On November 12, 2009, Gucci Mane returns to Fulton County Jail after receiving another 12-month sentence for violating the terms of his probation. He serves six months and is released on May 12, 2010.

Todd Moscowitz: The timing couldn’t [have been] worse. He was white hot. It was at the biggest moment of his career when we were about to turn that corner, and then it happened. It was a huge emotional letdown.



Zaytoven: Anytime he sit down, all we talking about is, “Oh, Zay, I want to do a record like this.” Or, “Check this out, I just wrote this. Make a beat for this.” It’s like he’s still out [and] right around the corner. So the [jail stints] slowed him down, but at the same time I think those were times where Gucci Mane got to rest and reevaluate everything and get back hungry. Gucci is built for this stuff. I hear guys rap about how tough they say they are—Gucci Mane one of them guys that’s that for real. He just as happy when he in there as he is when he out. And I’m right there in good spirits with him every time. If he didn’t [keep] getting put away the way he did, he wouldn’t come with the records like “First Day Out” or the street records that make him so relevant still to this day. [Those] come from him bumping his head over and over. There’s a certain edge that come with that.



DJ Holiday: He never brought his personal shit to the studio. That legal shit, that’s him and his lawyer. He wasn’t emotional, like, “Aw, I’m fucked up!” That nigga going to jail, he’ll call from jail, first day in there, like, “Hey, Holiday. Get my hard drive, put out some tapes. I’ll let you know when I want to drop them.” Cool. A lot of people was intimidated from the whole [2005] murder case situation. How many people you can actually say you stood next to that killed somebody? He defended himself, but this motherfucker really walked the walk and talked the talk of what he do. Nobody would try his ass. He was like the pied piper of the hood. Everybody wanted to be around him and absorb that energy. I walked with that man in the city of Chicago and you would have thought motherfucking Nelson Mandela showed up or some shit.



Coach K: For Gooch, when he goes and gets locked up, it hypes his fans up even more. [They’re] waiting on him. But you gotta build that shit back up. [So] I go in and I do a whole mixtape while he’s locked up—[March 2010’s] the Burrrprint 2.

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Richie Abbott (former VP of urban publicity at Warner Bros. Records): It was the first mixtape that he put out that you couldn’t just get off of LiveMixtapes or DatPiff. There was a huge debate over that. I don’t even know that Gucci wanted that to be available only commercially. I think that was a decision made on the part of the label.

DJ Drama: They did the Burrrprint 2 through Asylum, with Holiday. Which at the time I was hot about because, you know, “What the fuck? This is a series we did together—how dare this not come to me?”



Coach K: The Burrrprint 2, we did over 100,000 [sales].



Todd Moscowitz: He got out in May [2010]. I went and picked him up at Fulton County Jail. Wale was somehow in the SUV with us and we all went straight to the studio—Gucci in one room, Waka in the other. That was the night Waka made “No Hands.”



Drumma Boy: Gucci booked the whole Patchwerk Studios. I gave him a folder of beats. The first song we did was “Abnormal.” He takes that beat, goes in the studio, and I go in the B Room and [there’s] like 100 people [in there]. The B Room in Patchwerk is not that big. I got all my equipment—my beat machine, my keyboard—everything lined up, but I can’t even touch the keyboard. So if you listen to “No Hands,” the chords are super simple because I’m barely able to play a damn chord. I’m reaching over people making the beat. And then I got back to the A Room, and we do “Ferrari Boyz.” I make beats off of my emotions, and that night I was just so relieved and so happy to see all of us together. It was almost like a family reunion—you and all of your favorite guys in one studio making history.



Todd Moscowitz: Obviously “No Hands” turned out to be a huge hit.



Richie Abbott: The State vs. Radric Davis was a great example of a mixtape artist kind of transitioning and kind of going mainstream. [But] I’ve seen this movie so many times, I don’t even want the DVD. Gucci just was not ready for the next level of success and what it took at that time. Anything that was really mainstream—like New York Times or late night television or maybe SPIN or Rolling Stone—he never really got up for it. He was just in his own world. I respect that, but it felt like he was maybe not totally in a good place to play the game.

Todd Moscowitz: He came out with the best intentions. I remember him saying, “Big dog, I got this.” He was focused. He was gonna get this done. And then he fell back into a bunch of trouble.

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Kori Anders: He [went] from this happy-go-lucky guy that loved being in the studio into this darker space. I think that had to do with pressures the labels were putting on him.

Coach K: I think that sophomore album curse hit Gooch. Because although we had a great album, he wanted to go bigger and bigger. He was like, “Get me in the studio with Timbaland. Get me in the studio with Pharrell.” All these big names. No disrespect, they are incredible producers, but I think we started running away from everything that got us there. And his fans let us know that. He’s raw on everything he got on, don’t get me wrong, but I think The Appeal album, he was going through a lot. The court shit, that was on him bad, and I think he just wanted to kind of change people’s look on him.



Kori Anders: I think that pressure of trying to juggle keeping it real for the streets but also trying to get to that mainstream success was just at times too much for him.

Todd Moscowitz: Gucci was definitely struggling and spiraling. We were having a lot of trouble getting stuff done, and at the same time Waka’s stuff was really taking off.

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Richie Abbott: That was the beginning of the fallout between Gucci and Waka. One guy is kind of falling off. He helped escort the other dude in, and the other dude is taking off. It’s kind of a classic scenario.



Todd Moscowitz: Waka was like, “I’m doing a mixtape.” He played the mixtape and we fought to get “No Hands.” There was an argument as to whose record it was, but it was our session, so we ended up with the record. Waka plays the rest of the music, and he’s like, “These are all street records. This is my mixtape.” We’re like, “That’s ridiculously good. That’s your album.” Street records were becoming radio records. and Waka started getting super hot over the summer. Gucci’s album [The Appeal: Georgia’s Most Wanted] came out in September. Right after that, everything kind of fell apart.