On a recent appearance on the “Dope As Usual” podcast, legendary Atlanta rapper Jeezy shared a story about a scary experience from his hustling days that landed him in the hospital and made him stop smoking weed for ten years.
It began with a woman he knew requesting his “crumbs,” which are the remnants of crack cocaine left over after it’s cut.
“She was like, ‘Yo, cuz, let me get the crumbs.’ I’m like, ‘Aight, cool, whatever.’ So I give her the crumbs,” he explains to hosts Thomas Araujo and Marty O’Neill.
While hanging out later that night, Jeezy got the urge to smoke and was referred to the same lady friend from earlier. “So I called her, I was like, ‘Yo let me get some weed.’
“I get the weed from her, [me and my homeboy who doesn’t smoke] ridin’ around, listenin’ to 2Pac and I’m smokin’ and smokin’,” the Snowman continues, “and I’m listening and the music feels like it’s chasing me! I’m the most paranoid I ever been, I think I’ma die! So he takes me to the hospital.”
After calming his nerves a bit while under medical care, Jeezy wondered aloud whether his ladyfriend from earlier had put some of the crumbs in the weed to make it more potent. He assumed she had, “but I still didn’t get the truth out of her,” he said.
The experience hit too close to home for Jeezy, as his career in the drug game had unfortunately led to him witnessing a number of friends and relatives become addicted to the product they were supposed to be selling. As a result, he put the weed down for a whole decade.
“I was more afraid,” he says. “We started off hustling but a few of em started smoking crack, and by this time I’m knee-deep in [the dope game].”
This wasn’t the only moment of paranoia Jeezy reminisced about.
He also recalled the time he actually believed he was addicted to cocaine.
“One time I went to school after being with my cousin and we was cookin’ all night and all morning and I just had this crazy feeling,” he remembered. “It was just such an uneasy feeling that I was like, ‘I’m goin through withdrawal symptoms!’”
Jeezy says he then went to a payphone and called a drug hotline he’d found in the phone book. “I changed my voice like, ‘Hello? I think I’m addicted to crack! Can you tell me what I need to do?’ I was buggin’,” he laughed.
Speaking on a different type of addiction, the 45-year-old MC also spoke on replacing the daily thrill he got from hustling drugs with something just as satisfying but not nearly as dangerous.
“What really fulfilled me is when I learned about real estate because it’s the same thing,” he says. “You’re buying something, you flip it if you’d like, you keep it if you’d like. … It’s like your money is working for you so it’s no different than having a trap house. It’s like, ‘that’s one of my houses that makes money, that’s one of my houses that makes money, this is my duplex’ – it’s the most exciting and fascinating thing I’ve ever seen. It’s just fun.”
Jeezy’s appearance on “Dope As Usual” is the latest press stop as he prepares fans for the release of his first book, “Adversity For Sale: Ya Gotta Believe,” which is described as a collection of “never-heard stories of what it took for him to beat the odds and get out of the streets, his mindset he carefully honed to get an edge, and the lessons that changed his life and business.” “Adversity For Sale” is published by HarperCollins and hits retailers August 8.
Watch Jeezy’s full “Dope As Usual” episode here.
