In a time where rap beef has mutated into mildly entertaining WWF style grandstanding (see 50 Cent vs Rick Ross) featuring incessant video exchanges with less and less of an emphasis on actual diss records , its rare that you see a beef like this Battle of the Trap. While beefs like 50/Ross or 50/Cam (How much did the Mobb sell Curtis?!?!?) play out like they were helmed by the Farrelly Brothers, Gucci and Jeezy's beef plays more like a cold, taut Michael Mann crime thriller. On one street corner we have Atlanta's foremost Trap Star, the Snow Man (with no shots to T.I., who has transcended trap rap) and on the other street corner we have Atlanta's crack pipe hot upstart, poultry chef slash rapper (and by Thor, does he look the part), Gucci Mane La Fleur (check out his humorous uncylopedia entry or die suddenly).
Their problems started off small, a squabble over money for a verse, but ended up with some critical repercussions. Let's put all the ki's on the table, Young Jeezy allegedly sent a team of goons to rob/kill Gucci Mane in a semi-elaborate set-up involving a stripper. Gucci Mane, ever the quick-wit, shot them the fuck up on entry and caught a body off one of them. Amazing right? As far as I can remember Gucci is the only rapper with a known body on him (if you know of others please post in the comment section). Since Gucci is just now rising to the national stage (as opposed to popping up from time to time with hits separated by several years) this story hasn't gotten the shine it deserves. With Jeezy firing shots on wax again this week, the time is ripe to go over their history and look to their future. For our history lesson I will defer to Mara Shaloup who covered the beef in a painstakingly researched three-part expose' on the infamous drug racket, Black Mafia Family (a group Jeezy was closely affiliated with). Read on for excerpts from Shaloup's masterful Hip-Hop's Shadowy Empire (full article here) with scattered hyperlinks and bracketed italicized commentary from your trusty old blogger conneck.
~~
In the fall of 2004, two Atlanta rappers happened to brush shoulders at Walter's, a shoe store downtown. Gucci Mane was passing out CDs and offered one to an impressive-looking guy loaded with diamonds. Young Jeezy took the CD and complimented Gucci on his skills; he'd already heard some of the up-and-comer's tracks.
Though the rappers came from different territories -- Gucci from Atlanta's east side and Jeezy, by way of Macon, from the Old Fourth Ward -- they shared similar backgrounds. And both had been effective in channeling their street experiences into more professional ones.
Jeezy, however, was the bigger name. The 27-year-old had risen from Macon mixtape hawker to Atlanta hip-hop royalty. He was a street-level entrepreneur who had sold tens of thousands of mixtapes through his indie label, Corporate Thugz Entertainment. Around that time, he was busy flooding the streets with his record, Trap or Die. And thanks to a logo that likened him to a menacing snowman, Jeezy had cemented his ties to the street. (On the streets, "snow" is cocaine and the "snowman" a dealer.)
An affiliation with the Black Mafia Family didn't hurt, either. Jeezy wasn't shy about showing up on camera flanked by BMF members and saying things such as, "This is my muthafuckin' homeboy. It's love. It's family, dog," or dropping verses such as, "You don't want me to get the streets involved, better yet make a call and get Meech (Meech was the BMF's top boss) involved (yeah BMF)."
Though Meech had launched a record label earlier that year, Jeezy's affiliation with him stopped short of the label's roster. He would ink a deal with Def Jam Records instead. Thanks to the infusion of funds from Def Jam, Corporate Thugz Entertainment would be better equipped to cultivate Jeezy's own stable of artists, which included the rapper Slick Pulla, the group Blood Raw (although Blood Raw is one fat ass nigga, he is not a group, just one guy), and if all went according to plan, a trio from Macon called Loccish Lifestyle.
Gucci wasn't looking to join CTE's ranks when he ran into Jeezy at the shoe store. He'd already signed with Atlanta-based Big Cat Records. But that didn't mean the two rappers couldn't collaborate. The next day, Gucci showed up at Jeezy's studio with a track he'd been toying with, a song called "Icy." Jeezy laid down a few verses (the song is horrible and sports the worst Jeezy verse I've ever heard - and yet it caused all this trouble), and Gucci said he paid him for his work. It was a coup for the more underexposed artist to have a guy like Jeezy contributing to the track.
The camaraderie, however, was short-lived.
