They call it Sprawl City, and with good reason: As big as it is, and as much land as it consumes in its ever-outward push (it's the ninth-biggest metropolitan area in the country, despite its official city limits holding under half a million), Atlanta is always one step away from the rural. Even in Bankhead, Midtown, East Point, side streets are green and houses nestle in among trunks and under boughs. Don't let the backwoods feel fool you, though, because the thing about Atlanta is this: it's a hustler's town. All kinds of hustlers. Until recently, the Black Mafia Family proclaimed their presence from the famous billboard. A certain Reverend King hustled the ultimate dream here. Sheeeit, even Coca-Cola, the biggest hustler of them all--who else could convince African children that they need to drink sugar water?--makes its home here.
So it's in the town's DNA, deep as the blues. And sometimes it crops up when you're not even looking for it. Riding in the back of the Range down Peachtree, for instance. Young Jeezy's manager and consigliere Coach K is driving, with Cool and Dre in tow--they're in town to mix down a track they produced for Jeezy's upcoming album. It's a Saturday night in the middle of So So Def Weekend, and a couple of nights ago Jeezy co-sponsored a $200,000 "strip-off" at an area club. Dre heard about the jumpoff all the way out in the Midwest. "My nigga in St. Louis told me 'them niggas threw like a hundred thousand dollars cash in the air,'" he tells Coach K. "They tryin' to bring it back to the old guys that was doin' it every Saturday night out here!"
"Yeah," Coach K says, "them boys did it three times a week."
"And it was over a hundred every time?"
"Maaaaan, they gon' spend fifty at the bar."
"Jesus Christ," Dre says with a laugh.
And when the Range pulls onto one of those backwoods-looking side streets and into the parking lot of Patchwerk Studios, it's no surprise to find Jeezy inside dressed for the hustle. Black fitted, black tee, black shorts, black Chucks; it's pretty much what you would've found him in back in the hand-to-hand days, before he plotted his movement. He huddles with Cool and Dre, and snippets of his conversation float out over the thumping sounds of the track. To me, you hear him say, a regular song ain't good enough--these niggas comin' up, it ain't hard to get your music on these days. I'm gonna create my own lane.
No time for parties tonight, Jeezy. You're 80 tracks deep into The Inspiration: Thug Motivation 102. Focused, maaaan. Gotta be that way for your sophomore album. Especially when your freshman outing went double plat in an age of barely-gold, when your self-proclaimed "movement" sent shockwaves not only through the A but through every trap in America, when the whole damn world is waiting to see what The Snowman does next. You're not a rapper, but you're working harder than damn near any rapper out there. Hustle is as hustle does.
* * *
The thing about Jeezy is this: as corny as it sounds, he carved out a little corner of the game and made it synonymous with his name. It's hard to imagine an exercise as unnecessary as explaining dude and the impact he's had on hip-hop as of late, but let's try anyway. First off, it's a rag-to-riches story worthy of a movie--theatrical release too, none of this straight-to-DVD nonsense. Young boy from outside Macon, Georgia becomes a young hustler around the A-Town. Gets his money up, loses some friends along the way, and has an epiphany that goes a li'l something like this:
The young d-boy forms a label, grinds heavy, locally releases Come Shop With Me, then finds a champion in the form of DJ Drama. Two mixtapes--Streetz is Watching and Trap or Die--straight flatten the hood. "It was like a phenomenon," says Drama. "It was unbelievable. Unbelievable. From when the first tape came out, it started to get back to me, and it just grew incredibly." Bidding war ensues, Def Jam wins, and in 2005 Let's Get It: Thug Motivation 101 becomes an increasingly rare multiplatinum debut. Fueled by a lethal combo of dope-boy koans and laconic adlibs, the album continues what by now even President Hov is calling a Movement. Oh, and let's not forget the gold-certified Boyz N Da Hood album that dropped mere weeks before, giving Jeezy two albums in a month's time.
