It’s said that art mirrors life. In hip-hop’s case, there’s always been a deliberate entanglement of perception and reality. Fans demand their MCs be real…but never too real. Successful hip-hop is about the hint of the danger, the tease of it, the mystique. Hip-hop is about balance.
Gucci Mane is an artist striving for that balance, volatility versus musicality. Controversy, including a feud with former collaborator Young Jeezy, has grabbed the headlines, with insufficient regard paid to his considerable mic skills, raw talent, and business acumen. Gucci is looking to wrest his name from public speculation and let his own words do the talking.
“I wish everybody well who’s making money in this rap game,” the Atlanta-raised rapper says, dismissing the controversy that followed him in the past. “My own rap game is going so good, I’ve got so many things on my plate at my label, that I don’t got time for other people’s business.” With a deal with Asylum Records as the boss of his own label, So Icey Entertainment, Gucci does indeed have a full schedule with no time to dwell on the past.
“I live my life with no regrets. I just wish that a lot of things never happened, but anybody can wish,” says Gucci. Sounds like a man with his eyes on the prize. And you’d expect nothing less from an artist who ground his way to the top via the hustle of independent records. Signing to Big Cat Records in the wake of his local single “Black Tee,” he dropped his debut record, Trap House, in May 2005. The independent album moved an impressive 140,000 units, largely on the strength of the “Icy” single, featuring Jeezy. Clamor over song rights sparked dispute, and the resulting rift grew.
Controversy notwithstanding, Mane’s independence was cemented: “I was on the independent scene for about two years,” he recalls. “It’s crazy! You gotta go into your own pocket to support your craft. You need other avenues to have money coming in, to support your stuff. You might win, you might lose, and it’s a gamble out there with the independent circuit. One thing you’d better have is good music because without that, you go downhill fast in the independent game.”
Good music firmly in hand, Gucci was fast approaching stardom when more tragedy befell him. But let’s backtrack; how did the man born Radric Davis in Bessemer, Alabama, become Gucci Mane, mouthpiece for Atlanta stuntin’? Mane remembers little from his time in Alabama, just that it was rural, and that it’s changed dramatically since he left at the age of nine. “I gotta shout out Alabama though, because they holdin’ it down,” he affirms. “Every time I go there to do a show, I’m impressed with how hip-hop culture has taken root.”
Mane’s identity coalesced when he moved with his mother to Atlanta. “I lived all of my adolescent and adult life in Atlanta,” he explains. “I’m from East Atlanta Zone Six; it was hard, man, it was real rough. I grew up in the Starter jacket era: they’d take your Starter jacket, your 8Ball jacket, they’d take your hat, your shoes. It was just no holds barred on the streets, dog eat dog. If you missed the bus, you had to be crewed up or you’d get jumped. It was wild when I came up.”
It’s a bleak portrait. When asked to describe his home life more vividly, Mane offers a look into his contemplative side, a side honed as a schoolyard poet. “I was just a young dude in a single parent house most of my life. I can’t complain that much. I would guess it’s like any black child growing up in a single parent household. There are a lot of people who know how that is. I didn’t have a lot coming up; but what I did have, I appreciated. I was blessed to have a caring mother to raise me right and to help me with my business ventures; she’s been there through the whole struggle. There’s a lot that goes along with that; it made me who I am today.”
A stepfather would enter the picture during Mane’s adolescence, introducing not only a male figure, but also inspiration for Mane’s unusual moniker. “My father came in, the original Gucci Mane; that’s what people in the neighborhood called him, and that’s where I get my name from. From then on, I grew up the son of a hustler and a schoolteacher; it was the best of both worlds because I was educated twice.” Drawing inspiration from a pantheon of rappers before him –Big Daddy Kane, LL Cool J, Ice Cube, the Beastie Boys, N.W.A—Mane went on to release Trap House, a lethal brew of his signature sound: “I call my music straight Gucci: going hard and whatever beats you make you for me, if I’m feeling it, if I’m rocking with it, I’m gonna crush it. When you hear me, you hear a lot of pain, a lot of hood; you hear what’s going on in the inner city in Atlanta.”
Unfortunately, Trap House was ill timed; the month of its release, Gucci was accused of murder and jailed for two days. Eventually deemed to be acting in self-defense, and without sufficient evidence to hold him, Mane was exonerated. But the ordeal left an indelible imprint on the man. “I learned to keep better company, watch where I go, and be mindful of my surroundings at all times,” he reveals. “Watch what I say, watch what I do and how I do it, just keep myself out of the wrong crowd.”
