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.”
Grown Man
Gucci Mane Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
I'm 'bouta throw it again
I take my life in my hands
Cause I'm much more than a man
(I am grown ass man)
Now that I'm finally free
I was lost but now I'm found
Super high can't touch the ground
Life tested me but god blessin' me
Every sixteen bars is testimony
From the jailhouse junk to the Testarossa
I have find myself then remind myself
Woke up I'm grown I gotta blame myself
Streets taught me everything I train to sell
Did wrong so long know didn't know nothin' else
Then my lima crew was like me a member
Think every man worth, enemies himself
Glad as well but I'm mad as hell
Cause my best friend probably gon' die in jail
I ain't no lie to tell prolly cry like hell
If I dwell on it 'cause he got a eighty years
I'm going hard see I might as well
Guess I gotta a hard head like my daddy had
And my daddy dad my great great great great
Grandpa had a really crazy swag
So I stand a day
Diggin' down a grave
That if I can change now
And my mind is made
A got a point and prove
And a sign to raise
Can't let them make mistakes
That his daddy made
Finally free,
You're never send me away
Took everything that I had
For me to follow the plan
Now that I'm finally free,
I'm 'bouta throw it again
I take my life in my hands
Cause I'm much more than a man
Now that I'm finally free
Squash the beef im free of that
This crazy summer ain't feelin that
I guess they wanna see us kill each other
If im dead who the fuck gon' help my mother
I done struggled to hustle im too hard for this
I done rushed and killed ain't proud of that
Smoke weed took pills sold powder patches
I'm a solider I understand where the cowards at
My home boy gone where the flowers at
Out of money and the work can't bring that back
If I had one wish, wish momma there
Could come down now and see me rap
But she see me now and I believe in that
Wanna script of that, I ain't going back
So I put my family on I my back
Lost so much I cant pay that back
I was lost but now I'm found
I was blind but now I see
Super high can't touch the ground
Life tested me but god blessin' me
Every sixteen bars is testimony
From the jailhouse junk to the Testarossa
I have find myself then remind myself
Fuck up the wrong I gotta blind myself
It's Gucci, huh
Finally free,
You'll never take me away
Took everything that I have
For me to follow the plan
Now that I' m finally free,
I'm 'bouta do it again
I take my life in my hands
Cause I'm much more than a man
Now that I'm finally free
I was lost but now I'm found
Don't you push, can't keep me down
Seen my life go round and round
I say I straighten out my life
And I ain't never going back no
Now that I'm finally free,
Finally free,
You'll never take me away
You'll never take me away
To get everything that I have
Everything that I
You need to follow the plan
You need to follow the plan
Now that I'm finally free,
Finally free
I'm 'bouta do it again
Throw it again
I take my life in my hands
I take my life in my hands
Cause I'm much more than a man
I'm much more than a man
Now that I'm finally free
(I am grown ass man)
The song "Grown Man" by Gucci Mane featuring Estelle discusses the struggles and growth of a man who has been through a lot. The artist talks about how he has found himself and has become a much more mature and responsible individual. The chorus of the song emphasizes that he is finally free of all his past mistakes and problems, and he is determined to live his life to the fullest.
The lyrics also touch on the artist's past, and how he struggled with an addiction to drugs and a life of crime. He speaks about how the streets taught him everything he knows and trained him to sell drugs. The artist regrets the mistakes he has made, and notes that he has lost many friends and family members along the way.
Overall, the song "Grown Man" is an introspective look at the life of an individual who has been through many tough times but has come out stronger and wiser. The artist speaks to the power of growth, forgiveness, and redemption as they relate to his personal experience.
Line by Line Meaning
Now that I'm finally free
After being released from jail, I am ready to start anew.
I'm 'bouta throw it again
I'm about to start living life to the fullest.
I take my life in my hands
I am responsible for the direction my life takes.
Cause I'm much more than a man
I have learned important life lessons that have matured me beyond just being human.
(I am grown ass man)
I am a mature adult and am ready to take on the world.
I was lost but now I'm found
I have gained insight and knowledge to overcome my troubled past.
I was blind but now I see
I used to be unaware and impulsive, but now I have clarity and purpose.
Super high can't touch the ground
I am feeling good and invincible, but still grounded in reality.
Life tested me but god blessin' me
I've faced many struggles and challenges, but I have faith that God is on my side.
Every sixteen bars is testimony
Each verse of my music tells a story of my life and experiences.
From the jailhouse junk to the Testarossa
I've gone from being in jail to experiencing the riches of life.
I have find myself then remind myself
I've had to rediscover who I am and what's important.
Woke up I'm grown I gotta blame myself
I've matured and realized that I am responsible for my own actions.
Streets taught me everything I train to sell
My upbringing in rough neighborhoods has taught me valuable skills for success.
Did wrong so long know didn't know nothin' else
I was trapped in a cycle of wrongdoing because I didn't know any other way of life.
