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Words Benjamin Meadows-Ingram

Life really does work in mysterious way. Just look at Lil Boosie. With his buzz at its highest point, the self-coined Bad Ass was hit with a two-year prison sentence this past September. Can his career survive while he's behind bars? You better believe it.

Torrence “Lil Boosie” Hatch is going to jail. And while it would be a stretch to say that he’s happy about it, he’s doing everything he can to stay positive. “They say every real G gotta do time one day,” he says in mid-September, sitting on the edge of a double bed in a room at an Atlanta Hilton. “So I’ma be a G and go on and take a year and let that [propel] me into the biggest star I ever was.”

It’s fast approaching 1 a.m. on this Sunday night in ATL, and halfway across town, the folks at Club Ritz are growing restless, waiting for Boosie to show. In less than two days, his fourth solo album, SuperBad: The Return of Boosie Bad Azz, will finally be released, breaking a nearly three-year drought since his last solo effort, 2006’s Bad Azz (his first with national distribution, through Trill Entertainment’s deal with Asylum/Warner), became a certified classic—at least in the Southeast—while moving 273,000 units. In Baton Rouge, specifically, his popularity has grown so much that local barbershops even offer a “Boosie fade” upon request.

For Boosie, the three-year break has been brutal. In interviews, he openly criticizes Trill and Asylum for not pushing more Boosie-specific product. He calls the collective Lil Boosie, Webbie, Foxx and Trill Fam project Trill Entertainment Presents: Survival of the Fittest—released in May 2007 and featuring the hit “Wipe Me Down (Remix)”— “a bad decision,” and he suggests that if he had been able to crank out three or four solo albums in the interim, instead of sitting on ice, everyone would be considerably more paid. “I’d be getting 50 to 60 grand right now a show,” he says. “I’d have went international by now. I’d have done songs with Rihanna and people like that. It was just a big mistake.”

Trill Entertainment CEO Marcus “Turk” Roach sees it differently. “Artists sometimes have the tendency to get comfortable with their accomplishments. There was a time when Boosie wasn’t recording, then when he was the material wasn’t up to par. We needed a quality product for SuperBad. Once we got that, a release date was set.”

Which brings us to the present. The album’s lead single, “Better Believe It,” featuring Young Jeezy, is hitting all the right notes with Boosie’s core—the Southern streets—and, in his mind, the state of Louisiana is handing him a golden marketing opportunity. “I’m not taking it like it’s killing my career,” he says of his impending jail time. “I’m taking it like it’s a boost to my career. Yeah, jail make everybody fuckin’ hot.”

Nine days later, the news broke nationwide. “Lil Boosie Gets Two-Year Prison Sentence for Drug Possession,” read the headline on mtv.com on Wednesday, September 23, the day after Boosie pleaded guilty in Louisiana State District Court to a third-offense marijuana-possession charge.

It could have been a lot worse. By entering the guilty plea, Boosie was able to avoid trial, where he would have faced the marijuana charge as well as a charge of possession of a firearm with a controlled dangerous substance, all stemming from a traffic stop last October during which East Baton Rouge sheriff’s deputies discovered a bag of marijuana, a rolled blunt and a gun in Boosie’s white Dodge Challenger. The gun charge alone carries a mandatory five-year term upon conviction.

Instead, according to the terms of the deal, Boosie had all but two years of a 10-year sentence for weed suspended. He is required to serve at least one year in jail, and he will be on active supervised probation for two to five years following his release. In addition, the gun charge was held in abeyance, meaning that as long as Boosie adheres to the conditions of his probation, the charge will be dropped.

Boosie, who sees himself as a “target” in Baton Rouge, says the plea deal was the only way to go. “You got a bad court system in Louisiana,” he says. “Officers been made all kind of lies [on] things I said… They humiliate me in court, [portraying] Boosie Bad Azz as a straight problem. They say I’m running a criminal ring, things like that… My lawyer say, ‘If they bring all that in the court, what the jury gonna think?’” He looks at the Kool cigarette in his right hand. “I’m not gonna play with my life, bruh,” he continues. “They threw Mystikal away. Mystikal been gone six and a half years.”
Lewis Ungelsby, one of two attorneys who represented Boosie in the case, agrees. “He couldn’t win,” Ungelsby concedes. “The legal system is set up to allow innocent people to be found innocent, but also so that those found guilty to benefit from taking responsibility for their actions. By taking responsibility for what he’s done, [Torrence] eliminated or at least alleviated some of the time he faced.”

Boosie is scheduled to appear again in court on November 9, five days before he turns 27, for sentencing, and Ungelsby says he expects Boosie will be ordered to report to a minimum-security Louisiana correctional facility sometime around Christmas. Says Ungelsby, “We don’t anticipate any violations. The important thing is that he has a period of time between now and when he becomes incarcerated to get his work done and promote the album he recently released and cut another album. He’s been given a great opportunity.”

According to Ungelsby, the deal should mark the end of Boosie’s legal woes. But a dark shadow remains. During a May bond hearing related to the ongoing investigation into the alleged involvement of Trill Entertainment CEOs Melvin “Mel” Vernell Jr. and Roach in the 2005 attempted murder of Baton Rouge rapper Bruce “Beelow” Moore, FBI agent Antony Jung testified that the agency had received information implicating Boosie in the murder of Chris “Nussie” Jackson, 33, a rapper from Boosie’s hometown, who was found dead in a Baton Rouge home in February, with a gunshot to the head. Nussie had started making a name for himself locally by questioning Boosie’s street cred (in 2007, Nussie even released his own album titled Bad Azz), and while on the stand, Jung said the FBI had reason to believe Boosie had put a $30,000 bounty on Nussie’s head. As XXL went to press, no charges had been filed against Boosie in relation to Jackson’s murder. Ungelsby dismissed the suggestion, noting, “Nothing has come of that.”

Back in Atlanta, Boosie’s mind was on other concerns. A Type 1 diabetic (he was diagnosed when he was 21), Boosie worries that he might struggle to find proper medical treatment while in jail. And as a father of six, with another one on the way this winter, he wants to make sure that his kids don’t forget their father. He says he’s looking forward to their visits, and he “just told [their] mamas to show them pictures of me every day and let them know about they daddy.”

The one thing Boosie’s not worried about is the music. He’s hoping to branch out with his own imprint, Bad Azz Entertainment, through Asylum/Warner For anyone concerned that breaking from Trill might affect his sound, he simply points to SuperBad, which features 10 tracks produced by his Bad Azz team. He talks about dropping an album timed with his release (as he sees it, “coming home straight from jail to 106 & Park”), and according to Boosie himself, he’s got 300 to 400 records in the can, with plans to Gucci Mane the situation while he’s gone. “I’ma flood the streets with music, to where people be like, ‘This nigga the truth, man,’” he promises. “I ain’t going to jail with my head down. I’m going to jail smiling, letting people know, you know, this shit’s nothing to me… And when I come home, I’ll be the hottest nigga in the game.”

To that end, he’s off to a good start. The subhead on that mtv.com piece about the plea? “Rapper’s latest album, SuperBad: The Return of Boosie Bad Azz, debuts in next week’s top 10.”

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