“I always stand up man,” he continues. “I’m one of the toughest guys I know. It’ll take a lot more than that to break me down.” Undeterred, Mane was back in the studio, preparing 2006’s eerily apropos Hard To Kill. The buzz from Hard To Kill vaulted Gucci Mane from regional commodity to national treasure, and major labels responded accordingly: “There was a bidding war going on, and I liked Atlantic’s approach. They made it known that they wanted me, they felt where I was going and that I could grow with them.”
Asylum/Atlantic Records welcomed Gucci Mane in early ’07, granting him his own imprint, So Icey Entertainment. With it comes an entire stable of artists, the So Icey Boyz. As the Boyz ready for their own exposure –“I got them in training; they be in the weight room, pumping iron, doing pushups, shopping at the mall, buying ice”—Gucci is focused on his magnum opus, Back to the Trap House. “I started working on the album, and by the third song, I was like ‘This is going back to the Trap House.’ I started feeling the same way I did when I made my first album. It had the same feel to it, the same freshness. And I had the same hunger and desire I had when I first started rapping.”
“Since I went major, I want everybody to know I’m still keeping it street, keeping it hood,” Gucci maintains. “I’m trying to take it back to all my fans that I had when I first started my career. And at the same time, I’m trying to open up my new album to a new fan base. So it’s a mix for everybody coming together, like my first album was.” Gucci has always prided himself on his innate ability, and his refusal to let guest appearances dictate the tone of his records. “I just want people to know I’m a great songwriter, man,” he asserts. “I’m passionate about what I do, and it’s choreographed strategically when I do it. I bring a lot of experience, creative wordplay, and a crazy style. And my albums, I record most of the songs without writing them down; it’s a God-given gift and I just get paid for it. It come from God, it’s like wondering what makes a bird fly. He made me a poet like the great poets of the past.”
But don’t mistake Gucci’s confidence for self-absorption. The vicissitudes of his career have dictated a longer view. Lyrics aside, he’s less preoccupied with visible means and more so with acting as an emissary from his under-repped block. “I’m not the one to glorify what goes on in the hood,” he insists. “We have everything there, the whole range from violence to people getting on the bus and going to work. There’s a lot more to the hood than just drugs. It’s a bigger story, there’s a big picture. I went to school in that neighborhood, I worked there, I trapped there, I hustled there, and I got my name there. I’m proud to be from East Atlanta Zone Six, and I claim there. I hold that on my back and carry that, to be the first one from there to really rock.”
And Gucci’s professional aims have matured as well. While other rappers stress platinum plaques, Gucci hasn’t forgotten the route he took to stardom. “I made a lot of CDs on my own. People fucked with me and supported me, and just made me the man I am today. That’s my blueprint right there, and I stay mindful of it. So now, my only concern is that people feel my music; at the end of the day, I do it for people to feel it. If one person feel it, two people feel it, I feel like my job’s been done.”
Fortunately for Gucci, he should be prepared to welcome an army of new fans with Back to the Trap House. But longstanding fans shouldn’t fear; they’ll recognize “Freaky Gurl,” reprised from its previous appearance from Hard To Kill. Luda, upon hearing the joint, asked for a guest spot on the remix. Said remix now appears as the lead single on Back to the Trap House, following in Gucci’s theme of mating old and new. Over a bouncing, meandering beat from Cyber Sapp, the two cook up the requisite concoction of whips, chips, and chicks. Also look out for “Bird Flu,” the album’s number two single, laced by New-York based Supa Sonics. Elsewhere, firm guest verses from Rich Boy and Pimp C of UGK round out Gucci’s regional flavor, while Bay-area producer Zaytoven (of “Icy” renown) locks down Gucci’s West Coast appeal.
Gucci Mane has something for everyone, and with the struggles of the past in his rearview, Gucci is settled in for his ride to the top. “I’m best known for controversy but I’m trying to gain respect as a songwriter and entertainer. I plan to hit them so hard with this album; who knows what the future will bring. I’ll be banging them out till I can’t bang no more.”
Felix Brothers
Gucci Mane Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
We the felix brothers, vato, we the felix brothers
We count 200 million every time we meet each other
I'm in LA, caviar, like a Meechie Brother
Guwop a felix brother, PeeWee he a felix brother
We the felix brothers, nigga, we the felix brothers
We'll cut your body into pieces, send it to your mother
VVS' br-br-br got diamonds on the cutters
[Verse 1: Gucci Mane]
They call me Felix, when I'm in Pheonix, I'm selling cheap shit
Cheap bricks, that ain't that remix, I got that clean shit
I bulletproof my Hummers, I got Noreaga numbers
Call it Christmas in the summer when I touch down with them bumpers
Stash house in the jungle, I done filled it up with hundreds
A hundred killers, just go like gorillas, Brick Squad we ain't (?)
