Lil Boosie Gets Real: MC on Prison, Protests and ‘Classic’ New LP
Now that you’ve relocated to Atlanta, do you miss living in Louisiana?
Yeah, I miss Louisiana sometimes, just being around family all the time, and having those barbecues and our little family get-togethers. That’s what I miss the most. But I don’t miss the hatred. I don’t miss the crooked cops down there. I don’t miss the system that hates me down there. I don’t miss a lot of stuff down there except the family and the get-togethers. The other stuff is not. . .I don’t miss that, man. I like the life I’m living right now, and I’m blessed to be living like this.
I’ll go back maybe once or twice a month to check on my kids. I might follow all my kids to school and check in with their principal. But nah, I don’t be in Baton Rouge like that. I don’t feel it’s good for rappers who are on the level I’m on to be in their [home] city like that. That’s where you gonna get killed at, in your city. It’s just facts. That’s why we hustle to get out of the hood. You’ve always got to go back to the hood and show a little love, but it ain’t no place where you lay your head.
Can see retiring there at the end of your career.
No, hell no. N-E-V-E-R. I would never live in Baton Rouge again. My past is too strong for me to go live down there. I’m always reppin’, I’m a always shout out Baton Rouge. That’s my hometown, ’cause I love it, that’s where I’m from. But me living there, associating with people out there, that’s not going to happen.
What’s the difference between Atlanta and Baton Rouge?
The first thing is, I’m not a standout like I was in Louisiana. In Louisiana, there’s only one person driving a Rolls-Royce or a Bentley, and that’s Boosie. I’m like a store burning: I stand out there. I’ve got too many prior altercations with the police. Police in Atlanta don’t hate me. And Atlanta is a music capital. You can drive around the corner, and you’re on a video shoot. Everybody out there, they’ve got music on their minds. In Louisiana, music ain’t on none of them dudes’ minds. It’s nothing but jealousy and hatred. It’s not a place where, when you get to that status, you would want to be living, you know? Lil Wayne don’t live in New Orleans. Baby [Birdman] don’t live in New Orleans.
One of your most popular YouTube tracks is “Top to the Bottom,” and its message is about climbing from the bottom to the top in the South, only to encounter people who don’t necessarily understand where you came from.
If you listen to it, it’s the “Juicy” flow off that old Notorious B.I.G. But I say, “It was all a dream/I used to write raps in my notebook/A baby G tryin’ to walk like Eazy-E/2Pac was the shit to me.” I switched it up from what Biggie said. But that record came about as far as me just, like, being successful and reminding people who said, “This is a bad ass kid who’s not going to make it.” I’m reminding them, like, they said I’d never make because I came from so much poverty.
I always reflect on that because if you forget where you came from, it’ll be hard to get where you’re going. That’s why people are successful: because they remember where they came from and they don’t want to go back to that.