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.”
Two Thangs
Gucci Mane Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Two things
Trap house
Gucci mane in the building (Gucci, Gucci)
Laflare, big kat (laflare)
Say we got it like that (like that)
Every thing don't mean two things, watch this
[hook]
Young Gucci mane got a style so strange
Every word I use might mean two things [Repeat: x3]
Young Gucci mane got a style so strange
Every word I use don't mean two thangs
It ain't the way its the principle
What kind of student make mo money than the principal
And I never made the honor roll
But I'm in the lunch line with a honor roll
You pumping iron in the weight room
I'm on the grind got a nine in the weight room
And I never play softball
But I always kept the hard and the soft balls
You doing math on the calculator
I'm weighing slabs doing math on a calculator
And I ain't trying to to write no essays
I'm trying to to get a hundred pounds for my eses
You trying to learn how ta speak Spanish
But my connect trying to teach me ta speak Spanish
And u a monitor in the hallway
I'm all day on the grind wit a 4-way
[Chorus]
You the one who won the spelling bee
I'm the first 3rd grader wit a felony
And I never was a teacher's pet
I'm the one who went and stole the teacher's cigarettes
And I never went on field trips
I'm at walter's trying to buy me some stash slips
And I always been cut throat
15 taking big niggas starter coats
Laflare entertainment by myself
But I used to have a high right, low left
Gettin' money by da truck loads
Rollin up big fat el productos
Before I drank v.s.o.p. remy
I used to drank that MD 22
Wood-grain and reverse 8's
Box Chevy trunk sounding like a earthquake
[Chorus]
I gotta give it to u raw man
Cause I still keep a trunk full of raw
I'm a nigga from the block man
In the club putting down wit the block man
You probably gotta worker 9 to 5
I'm on the grind with the nines for the 55
Bitch u a half of a 12
Low key bucket trying to duck 12's
So what's up with them t-shirts
I got a t-shirt tuck under my t-shirt
Better watch yo fucking tone man
Cause you know Gucci keep a tone man
[Chorus]
In Gucci Mane's song "Two Thangs," he describes his life growing up in the trap house and the stark differences between himself and those who lived a more traditional and lawful lifestyle. The song is filled with references to his rough upbringing, his desire to make money by any means necessary, and his willingness to take risks in order to succeed.
The chorus of the song highlights Gucci's unique approach to language, as he raps, "Young Gucci mane got a style so strange / Every word I use might mean two things." This highlights his clever use of double entendres throughout the song, as he references both drugs and his own personal hustle through his lyrics.
In the first verse, Gucci contrasts his earnings as a trap house dealer with the meager salary of a school principal, and boasts about his ability to excel in his chosen trade even without a traditional education. He then goes on to describe his own physical fitness routine, which involves lifting drugs instead of weights, and his skill at performing calculations related to drugs and money, rather than academics.
In the second verse, Gucci again highlights his criminal activities, boasting about committing felonies at a young age and stealing from his own teachers. He also references his connections to the drug trade, and his success in making money by any means possible.
Line by Line Meaning
Gucci mane in the building (Gucci, Gucci)
Gucci Mane is present and ready to rap.
Laflare, big kat (laflare)
These are Gucci Mane's nicknames.
Say we got it like that (like that)
They are confident in their abilities and possessions.
Every thing don't mean two things, watch this
Not everything has a double meaning, but Gucci Mane's words may have a second layer of meaning.
Young Gucci mane got a style so strange
Gucci Mane has a unique style of rapping.
Every word I use might mean two things [Repeat: x3]
His words may have double meanings.
Every word I use don't mean two thangs
His words may not have double meanings every time.
It ain't the way its the principle
It's not the situation, it's the principle behind it.
What kind of student make mo money than the principal
A student who can make more money than the principal is impressive.
And I never made the honor roll
Gucci Mane did not make the honor roll in school.
But I'm in the lunch line with a honor roll
Despite not making the honor roll academically, he has earned respect in the lunch line.
