, Future was coming up, and Mike Will had the Midas touch. Every beat he made was blowing up. All the pieces were there. Future happened to be in LA that week so I hit him and told him I had this crazy spot for us to shoot a video for “Fuck Da World.” The thing was we had to do it right now. Future put whatever he was doing on hold and came through.
Of course I didn’t have permission to film a music video in this house and I had no intention of putting up the money or going through the proper channels to do so. I was just going to piggyback off this LRG shoot.
When the whole mob showed up—Future, his people, the video production crew, the models—the homeowner and the LRG crew went crazy. But it was too late. I’d made up my mind we were getting footage at this spot.
“Keep the camera rolling,” I told the videographer. “Don’t listen to what these folks say.”
The most important part of that trip to California was my meeting with Todd. I wanted to show him I’d gotten my shit together and that I deserved a chance to make things right with the label. Todd and I had never had any sort of beef or fallout, but he and I had become distant after how everything played out with The Appeal. I’d been so embarrassed that I didn’t want to go to Todd until I had something to show. With Trap Back, I’m Up, Spring Breakers, and this next mixtape I had on the way, now was the time.
“I’m sorry, Todd,” I told him. “I’m sorry for the last year and I’m sorry for the last album. I’ve cleaned myself up.”
We hugged it out. That deep friendship was still there. Our relationship was bigger than business. Still, there was business I wanted to attend to. I wanted to restructure my deal at Warner Bros. We needed to get a proper budget for my next album like I’d gotten with The Appeal.
Todd told me his hands were tied as far as restructuring my contract, but he gave me the green light to sell my mixtapes on iTunes to put some extra money in my pocket. He also had another idea.
“You should start calling yourself the trap god,” he said. “Actually . . . you should legally change your name to Trap God.”
Legally change my name? Todd was crazy, but he was onto something.
“Okay, it’s perfect!” he said. “Put together a mixtape called Trap God and I’ll sign off on it so you can sell it on iTunes.”
That’s how the Trap God moniker was born.
Coming up with the Trap God name and letting me sell my mixtapes would be the last things Todd did for me at Warner Bros. A month after I put out the project he resigned from his position as CEO of the label. Not long after, Warner Bros. folded its urban music department and by default I was transferred to Atlantic Records.
These were the folks who screwed me in 2007 with Back to the Trap House and now I was supposed to deal with them again. I hadn’t gotten what I wanted out of my conversation with Todd, one of my biggest supporters, so I knew it wasn’t going to go any better at Atlantic. And I was right about that. We couldn’t see eye to eye on anything.
Fuck it.
Everything had been going so well. I wasn’t going to let the label mess it up. I didn’t need ’em. I’d get my contract sorted out later. For now I was on strike with Atlantic Records and taking my career back into my own hands.
XIX
* * *
BRICK BY BRICK
Patchwerk had always been my spot, but my bills there had gotten ridiculous. Studio fees were running me nearly a hundred thousand dollars a year. If I wasn’t on the road, I was there. Every day. After I signed Waka, I’d started renting out both rooms of the studio at $150 an hour each. Even when I wasn’t recording I’d be there just hanging. But the meter was always running. I don’t even want to think about how many hours I got billed just to be smoking weed and drinking lean at Patchwerk.
So when I decided I was on strike with the label and they were no longer footing the bill, I decided to set up my own shop. I scouted a couple of locations and landed on a studio in the heart of East Atlanta. I named it the Brick Factory, after the Hit Factory in Miami, which had always been one of my favorite places to record.
The Brick Factory was the studio where Dunk had gotten killed. Because of that I had reservations about getting the place. Financially, though, it made sense.
I needed to get rid of the bad vibes in there and give it a fresh start. With the help of Beasley, a longtime friend who doubled as my hood secretary of sorts, I had the whole spot gutted and remodeled. I put a lot of money into it. There was a lounge with flat-screen TVs. A workout room. I had my own little apartment-like area with a bedroom and kitchen and shower upstairs. And I assigned Zay the task of outfitting the three recording rooms with top-of-the-line equipment. We made it real nice. I also bought the car wash next door and had the fence between the buildings torn down. My plan was to add two more recording rooms after we finished phase one of renovations.
I already had a reputation as an A&R man—someone with an ear for new talent. My early involvement with Waka, OJ, Nicki, and Mike Will spoke for itself. But the Brick Factory was where I took an active role in grooming the careers of the next generation of young talent coming out of Atlanta.
?
Having this multiroom recording studio allowed for that. Before, anyone who was in one of my sessions at Patchwerk was there to be a part of whatever I was working on. Now, with three rooms and two more on the way, there was space for everyone to work on their own stuff simultaneously. I could bounce around and get involved in what everyone had going on. I wanted my studio to be a place where artists had the freedom to experiment. A place to take chances. Where people could be themselves but also find themselves as rappers or producers. For me this was a much deeper level of involvement. I’d set up an incubator of talent.
I’d had this in mind when I got the place. I wanted a new stable of protégés. Waka and I were on okay terms, but he had his own career now so he wasn’t around all the time. That meant Wooh and Frenchie weren’t around either. And Dunk was dead. So I was looking for a new crew of young bulls to take under my wing.
Even before I got the studio, I’d been on the hunt for artists who would be good fits for 1017. First was Scooter. Young Scooter and I had gotten cool during the summer of 2011 when I was working with Future on Free Bricks. Future and Scooter were childhood friends from Kirkwood. I mentioned earlier that I never knew Future coming up, but when he introduced Scooter and me at Patchwerk, it turned out he and I had actually met before.
“Don’t you remember me, bro?” he asked. “From that dice game in East Atlanta?”