To say that someone is "icy" is to imply he's heavy with diamonds. The term applied to Jeezy that day at Walter's, and it applied just as much to Gucci when it came time in April 2005 to shoot the video for "Icy." On the set, he wore a blue-and-yellow, diamond-studded "Jacob" (as in a $50,000 watch designed by New York hip-hop jeweler Jacob Arabo) (ever wonder why rapper's don't talk about Jacob anymore? It's because he is in jail for money laundering for BMF. I really urge you to read the whole BMF saga as it is quite riveting) and a 37-carat pendant that spelled the words "So Icy" in $40,000 worth of diamonds.
"Icy" also happened to describe the hostilities that formed between the two rappers after the song became a surprise hit. In the spring of 2005, Gucci and Jeezy had a bitter -- and rather public -- falling out.
Gucci claimed that once "Icy" was hot, Jeezy wanted to use it on his soon-to-drop album, Let's Get It: Thug Motivation 101 (a fantastic album by the by). Jeezy's attorney claimed that was bullshit; Gucci was just looking to drum up press. As if to make his feelings on the matter abundantly clear, Jeezy released a "diss song" slamming Gucci -- and placing a bounty on his $40,000 necklace: "I want that muthafuckin' bullshit-ass icy chain," Jeezy sneered on "Stay Strapped." The title of the track doubled as a threat. If Gucci wasn't already carrying a gun, he ought to start.
Gucci was quick to fire back. In his response, "Round 1," which featured fellow Big Cat artist Black Magik, Gucci rapped, "Jeezy can't make a hit with a Louisville Slugger," "You're a thug imposter, you deserve an Oscar," and "Put a dress on, nigga, you Meech's bitch."
By then, however, Jeezy appeared to have turned his attention elsewhere -- to Loccish Lifestyle's Henry "Pookie Loc" Clark, Carlos "Low Down" Rhodes and Shannon "Luke" Lundy. Jeezy was interested in signing the group to CTE. The deal appeared to be moving along.
But in May 2005, when Luke and Pookie Loc headed to Atlanta from Macon to meet with CTE, one of them would be diverted. Something would go wrong. And an unwitting Gucci Mane would find himself back in the picture.
Before Loccish Lifestyle had officially formed, its three members decided to test their talent. They came to Atlanta in 2000 for a freestyle rap competition at the Atrium. Low Down, Luke and Pookie Loc didn't even have a song ready, Low Down recalls, "just a beat from somewhere, and the name."The group's name refers to a way of life on the streets of Macon -- a lifestyle that Low Down likens to that of the Crips. "We had good chemistry," he says. "That's probably what did it. We was all on the same tip."
The Macon trio that came to Atlanta without a song managed to take home the prize. They spent the next five years putting out two albums on their own and building their name on the street. Several of Loccish Lifestyle's tracks got heavy play on local radio and in the hip-hop clubs. The sound was moody and introspective -- and the lyrics unapologetic. "Trying to muse on how we're living," is how Low Down sums up the music. Loccish Lifestyle's single "Ridin' High" puts it more bluntly: "I'm gettin' high as I wanna be," "ain't no stopping me," and "don't blame me, nigga, blame the gang."
The group had been hustling for five years when Jeezy, whom they knew from his Macon days as "Lil Jay,"(no homo on that name) wanted to make them an offer. Loccish Lifestyle wasn't big in Atlanta's hip-hop scene. But a deal with CTE might change that.
Yet Low Down was holding out. He wasn't exactly opposed to CTE's offer; he just wasn't yet convinced it was the right move. Luke and Pookie Loc were more enthusiastic. When the two of them checked into the Marriott Courtyard downtown in May 2005 to go over some details with CTE, they were eager to sign. But before the deal was official, Pookie Loc would be diverted.
He had been in trouble before. But as far as Low Down was concerned, Pookie Loc's past didn't make an impression against the daily realities that go with the lifestyle. "If you know him for being wild, I guess you could say he was being wild," Low Down says. "If you know him for being cool, he probably was cool."
As for what happened shortly after Loccish Lifestyle landed in Atlanta, Low Down expresses similar stoicism: "The situation is what it is. I mean, shit happens."
The situation would plot Pookie Loc against Jeezy's nemesis, Gucci Mane. And it would put Loccish Lifestyle's deal on indefinite hold.
On May 10, 2005, Gucci went with a friend to the Blazin' Saddles (harumph) strip club down on Moreland Avenue. After a while, they decided to head with one of the strippers, a woman named Foxy, over to her house. They weren't there long when company arrived.
Five guys rolled in. One had a set of brass knuckles. Another had duct tape. Several had guns. Their intentions did not appear to be good.