You pumping iron in the weight room
You are working out in a gym.
I'm on the grind got a nine in the weight room
He is working hard to make money and has a gun for protection.
And I never play softball
Gucci Mane did not play softball.
But I always kept the hard and the soft balls
He has both hard drugs and soft drugs on hand.
You doing math on the calculator
You are doing math with a calculator.
I'm weighing slabs doing math on a calculator
He is weighing and calculating drugs to make money.
And I ain't trying to to write no essays
Gucci Mane is not interested in writing essays.
I'm trying to to get a hundred pounds for my eses
He is trying to obtain a large quantity of drugs to sell.
You trying to learn how ta speak Spanish
You are trying to learn to speak Spanish.
But my connect trying to teach me ta speak Spanish
His drug supplier is trying to teach him Spanish.
And u a monitor in the hallway
You are hall monitor.
I'm all day on the grind wit a 4-way
He is working hard all day with a four-way stop sign.
You the one who won the spelling bee
You won the spelling bee competition.
I'm the first 3rd grader wit a felony
He was the first third-grader he knew to get a felony.
And I never was a teacher's pet
He was not a teacher's favorite student.
I'm the one who went and stole the teacher's cigarettes
He stole cigarettes from his teacher.
And I never went on field trips
He did not attend field trips.
I'm at walter's trying to buy me some stash slips
He is trying to buy drug stash slips at Walter's.
And I always been cut throat
He has always been ruthless.
15 taking big niggas starter coats
At fifteen, he was stealing jackets from big guys.
Laflare entertainment by myself
He is a solo artist in Laflare Entertainment.
But I used to have a high right, low left
He used to have a fancy car, with a high right and low left side.
Gettin' money by da truck loads
Gucci Mane is making money in large amounts.
Rollin up big fat el productos
He is smoking large cigars.
Before I drank v.s.o.p. remy
Before he drank expensive cognac, he drank MD 22.
Wood-grain and reverse 8's
He has a fancy car with wood interior and eight-inch rims in reverse.
Box Chevy trunk sounding like a earthquake
The trunk of his Chevy is so loud that it sounds like an earthquake.
I gotta give it to u raw man
He has to be honest with the listener.
Cause I still keep a trunk full of raw
He has a large stash of drugs in his car trunk.
I'm a nigga from the block man
He is from a rough neighborhood.
In the club putting down wit the block man
He is supporting the neighborhood in the club.
You probably gotta worker 9 to 5
You probably have a regular job.
I'm on the grind with the nines for the 55
He is hustling with guns to make money quickly.
Bitch u a half of a 12
The listener is half a brick of drugs.
Low key bucket trying to duck 12's
They are driving a nondescript car to avoid the police.
So what's up with them t-shirts
He is asking about the t-shirts.
I got a t-shirt tuck under my t-shirt
He has a t-shirt hidden under his current shirt.
Better watch yo fucking tone man
The listener needs to be careful with their tone.
Cause you know Gucci keep a tone man
Gucci Mane always has a gun on him.
Lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
Written by: DEMETRIUS STEWART, DEMETRIUS L STEWART, RADRIC DELANTIC DAVIS
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
A1 Since Day 1
This is one of the hardest songs on this album #classic 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
054BlackGate
Album Used Ta Go Hard Af Still Does
F Cuamnz
Gucci mane still bumpin heavy af in 2020
Jordan Peters
damn i miss this shit. this is one of my favorites by gucci
Sylvia Foster
Me too💯💯
Da Greazy
u whyte lol
Javian Johnson
Just found this song today...happy that I did 🔥🔥🔥
Torrence Cameron-Brooks
I admit this gucci go a lil harder but gucci got way better as a rapper overtime. now he can spit to any beat in only a way he can and his shit got 100% clearer
Saad Dolo 00
this album was 🔥 hustled to this all day.wordplay on this song classic
HeathNotKeith316
Old gucci mane got a style so strange!!!