Fast-forward to the present, a year and a half later, and zoom in on Jeezy. He's in a quiet room off the main studio at Patchwerk: Just some white walls, hardwood floors and him, fidgeting in an Aeron chair. Outside in the world, hip-hop is all but snowed in, and it would be foolish to say Jeezy didn't have something to do with it. He knows it, and it's wearing on him. "I didn't want it to be a fad, homie," he says. "And to me, that's what's happenin'. I started somethin', so now I gotta fix it."
That's not even the main problem. People will always be making music about certain topics; you can't stop that. But a cat like Jeezy takes issue more with the honesty behind the message than the message itself. "You can do this," he says, "and then you get to a point where it's about the money. And you can tell when it's about the money, 'cause a nigga change up his whole shit." It's always tempting to wonder who Jeezy's referring to, but he's not usually one to name names. "Man, you can see it!" he says. "I ain't gotta say! It ain't spreadin' the word, it ain't about testin' the hearts of men no more. It's about a paycheck. And you can tell in the music, it's like, 'I liked you when you was you, nigga. What the fuck is this?'"
The idea of change hangs around Jeezy these days, close as his CTE chain. It's not just the idea of a trendspotting rapper switching up his style, either. Not even close. He's much more attuned to changes in himself, changes in people around him.
Himself he can handle. It's the other cats that worry him. "This rap shit kinda opened my eyes to a lot of shit," he says. "Motherfuckers you thought was down with you, that ain't what it is. I'm livin' my life and to anybody else it's perfect: You're the shit, you're the man, the streets love you, you got everybody fuckin' witcha, you can't do no wrong. But it's like, what if one of y'all niggas flip out and kill me, man?"
And if the sentiment sounds a bit Makavelian in its doom and gloom, a new song called "Bury Me A G" (sound familiar?) makes sure you see the storm clouds. As does a loine from the album's first official single, "I Love It": "I live for the moment, Lord knows I'm gon' die/and when I get to Hell, Lord knows I'm gon' fry."
"I ain't trippin' on the dyin' part," he says, "'cause that's how this game goes. But sometimes you forget about your family, your friends, the people who take care--the people who got love for you. If you lost your voice tomorrow, they'd be right there; if you got shot the fuck up, they'd be right there. Nobody knows what's on the other side or how it goes down when it's over, so I just wanna be prepared. But whle I'm here, I'ma do my best. Everybody fucks up, it's makin' it right that counts."
It's not that he's obsessed with dying--he's quick to shut that down. But for someone with a grind like his ("perfectionist" is the word Drama uses) it's natural to sink into your own thoughts. "I'm sorry for being depressing, my nigga," he says at one point. "I had a hard life."
The other thing about Jeezy is this: it's some je ne sais quoi shit is what it is. He has famously dismissed any artistic ambition ("I don't even want to be no rapper," he said in a 2005 interview in XXL. "I got love for this music 'cause it's a hustle.") And every critic and his mother has dismissed him as a remedial lyricist. But still, dude goes in. Not in a syllables-per-bar hyperintellectual way or even a clever-ass way, but in a sleepy genius way. A handful of well-spaced words that say more about a certain situation than a doctoral dissertation ever could. Like these from Trap or Die's "Street Niggaz": "Got two strikes, nigga dodgin' one time/This is real life, you got the nerve to call it punchlines?/Well, I got a punchline for ya/Y'ain't talkin' 'bout shit, I wanna see my lawyer." Heeeeeeyyyyy!.
So fuck with his day if you want to. Argue about elementary cadence, about every bar sounding the same. It's not like he's checking for you anyway; Senor Jenkins knows what side his bread is buttered on. "We could go around the corner," he says, "and I could take you in and play some of my new shit for niggas, and niggas will lose they fuckin' minds. Then I go play this shit for some critics, and they be like, Well, it's cool, but you coulda.... Real muthafuckas in the world, they gon' accept you for who you are. They don't care about the breakdowns, and the whatchacouldadids and what you said last time. They don't care! Get me through my day. I can stay over here and be cool and I can show my face, or I can go over here and fuck with these mufuckas who already hate me. That's the dilemma. And I'm goin' with the niggas who love me."
