Gucci Mane says that being put away helped him clear his head and beat drug addiction.
When Gucci Mane was put in jail five years ago on charges of firearm possession as a felon, he took that time to get his head on straight and get clean from drugs.
“I think I would have been dead, probably,” he said on Zane Lowe’s Beats 1 radio podcast.
Though he’s committed to staying sober and free of drug use, he knows the world isn’t getting clean any time soon.
“It’s never gonna go nowhere,” he said in the podcast interview. “It’s going to always be like that. Drugs gonna always be a part of society. It’s going [to] always be people fighting. It’s going to always be death. It’s just, you know, just what it is. It’s always going to be a part of music. Think about all these rock n roll stars before these hip-hop stars.”
The rapper has always been open about and proud of his sobriety. When he was released from his three-year prison sentence in mid-2016, he decided to clean up his act in more ways than one: He was done with being a repeat offender and he was done with drugs. The album he released then, Everybody Looking, was the first music he made sober.
“I felt like I couldn’t make music sober, I couldn’t enjoy my money sober. Why would I wanna go to a club and couldn’t smoke or drink? I felt like sex wouldn’t be good sober. I associated everything with being high,” he told The New York Times in an interview then. “In hindsight I see it for what it was: I was a drug addict.”
He committed himself to sobriety to keep himself healthy and out of trouble.
“To ensure that I don’t come back into this prison, I’m just gonna be totally sober,” he revealed on an ESPN interview. “I don’t have any time to make any more mistakes. I want to jump every hurdle that’s in front of me. And it takes me [having] a clearer mind. I know my weaknesses. And being sober, it’s like a big strength for me.”
Gucci Mane just released his newest album, Evil Genius, on Friday. His Glacier Boyz project, on which he is collaborating with Lil Yachty and Migos, is set to release this coming spring.
