“No disrespect to my man Barack,” says Jay “Young Jeezy” Jenkins, 30, in a small NBC Studios greenroom, “but I fuck with John McCain.” This pronouncement comes moments after shaking the hand of the Arizona Senator and presumptive Republican presidential nominee. “He greeted me like a G.” Jeezy’s at 30 Rockefeller Plaza this May evening to perform his verse from Usher’s Billboard No. 1 hit “Love In This Club” for Saturday Night Live’s season finale.
He will interact with fellow guest McCain two more times before the broadcast wraps, including one exchange captured on-air during the show’s closing credits. The former ATL trap star and the celebrated Vietnam P.O.W. make an odd couple—on par with the late Eric “Eazy-E” Wright’s fraternization with President George H.W. Bush and the Republican party in the early ’90s.
So while it wouldn’t quite be right to say things just ain’t the same for gangstas, for Young Jeezy, well, things just ain’t the same.
A close friend of one of this generation’s most notorious crimelords, Black Mafia Family’s Demetrius “Big Meech” Flenory (who is scheduled to serve a 30-year-to-life sentence for running a criminal enterprise), and an unabashed former drug dealer himself, Young Jeezy is what one might call certified.
It’s been more than four years since he first steam- rolled through the South, riding high on a pair of 2004 and 2005 mixtapes, Tha Streets Iz Watchin and the seminal Trap or Die, that showcased his dark, bone-crushing sound. Rap fans flocked, hard. By the time Jeezy signed to Def Jam in 2004, he was no longer a rap- per—he was a movement [see “Southern Hospitality,” page 85].
Today the Atlanta-by-way-of-Macon, Ga., resident is poised to solidify his position as the gangsta rapper of the moment. As any hustler knows, all press is good press, and Jeezy has a knack for keeping his name in other people’s mouths.
A single father of one, Jeezy’s rumored relationship with R&B superstar Keyshia Cole has been documented across the Web and in tabloids throughout the last year, riddled with the same asked but unanswered questions:
Are they? or Aren’t they? In an October 2007 interview with Essence, Keyshia talked frankly about a broken engagement to an unnamed man.
She said, “After this guy proposed to me, I was like, dang, this is everything a woman lives for: to be married with a ring, to be able to represent something. But for me, it was the opposite.” Of late, Jeezy has turned his attention to pushing his best product—himself—further into the pop sphere.
Critics call him a subpar lyricist—your favorite rapper’s favorite ad-libber. But Jeezy is proving he’s much more than that. First he lent his signature growl — “Yeeeeeaaaaahh!”—to “Can’t Tell Me Nothing,” from Kanye West’s Graduation (Roc-A-Fella/Def Jam, 2007). Then, in April, he stole “Side Effects” (Island, 2008) right out from under Mariah Carey’s feet.
His biggest look came on “Love In This Club,” thanks to an effort- lessly quotable cameo (“I’ll be like your medicine, you’ll take every dose of me”). To say nothing of the impression he’s left on Southern rap.
Real talk: Jeezy should be able to recoup off two of the year’s biggest street records—Rocko’s “Umma Do Me” and Shawty Lo’s “Dey Know”—and not just because he stomped all over the remixes. Both hits—in style, sound, and substance—could have been throwaways from his classic, platinum-plus major label debut, Let’s Get It: Thug Motivation 101 (CTE/Def Jam, 2005).
Yep, this is Young Jeezy’s moment. His third studio album, The Recession—which he had yet to play for Def Jam as VIBE went to press—is a return to Thug Motivation form after a more commercially successful but uneven sophomore effort, The Inspiration (CTE/Def Jam, 2006).
The album’s first single, “Put On,” featuring Kanye West and produced by Yeezy and Drumma Boy—a throbbing, chest-pounding anthem—does what Jeezy’s best songs always do: It furthers his legend with its might. And the dark, serious-minded wall of sound that is The Recession follows suit.