While Jeezy remains adamant about not being lyrical, about not being a rapper, don't look now, but that's just what he is. The beats on The Inspiration are still bottom-of-the-map heavy, courtesy of the usual suspects (Shawty Redd, Speedy, Drumma Boy, Cool & Dre). There's a joint from Scott Storch, one from Timbaland. But listen to the lyrics and you'll hear a man plotting a step ahead. He might extend a metaphor an extra line, might have a couple more words in a bar from time to time, might even expand his subject matter.
"I had to speak what niggas like so they'd be interested in me," he says about the subtle shift, "so now I can talk to 'em about the real shit of this shit. I don't want niggas thinkin' that the first thing that come outta my mouth is some bricks and that's it. Like, I'm more than a chain, more than a watch, more than a car. It's just that that's all I knew. But I've been all over the world now."
"Everybody get money," he continues. "Make a difference, dude! Not in a righteous way, but in my lifetime I saw a lot of shit. Anything I can share with somebody to help them through, maybe to be safer, maybe to be a li'l smarter, a li'l slicker. I'm just sayin' if people knew better, they'd do better."
Speaking of which, it's clear Jeezy took a hint from Jared from Subway and dropped some of the roundness off the Snowman frame. "I want longevity, man," he says. "Drinkin' twenty bottles of Cristal a week yourself and six, seven zips of kush, I wasn't physically ready. It wasn't tryin' to be no sex symbol, it was 'can I get myself together.'" So between the weight room and running, dude dropped 35 pounds--and USDA became a thugged-out Celebrity Fit Club: "Every nigga in my camp go to the gym now! Slick Pulla in the gym, Bloodraw in the gym. It's crazy! I'm callin' niggas like "where you at?" "we in the gym!"" He laughs. "Workin' with trainers and shit."
As early as July, the street single "I Do This" had Atlanta radio on lock. When fall rolled around, Jeezy leaked "I Love It." With 80 songs in the can for a year-end release, Jeezy has more than enough to work with, including joints with Snoop, Three 6 Mafia, and Keyshia Cole (oh, and for you US Weekly fruit flies, all this talk about him and Keyshia? Jeezy saith: "nah, it's nothin'"). But he's not done. Not even close--dude wants to do another 20 before he figures out what's on the album. ""But to paint that inspiration picture, I'ma need that inspiration music.," he says. "My niggas tell me all the time, 'you trippin,' but I just wanna be heard. It ain't about no money, it ain't about no paycheck, ain't about no video. I just wanna be heard. 'Cause I know in my heart somewhere that this is the truth. I'm that nigga."
It's after midnight, which means dinner when you're pulling a studio marathon. As he readies to dip out on a late-night seafood run (he's 35 pounds down--you think your man's gonna grab a cheeseburger?!), he stresses what he holds dear: his own sincerity. "At the end of the day, my word is gonna get out. And I'm gonna touch motherfuckers--they gon' understand where the fuck I'm comin' from. They're gon' be like, You know what? I fuck with that nigga."
Clearly, he needs to inspire as much as he needs the inspiration. It's a two-way street, this movement, and that's what cats react to. The general's not off in the tent with the chilled grapes and fan-wielding wenches; he's in the barracks with the grunts, loading up.
While Jeezy's gone, Cool and Dre tweak the mixdown. After Dre's fiftyleventh "this eeeeeis," he's finally satisfied that he won't embarrass himself next to the Ad-Lib King. They compare notes with the studio engineer about the material they've heard from the record.
"You haven't heard "Hypnotized'?" Dre asks incredulously, referring to an industrial-sounding Shawty Redd track. "You're gonna need to tell your wife to go to her mother's house for the day, because that shit will make you want to strap up and ride. I'm a calm dude, but I heard that song, and I was like--"
He stands up, ramrod-straight, and salutes. "I was ready to be a motherfucking soldier."
And that's the thing about Jeezy.