9781422271872

Chapter 1:

Career Highlights— Setting Recording Industry Records

N obody starts their career as a trap pioneer, not even Gucci Mane. At one point, he was a little kid moving to a big city with his mama and older brother. When his family relocated from Alabama to Georgia during Davis’s fourth-grade year, it put him in the right place for his career, but the wrong place for staying out of trouble. By his eighth- grade year, he was rapping, writing poetry, and selling marijuana, something his brother introduced him to as a pocket-change moneymaker. During high school, his deal- making grew to include crack cocaine so he could afford Jordans and a Starter jacket, items the other school kids wore. He also hit the recording studio before even entering high school, initially attracted to the rap genre by the fashion sense and glamour of Big Daddy Kane and his associates. As an independent artist, he recorded and released the single “Black Tee,”which became a local hit. That single peaked the interest of Big Cat Records, which signed him in 2005. Many in the music industry say that Davis as Gucci Mane would be a “full-on mogul” now,

Big Daddy Kane was an important influence of Davis’s early career.

7