A week after his appearance on SNL, Jeezy and his team—a small army of hulking bodyguards and friends littered with tats—head to sunny South Beach to spend Memorial Day weekend catching a little R&R. For three days and nights, Jeezy holds down the 3,100-square- foot penthouse of Sagamore Hotel, where the pool patio reeks of skunk, Patrón Añejo is poured like Poland Spring, and if paper is an object, you’d be hard-pressed to tell.
On Saturday, Jeezy, clad in a backward L.A. Dodgers fitted, a blue Put On promo tee, navy Dickies shorts, a set of 16-carat diamond earrings, and a frostbit Masterpiece Rolex, opens up his terrace to more than 60 guests for an impromptu afternoon barbecue. As a violent thunderstorm rolls in from the North, chasing the party inside, he posts up in a quiet corner, lights a Swisher, and with a cranberry and Grey Goose in hand, sheds light wherever he can.
VIBE: You’ve caught a lot of criticism for your subject matter and your flow. On The Recession you address a lot of that.
YOUNG JEEZY: I’m hated by many, confronted by none. Niggas know my shit is impeccable. They gotta respect that. I ain’t gonna bitch and cry and moan about the shit, because if you want something, you gotta go out and get it. So that’s what I did. I don’t think it’s been a lotta motherfuckers that’s done this shit on their second album, that’s made the accomplishments I’ve made in the game.
I came in on my own two feet, ain’t nobody give me shit. I ain’t come in on a nigga’s back, on a nigga’s side or nothing. I came in as me. I’m still me. I hear talk about, Well why don’t you rap about something else? Why am I gonna change what I’m spittin’ for you?
Were you disappointed with the critical reception of your second album?
Not at all—that’s how I felt. When I was Trapping or Dying, that’s what I was doing, trapping or dying. Thug Motivation was what it was—let’s get this money. The Inspiration was [about] getting money and going through trials and tribs. So you come back to The Recession. [This is] the last drought, this is the big one. Everybody’s biting their nails trying to figure out what to do. I’ma address it, ’cause that’s what I do. I’ma teach ya how to get through the drought. I been here before.
Do you feel you owe rap, or hip hop, anything?
I mean, yeah, but shit, you gotta think about it. I held it down. Whenmy first album came out, music was at a standstill. I came and saved the summer. How niggas not gonna respect that? I got joints! Put me on the stage with anybody, I don’t give a fuck who it is, I’ll bet you I hold my own.
You put me in the right club, I can do an hour off of mixtape material and not even do my albums, neither one of ’em. You go to any club, anywhere in the United States, and probably mother- fucking Pakistan, you gonna hear a Jeezy record. I can get on any song and still be me.
You don’t get on a Mariah Carey record and [“Dey Know”] in the same year. You don’t do that. Who does that? Gimme three right now! That’s accomplishments.
What do you say to people who don’t recognize what you’ve accomplished?
Fuck them! I paid my dues. You go back to Nas, you go back to Ghostface Killah, you go back to Biggie, you go back to Tupac, what you think they were talking about? Wu-Tang Clan was talking about getting motherfucking money and stabbing the shit outta niggas. ’Pac was talking about, Nigga, fuck that, we gonna get this money, we gonna gang bang. Biggie was like, We gonna get this money, we gonna get off this shit, and we gonna buy
some Versace shirts. How the fuck am I wrong? I ain’t killing nobody, I ain’t shooting nobody ... How am I wrong? Niggas live and die by what I say. You go anywhere, niggas recited Biggie and Tupac. Man, you don’t recite no one from Georgia’s mixtape [laughs]. You don’t do that.
I heard something about you nearly ripping your vocal cords...
Yeah, man. My voice is my gift and my curse. When I first got into music, nobody taught me how to record or how to perform so I just did it with all my heart. And at that time, I was destroying my vocal cords and didn’t know it. I overdid it and it ripped my shit damn near in half. Everything was gone. I couldn’t talk. I had to have surgery and it was crazy. You wouldn’t even know it—when I was mixing Thug Motivation, I couldn’t even talk to the engineers. I had to write it on a piece of paper. I couldn’t talk for seven months.
Read the rest in the August 2008 issue of VIBE.
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