Then my lima crew was like me a member
My loyal friends have always been there for me like family.
Think every man worth, enemies himself
I believe that everyone has worth, but sometimes we can self-sabotage and become our own enemies.
Glad as well but I'm mad as hell
I am grateful for my freedom but angry at the injustices of the system.
Cause my best friend probably gon' die in jail
I am heartbroken because my closest friend is facing a long prison sentence.
I ain't no lie to tell prolly cry like hell
I am honest about my emotions, and the thought of losing my friend makes me sad.
If I dwell on it 'cause he got a eighty years
I can't let myself get stuck in negative thoughts because my friend received a severe sentence.
I'm going hard see I might as well
I am determined to make the most of my freedom and live life to the fullest.
Guess I gotta a hard head like my daddy had
I have a stubborn streak like my father, which can be both a blessing and a curse.
And my daddy dad my great great great great
My ancestors have passed down their attitudes and qualities to me.
Grandpa had a really crazy swag
My grandfather had a unique personality and style that has influenced me.
So I stand a day
I am proud of who I am and where I come from.
Diggin' down a grave
I am very serious about making major changes in my life.
That if I can change now
If I can turn my life around and be successful, it gives hope to others who are struggling.
And my mind is made
I have a clear sense of purpose and direction for my life.
A got a point and prove
I have something to prove to myself and to the world.
And a sign to raise
I want to inspire others with my story of overcoming adversity.
Can't let them make mistakes
I want to help others avoid making the same mistakes I did.
That his daddy made
I don't want to repeat the same mistakes that my father made.
Squash the beef im free of that
I want to put past conflicts behind me and move forward with my life.
This crazy summer ain't feelin that
I'm not going to let negative influences distract me from my goals.
I guess they wanna see us kill each other
Some people prefer to see others fail, even if it means harming themselves or their community.
If im dead who the fuck gon' help my mother
It's important for me to stay alive and support my family.
I done struggled to hustle im too hard for this
I've experienced many challenges in life, but I am tough and persistent.
I done rushed and killed ain't proud of that
I've made poor choices in the past that I regret.
Smoke weed took pills sold powder patches
I've engaged in risky behaviors and sold drugs to make money in the past.
I'm a solider I understand where the cowards at
I have been through tough situations and know what it takes to be brave.
My home boy gone where the flowers at
I've lost a close friend and am grieving their passing.
Out of money and the work can't bring that back
I've experienced financial struggles and am trying to overcome them.
If I had one wish, wish momma there
I wish my mother were alive to see me succeed.
Could come down now and see me rap
I wish my mother could see me perform my music.
But she see me now and I believe in that
Even though my mother has passed away, I feel her presence and support in my life.
Wanna script of that, I ain't going back
I don't want to go back to my past life of crime and hardship.
So I put my family on I my back
I am determined to support my family and be a positive influence on them.
Lost so much I cant pay that back
I've lost a lot in life and can't make up for all of it.
Don't you push, can't keep me down
I won't let anyone hold me back or put me in a negative situation.
Seen my life go round and round
I've been through many ups and downs in my life.
I say I straighten out my life
I've made a conscious effort to improve myself and make better choices.
And I ain't never going back no
I'm committed to living a positive, productive life and won't revert to my old ways.
Finally free,
I am free from incarceration and ready to live my life.
You'll never send me away
No one can take my freedom away from me.
Took everything that I had
I've lost a lot in life but am determined to overcome it.
For me to follow the plan
I have a clear sense of direction and purpose for my life.
I'm 'bouta do it again
I'm ready to live life to the fullest and enjoy all it has to offer.
I take my life in my hands
I am responsible for my own future and destiny.
Cause I'm much more than a man
I have experienced and learned a lot in my life that has made me into a mature, wise person.
Finally free
I am no longer restrained by my past mistakes and am free to make a positive change.
Lyrics © BMG Rights Management, Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Songtrust Ave, Warner Chappell Music, Inc.
Written by: RADRIC DAVIS, ESTELLE SWARAY, JERRY DUPLESSIS, JIM JONSIN, WAYNE ANDREW WILKINS
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
Fabio Zuliani
One of the best rap songs ever written, I love these words, this music and Estelle's velvety voice. 🎧
Joe Williams
Facts
Zero Fuks
100
E Jones
exactly!
Birdie Brietling
This is the song you play when you’ve achieved something major in life. I was proud of Gucci when he blew up
Isiac Baldanella
Great song..Gucci normally does trap music, but he switched it up with a differnt type, Admitting his wrong things he has done...GREAT SONG
wicketts16
This is one of Gucci's only songs that aren't about wearing hella ice just enjoy that there is an actual message in this song.
Anthony Gueorguiev
"Got a point to prove and a son to raise" We have found the true Gucci
J Palu
#AMEN 😭✊🏼 😂💯
iShootskaters
gucci needs to stay like this..he kills it.