By Dylan Botelho, Staff Writer
Radric Delantic Davis was a young-man who grew up on the streets of Atlanta, dealing drugs, hustling strangers, fighting rivals and rapping his way to the top. A run in with the law was not anything new for Davis, as he has had multiple stints in jail since his adolescence and a whole host of probations to serve. After he was out from his latest probation, Davis decided to give everyone a look inside the life of the Gucci Mane.
Davis is better known for his stage-name Gucci Mane. If you did not realize it was the one and only Gucci after that last line, maybe this just is not the place. The famous rapper gave birth to a whole new genre of rap, the most popular kind of rap in our generation, trap. In his new autobiography, Gucci Mane tells countless of stories about his childhood from his humble beginnings in Alabama to his life in the streets of Atlanta as a teenage trap-artist, selling coke and marijuana to get the freshest pair of Jordan’s his momma couldn’t afford.
This is all just setting the framework to lead to the life of the Gucci Mane, the person we know now.
There are more stories than tattoos on his body, there are even stories about his tattoos, like the famous ice-cream face tattoo that covers the inside cover of the book. Within its pages we learn everything there is to know about, Radric Davis and Gucci Mane. There are stories of his murder charge, his personal drug use, multiple arrests, and fueds with rappers like Jeezy that left Gucci convinced he would not make it out of the studio alive.
This isn’t the same Gucci though. Just do a quick google search of “Gucci Mane then and now” and you’ll see just how much he’s changed from a chubby rapper with a hard under-belly, to a healthy, happy man. According to him, Gucci Mane is sober and healthy, ready to put the past behind him and push forward with his tremendous success. There were times however, where Gucci Mane thought it all to be over and frankly, it should have been by now.
He writes in his book, “Unlike a lot of guys in this place, I was getting another chance. My last one.” The now 37-year old rapper has made the most of his last chance and has seen overwhelming support from fans in his career that only seems to grow larger and larger by the minute.
There was a time though, when Gucci Mane didn’t even want to rap. He actually though rapping was “lame.” Before the Gucci Mane moniker was born, Davis had no intentions on becoming a rapper. All he cared about was making money, that’s why he stood out on the street dealing drugs to his entire neighborhood. Davis wanted to be the “money-man” behind a rapper, and only decided to start rapping after a short-jail sentence left him with tons of beats, and no friend to manage. It’s thanks to one man that we eventually got the Gucci Mane we know and love today, and that is Zaytoven. Gucci Mane’s childhood friend and now long-time famous producer. Zaytoven had originally sold the beats to Gucci Mane for his friend to rap on, but once that friend gave up on the idea, Zaytoven pushed for Gucci to make use of them because of the talent he saw.
His book is an amazing read for any fan of his. There isn’t a place you can get stories like that unless you’re hearing it come from the mouth of the man himself. It’s entertaining too, even if you’re not a huge fan, Gucci Mane has lived an interesting life filled with struggles and wild events. The man began dealing marijuana in the seventh grade, then elevated to coke by the time he was a freshman. His stories give insight not only to his own life, but just how rough life in certain parts of east Atlanta really are. Gucci Mane raps the way he would normally talk, so why would writing a book be any different? The way Gucci Mane words his sentences and tells a story will leave you with a smile on your face at the very least, so why not give it a read?