The guy with the knuckles punched Gucci in the head. One of the other guys pistol-whipped his friend. Someone said something about killing them.
Gucci saw his chance. "Stay strapped," he'd been warned.
He aimed and fired.
~~(This is the beginning of Part 2, excuse the brief repetition)
On a dead-end street called Springside Run, five men dressed in black were making their way up one of the driveways. One carried brass knuckles. Another had duct tape. Some had guns. A neighbor doing yard work glanced up and thought it odd, a sight so menacing in broad daylight.
Inside the house, a rapper named Gucci Mane was hanging out with a stripper he'd met earlier that day. Gucci had wanted her to hear some of his tracks, so they decided to go back to her place. He was hoping she'd like one of the songs enough to dance to it on stage, a move that would generate some buzz (he was tryna fuck tho).
He'd already created a good bit on his own.
It started with a track called "Icy." Gucci had written it, and a better-known rapper named Young Jeezy had laid down a few verses. But when the song became a hit, Gucci and Jeezy got in a spat over who was indebted to whom. Jeezy responded with a "dis song," "Stay Strapped," that put a $10,000 price on Gucci's diamond-encrusted necklace:
"I want that muthafuckin' bullshit-ass icy chain ...
"I got a bounty on that shit, nigga, 10 stacks ...
"So if he come to your town,
"And you just happen to snatch that muthafucker off his neck ...
"I'm gonna shoot you the 10-stack, man ...
"So I can cremate that muthafucker."
By all accounts, Jeezy wasn't one of the men who walked through the stripper's door on the afternoon of May 10, 2005. But he was connected to at least one of them.
The five men flooded the room. The one with the brass knuckles hit Gucci in the head. Another guy pistol-whipped his friend. At least one of the men drew a gun.
Gucci drew faster.
"All of a sudden I feel a pop, and fall to the ground ..."
-- Macon rapper Pookie Loc, circa 2000, recording with the group Loccish Lifestyle
The five men quickly got out of there. One of them, Henry "Pookie Loc" Clark, was separated from the others. He ran along Springside Run toward Columbia Drive. A middle school was up ahead. So was a cop car. He veered into the woods, stumbling, stumbling, falling.
"I try to move but constantly something is holding me down ..."
Five years earlier, Pookie Loc's group, Loccish Lifestyle, came to town from Macon for a freestyle rap competition at the Atrium. Without having written a single song, they took the prize. Dozens of recordings and two self-released albums later, Pookie Loc and band member Shannon "Luke" Lundy were in Atlanta again -- this time with the hopes of inking a deal with the label Corporate Thugz Entertainment. Pookie Loc was within a breath of success.
"I wake up cold and sweating, light flashing in my eye ..."
Three days after the incident at the stripper's house, DeKalb County Police got a call. Four men had shown up at Columbia Middle School to search for something in the woods. The incident report lists one of the men as Shannon "Luke" Lundy. It lists another as Demetrius "Kinky B" Ellerbee, who is co-owner, along with Young Jeezy, of Corporate Thugz Entertainment.
Luke told police he'd been at a video shoot in West End when he heard about a shooting on Springside Run. He said his friend Pookie Loc, who'd gone missing, knew a woman who lived there.
So they went looking for him.
"Realizing that I'm shot and real slowly I'm dying."
They found Pookie Loc there in the woods, dressed in black. Flies were swarming all around him.
Let's get one thing straight: Young Jeezy has said on several occasions that he had nothing to do with the raid on Springside Run (ed's note click, this). Police have never named him as a suspect. And the only arrest that came of the incident was that of Gucci Mane, who was charged with killing Pookie Loc. (Those charges wouldn't stick.)But there is some disagreement about what happened that day in May 2005. And it basically boils down to whether an organization with ties to Jeezy -- an alleged drug ring called the Black Mafia Family -- might have been involved.
At the time, BMF was well-known in Atlanta hip-hop circles as a crew that partied like celebs and dropped money like monarchy. The crew's reputation on the street was legendary. As with most legends, there was likely some truth to the lore, and quite possibly a false claim or two.
Neither Loccish Lifestyle's manager, Tarence Bivins, nor its third member, Carlos "Low Down" Rhodes, was in Atlanta at the time of Pookie Loc's death. But both Bivins and Low Down say they're positive BMF was not behind it.
"BMF had nothing to do with -- not anything, period -- the Gucci Mane situation and [Pookie] Loc," Bivins says. "That's not true, totally not true. You can quote me on that."
Low Down is equally unequivocal. "Basically, they're just using BMF as a prop," he says. "They're going to use BMF just so they can bring more heat."
