The response to Trap House 3 was positive. I knew it would be. The album wasn’t doing anything crazy numbers-wise, but because I’d put it out independently I was seeing more money on every copy sold. Really what mattered was that people were fucking with the music. My grand experiment with the Brick Factory was paying off.
But I couldn’t enjoy Trap House 3’s success. I was growing increasingly more anxious. I had an open assault case. A probation violation hearing on the horizon. Defecting artists. My old rap beefs were back on. The unease at the studio made me stress. And as it always did, my stress manifested itself as intense dread and paranoia.
Much of this paranoia was the product of the drugs—delusions brought on by weed and promethazine and codeine syrup coursing through me. I was always high. But there was a legitimacy to my fears as well. My mind was unraveling, no doubt about it, but I really was in the same studio my friend got killed in. I’d experienced people with guns looking to kill me before. I was legally confined to this building, which was in a neighborhood where I’d accumulated a lot of enemies over the past twenty years. That shit was real.
I couldn’t sleep. So I drank more lean and smoked more weed. My intake was beyond anything before and my addiction had become unsustainably expensive. The lean was a thousand dollars a pint and I was drinking almost a pint a day. The weed was a few hundred dollars an ounce and I was smoking an ounce a day. More than a grand a day on drugs alone. And those were just the basic necessities. Anything else I came across—Percocets, Xanax bars, molly, whatever really—would get tossed in the mix too.
The money I was sinking into drugs was the least of my concerns. I needed this stuff. It was the only thing that could calm me, even if it was temporary. When I did catch some sleep, it wasn’t like I was tucked in bed for a restful night. I was nodding out during recording sessions. I was falling out of chairs. I would take too much of something and throw it up. Things were getting bad again. I could feel it. But I didn’t know how to stop it.
The studio got broken into. I found out who it was when I reviewed the surveillance footage. When I told them I didn’t want them coming by anymore, it didn’t go well. Now I had problems with niggas who stayed right around the corner. Niggas with very little to lose.
Earlier in the summer I’d done an interview where I called my new studio the Fort Knox of the hood. At the time I’d said it in jest because of the gate and surveillance cameras. But now the Brick Factory looked more like an armory than a place where music was made. There were guns everywhere. I could see the look on people’s faces when they came through. My studio was no longer a fun place to be. Onetime regulars were dropping like flies.
I was still recording like hell. I’d dropped three mixtapes at once—the World War 3: Molly, Gas, and Lean series—and now I was working on a new project. Diary of a Trap God. A lot of the songs on there—“Decapitated,” “Half,” “High Power Cowards,” “Keep It Real”—were recorded during my darkest days, trapped in my brick prison. I was slurring my words bad on those songs. I’d never sounded so congested.
It was the sound of somebody at the end of the line, facing a decision: accept defeat or go down in a blaze. I was sure someone was going to kill me or that I was going to have to kill someone again. That wasn’t a difficult decision for me to make.
I fell out with my right-hand man, he tried to top on me
I guess it’s clear we ain’t homies like I think we homies
I’m at the top and I swear to God, it’s really lonely
But I’m not coming down, no stoopin’ down, I keep it movin’
These young niggas got no respect who make music
Broke-ass nigga, never can get used to it
And the bottom of Sun Valley don’t do it like the top do it
Bouldercrest we hear AK’s more than church music
—“Decapitated” (2013)
Zay was at the studio the night I made “Decapitated.” It was late and there wasn’t a light on in there save for the glow of Pro Tools coming from the computer monitor. When the beat wasn’t playing you could hear a pin drop in there. Dark and quiet. Everyone was gone. Just me and Zay. Like old times. Simpler times.
That was an eerie night. The calm before the storm.
?
Diary of a Trap God was so fucking deep. It needed to be an album, not just another mixtape. To do that I was going to have to reconnect with the people at my label. I needed them to sign off on it being a retail release and I wanted to restructure my deal. I also wanted them to buy out Waka’s contract.
My lawyer got in touch with Craig Kallman and Julie Greenwald, the CEO and COO at Atlantic, and came back with an offer. It wasn’t to my liking. I marked the contract up with changes and sent it back.
“We can’t make any revisions,” I was told. “Take it or leave it.”
The next day I hopped on Twitter and told Craig and Julie to suck my dick and that was the end of negotiations. The label had its limits too.
Gucci Mane Is No Longer on Atlantic Records
—Fader
Telling off Craig and Julie was one of the many ways I was airing grievances on Twitter that week. I was letting it fly. Any shit I felt had been bubbling beneath the surface, whether it was recent or an unresolved situation that had been dormant for years, I put it out there. Now we ain’t gotta dance around shit no more, was my thinking. Anyone and everyone could get it. And they did.
Eventually my other lawyer called and told me to stop. I had several pending cases and I was out here threatening folks for anyone to see.
“What are you thinking?!” he told me. “Stop it immediately.”
I did stop. And put out word that my Twitter account had been hacked. But then I started to question my lawyer’s motives. Did he tell me that ’cause he was looking out for me, or was he doing someone else’s bidding? Over the next forty-eight hours my fears festered as I sat in the studio, smoking and drinking lean.
Fuck it.
I’d just fired my entertainment attorney after the failed talks with Atlantic. My criminal lawyer could go too. And I was going to his office to get paperwork to show he no longer represented me. I didn’t know what the fuck he was out here doing on my behalf.
I got into it with the security officers at the office and the police were called. My lawyer asked me to leave and when the cops went inside to gather my belongings for me, they found a loaded handgun in the area. I told them it wasn’t mine.
My lawyer didn’t say anything different.
I think they call that attorney-client privilege. Maybe I was wrong about this guy. Good thing he didn’t sign those termination papers.
?