Throw a (?) we blow up your beamer, then cut off your fingers
Got a gold AK, and a gold AP, and I'm slidin' down the street on fo's
Got a hit squad vato, (?) niggas
(?) won't sip on that ammo
The world is all mine, I want all of it nigga
And I got enough choppers for all of you niggas
You say you're my friend, and you say you're my man, but you roll with the nigga that snitched on a nigga
You're down on your luck and you say you're fucked up and I should get your white for a brick of that dust
Money got a little dust on it
Blunt got a little tuss' on it
Fell in love with that white girl
At first I had a little crush on it
Dope coming by train nigga
Caravan then by plane nigga
So Icey print on my last brick
But these bricks plain jane, nigga
[Hook]
[Verse 2: PeeWee Longway]
Chop your body into pieces, send it to your momma
Walking in the underground tunnel with a hundred bundles
And a hundred gunners spraying colors, wet you up, tomato
We at war with chapos, send my head honcho, get your bitch at brunch
Double back duwop for lunch, big guns that shoot outside front
Cocaine, lean, marijuana, close call, got goons on call, show up on your porch
OG weed rolled up in my blunt
We the Felix Brothers, nigga
Smash your ass straight out that junt
Felix brothers, nigga
Every time we have a meeting, agree, count two hundred (?)
AK that go by the name of my car, and my brother (?)
My max is extortion, them youngins are bussin'
(?)
New York, meet with 50 for a (?)
(?)
Told you before, we them Felix Brothers
Me and my main man, we (?)
You see one of us, you gon' see the other
My bredren, my bredren, my bredren
I told you before, don't beef with us
We letting go rounds in the beamer truck
Fuck up your whole town like Katrina struck
I told you before, we the Felix Brothers
Longway!
[Hook]
The song "Felix Brothers" by Gucci Mane features a hook that highlights the Felix brothers' lifestyle, which focuses on their wealth, drug usage, and inclination towards violence. This hook sets the tone for the rest of the lyrics, from Gucci Mane's recounting of his drug deals to PeeWee Longway's raps about chopping bodies into pieces. Gucci Mane also touches upon the Felix brothers' rivalry with other drug cartels, such as the War on Chapos, indicating the danger that comes with their line of work.
The song's lyrics showcase the Felix brothers' glamorous lifestyle but also emphasize the violent and deadly nature of their profession. Gucci Mane's lyrics indicate his willingness to use his weapons to kill and highlights his loyal relationship with his "hit squad vato." PeeWee Longway's lyrics also highlight the Felix brothers' violent tendencies and their disregard for human life. The chorus's repetition of the phrase "we the Felix brothers" reinforces the brotherly bond these men share and the danger they pose to their enemies.
Line by Line Meaning
We the felix brothers, vato, we the felix brothers
We are the Felix brothers, and we are proud of it
We count 200 million every time we meet each other
We each have a lot of money, amounting to $200 million, and we talk about it when we meet
I'm in LA, caviar, like a Meechie Brother
I'm currently in Los Angeles, enjoying the finer things in life, much like Meechie Brother would
Guwop a felix brother, PeeWee he a felix brother
Both Guwop and PeeWee are also Felix brothers
We'll cut your body into pieces, send it to your mother
We are capable of extreme violence, and we won't hesitate to dismember and send your body parts to your mother
VVS' br-br-br got diamonds on the cutters
Our diamond cutters are of the highest quality, with VVS diamonds adorning them
Ballin' hard in Tijuana, cocaine, lean and marijuana
We are living extravagantly in Tijuana, indulging in drugs like cocaine, lean, and marijuana
They call me Felix, when I'm in Pheonix, I'm selling cheap shit
My alias is Felix, and when I'm in Phoenix, I'm selling low-quality drugs
Cheap bricks, that ain't that remix, I got that clean shit
My drugs may be cheap, but they're uncut and of high quality
Money got a little dust on it
My money may not be clean, with traces of illegal activity on it
Blunt got a little tuss' on it
My blunt may be flawed or damaged, but I'll still smoke it
I told you before, we them Felix Brothers
As I've said before, we are the Felix Brothers and you shouldn't mess with us
Contributed by Grace R. Suggest a correction in the comments below.
@javservin2488
Who still listening 2023
@fultonstreetfreestyle
Rip young dolph🙏🕊️
@deimoskvlt8778
M I L E S S I L V A S
@Gomxss_
👍
@iscrappyhd4228
1947 brought me here aswell🙌🏾😂😂
@samuelvictor9576
+madicri ali soty pleasss
@ethanchalmers6645
+madicri ali The nollie inward at the start is that g
@_dv.99
+madicri ali YUUU KNOOOOW!
@Felipe-md9fu
RIP DOLPH. Felix brothers 4L.
@lb0272
first dolph song i ever heard when it came out big fan since RIP