Of BMF itself, he claims: "They are really hot anyway. I mean, they on fire. So I guess you can't add no more fire to it."
Yet Gucci's former attorney, Dennis Scheib, and his current one, Ash Joshi, are firm in their assertions that BMF is in some way responsible.
"Here's the situation," Scheib says. "Five guys came in. They were BMF."
According to Joshi, the DeKalb County district attorney's office was looking into whether BMF was behind the attack. The spokeswoman for the district attorney's office, Adora Andy, says she can't comment on allegations of BMF's involvement. "We did not investigate it," she tells CL. "The FBI did."
The FBI's Atlanta office declines to comment. "I wouldn't be able to discuss that," Special Agent Steve Emmett says.
the feds allege the crew laundered some of the drug money. They would pay inflated prices for winning Detroit Lotto Tickets and then buy cars and cribs with the legit winnings.
~~
It's me again. Let's move to the present. Gucci winds up in prison after skipping on his probation for assaulting an upstanding citizen with a pool cue (source). While in the bink, Gucci's already hefty mixtape presence skyrockets with a big time assist from his partner (pause), the unbelievably more niggerish, OJ Da Juiceman. This surge was based largely around the record Make The Trap Aye, Juice's breakout single on which Gucci appeared. On being released after nearly six months, Gucci got out with the largest buzz of his career and was welcomed home like rap royalty.
He wasted no time in putting out his first official mixtape since being jailed, Writing on the Wall. A song on the tape, Hurry, caught the attention of Jeezy.
Hurry - check out from 2:29 onwards
The offending lyrics-
Who you calling murderer, the only thing I'm killing is your motherfucking girl jaw, smoking on that fruity dro, girl u look like keyshia cole, i know you a dick pulla but i cant fuck ya blood raw, damn I like those kinky flows
Now Jeezy had a long term relationship with Keyshia Cole and his right hand guys are Slick Pulla, Kinky B and Bloodraw. So this isn't exactly subliminal stuff.
Just this week, Jeezy comes out with a diss track 23, 24 throwing jabs at both OJ and Gucci.
Listen:
The offending lyrics as transcribed by missinfo:
“They say the club is off the chain, I’m on my Louie shit today, fuck some Gucci, mane. These n—–s still on my dick they like some groupies, mane. Can’t keep they lips closed, they worse than coochies, mane. And that fruity looking stupid like some Coogi, mane. Let you trick me off these streets, you must be stupid, mane. Tell him this aint what he want, not the boy Snow. But between me and you I think the boy slow.”
“They said the club is off the chain. Straight shots to the head, fuck some juice, man. Next to real n—-s in the city who got the juice, mane. these n—-s talking bout the work but what they prove, mane. Y’all know these n—-s really clowns but I’m the truth, mane. And this is what you goin’ for then what’s the use, mane. Tell him this ain’t what he want, not the boy Snow. But between me and you, I think the boy slow.”
A pretty straight call out on not only Guc and Juice, but also the fans for fucking with such "slow" or as some would restate, "terrible" rappers.It looks as if things will heat up again, Jeezy and Gucci are booked to appear on the same bill twice, once on Friday and once on Saturday. Will there be blood? Probably not, but I am certain Jeezy will perform 24, 23 after seeing his reaction to it being played at The Velvet Room this week (below).
Gucci has said that he won't be responding to the track but for the second time in this post, click here.
Jeezy agrees, he told MTV:
"This is what he does. He always does it," Jeezy said. "He says what he says, then he hides his hands. Then when you say something, you're the bad guy. I'm definitely not the aggressor in this situation. I'm just holding my business. I'm a grown-ass man. The best thing for you to do is get your money and leave me the f--- alone. I heard their little statement, 'We ain't feeding into that.' Y'all been feeding into that for four years. Get your money, dog. Don't be out here with the bullsh--.
"I don't got no reason to be picking on nobody or f--- with nobody for no exposure," he added, denying Gucci's claims. "Come on, dog. I ain't never did no sh-- like that to sell no records or get no notoriety. It's personal because he keeps f---ing throwing rocks and hiding your hands, man."
Check out all the previous back and forth here. It's 67% Gucci so Jeezy makes a good case about Guc feeding into it for 4 years. Unsurprisingly despite the differences in output, Jeezy mops up the Gucci pretty easily.
All of a sudden rap beef is real again. I'm all for it as long as no one gets hurt again (jk, I don't care as long as the rappers survive).
Thanks for (all that) reading folks.
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