Don’t encourage Gucci Mane

I guess it's true what they say, the lord giveth and the good lord taketh away.

Case in point, last week Teddy Pendergrass and mad Haitians died, but Mystikal was released from prison, and I finally got that new Spoon album.

Always look on the bright side of your life.

Mystikal had been in jail so I forgot he was even in jail. Usually when these rappers go to jail, they somehow manage to get out in the time it might take me to change pants. Which is longer than you might think, when you only have two pairs of pants that fit well, and you only wear shorts and pajama pants around the house, which is your primary place of employment so to speak, but still. You suspect there might be shenanigans. Phone calls are made, and rappers are only sent up long enough to boost their street cred, and so people don't suspect they're receiving preferential treatment.

I wonder if Mystikal went away so long because he wouldn't play the game, either because he refused to tattle on people, or because he wasn't deemed important enough to where it mattered if he just up and disappeared for half a decade or so. Like Prodigy from Mobb Deep. Do we even know what he did? I think he just had a gun, but something tells me that Lil Wayne will enter prison and be released from prison before Prodigy is back on the streets. But if that Mobb Deep album on G-Unit had sold better, and if Prodigy didn't seek to enlighten people on the Illuminati, via those letters he wrote to the late, great Vibe magazine, this wouldn't be an issue.

Sidebar: It's been a while since I've seen one of those letters from Prodigy. You'd think Inmate P would be more prolific than ever now that the truth about Jay-Z is starting to be revealed. Could it be because Vibe went out of business, and those letters keep coming back to him return to sender? I might need to contact him in prison and send him my address. I've got a scanner. I used it to upload some weird gang information a crazy homeless kid gave me at a bus station in Chicago. Maybe I'll send Prodigy some pr0n. Inmates in prison are allowed to receive pr0n, right?

Mystikal went to jail for forcing a woman to give him a blowski, because she owed him some money. And there was probably some violence involved too. He may have pointed a gun at her, or kicked the crap out of her. Otherwise, we never would have heard about it, and Mystikal wouldn't have spent the last half a decade-plus in the pokey. I know if there was a way I could pay women by going down on them, I'd never have to pay cash for anything. And most women have hideous vaginae. (Or so I've heard.) I definitely wouldn't be trying to have any women thrown in jail, even if they hurt me a little bit. But that's just me being a guy.

I definitely don't mean to suggest that demanding head from someone who owes you money is an appropriate way to conduct business. Even at Ozone magazine. However, I am concerned any time someone goes to jail for attacking someone who owes them money, when the fault, if you think about it, ultimately lies with the person who got attacked. I'm not blaming the victim for her own mouth rape. I'm just saying. Mystikal could have had his knob shined by any number of women. No Limit made a shedload of money back in the late '90s - early '00s. And even if Mystikal happened to be light at that point, probably because this woman owed him money, there was always Mia X. Fat women give good head, because they're always hungry, and they know it'll give them a leg up on attractive women.

My bad, if I just crossed a line there. I can't write about anything with a weird sexual element without getting carried away, and I can't write about anything that doesn't have a weird sexual element. I'm developmentally disabled like that. But for what it's worth, I'm not the one heralding this guy's return from prison. Part of the reason I forgot Mystikal was even in prison is that I could give a rat's ass about listening to his music. I only listen to lyrical hip-hop, that sounds good coming out of computer speakers in your mom's basement. It was a trip all last week watching people report on Mystikal's release from prison, posting interviews he did and what have you, all while trying not to seem as if they were celebrating the release of a violent sex criminal.

It's a trend I've noticed lately and I'd been meaning to post on even before I heard about Mystikal getting out. First there was a post on the late, great Noz's site called Free Shawty Redd, the Atlanta-based producer who decided to ring in the New Year by busting a cap in one of his weed carriers. But then in the body of the post he made it point to note that he wasn't advocating for Shawty Redd to get away with killing people; the title of the post referred to the fact that he was offering several Shawty Redd songs for free. Then I read an article somewhere about how people are pissed at MIA producer Diplo for jumping on the Gucci Mane bandwagon by releasing a mixtape called Free Gucci Mane - the title again referring to the fact that it didn't cost anything.

They certainly wouldn't want people to think they condone trying to get a woman's mouth pregnant without her consent, or shooting the guy who brings you your scarves and water, or whatever Gucci Mane did, just because they like music by artists who do shit like that. From what I understand, Gucci Mane's thing was more so that he's a crackhead, and he keeps failing a piss test. You've gotta have a pretty severe problem to get caught doing cocaine, since it's out of your system so quickly. I happen to know for a fact, because a guy I know works there, that the airport here in St. Louis has a semi-official policy about not showing up to work the day after you sniff some blow. Which seems counter intuitive, in the sense that coke is a lot more dangerous drug than weed, which you just plain can't do if you've got a job like that. But I will say that most of the people I know on coke seem a lot smarter than most of the people I know on weed.

Gucci Mane was a free mane for most of last year (see what I did there?), thus suggesting to me that he was able to hold his addiction at bay for a period of time. But that's the thing about coke: It's so good (I've been told) that you're gonna come back to it sooner or later. It just keeps calling you and calling you, like in New Jack City. And if you lack the sense god gave geese, like Gucci Mane, you're gonna do it the one time you shouldn't have. Which is really, according to Dr. Drew, a board certified physician, the definition of addiction. If you do drugs, and they don't lead to any severe problems in your life, you're not a drug addict. You're just a guy who does drugs.

Gucci Mane is a drug addict, which makes the fact that so many people pretend to like his music, for the purpose of irony, all the more problematic. Do I mean to suggest that people don't genuinely enjoy his music? No. I'm sure there are plenty of lulz to be had. I'm thinking about checking out The State vs. Radric Davis myself, too see if it really is what it would be like if Eli Porter were given a deal with a major label. But if and when I do, I'm not gonna sit here and front like what I'm doing is benign in its intent, or its actual effect.