Benny The Butcher dropped the Harry Fraud-produced Plugs I Met 2 in March, the follow-up to the 2019 original. On Wednesday (May 5), the Griselda powerhouse returned with a new animated video for one of the project’s standout tracks, “Overall” featuring the late Chinx.
Directed by Paperface, the visual brings Benny’s lyrics to life as he raps about his journey from drug dealer to rap star. In a recent interview with HipHopDX,Benny expounded on the topic, explaining how a three-time felon was able to break away from a life of crime.
“I got into it being from a neighborhood that was blanketed with it,” he told DX in March. “The whole history of the neighborhood was about drug dealing. It was a drug dealing block and I was a born on that block. When my mom birthed me, I was brought home from the hospital on that block. So the hustlers outside was doing what they was doing. As I grew up, those dudes was my friends, those dudes turned into my brothers, so I did what they did. It’s just the path I chose at the time. I got three felonies. I’ve been back and forth, in and out of prison.
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“I got the other side of it, too — not just the glory of it, so that came with a lot of regret. That came with a lot of would of, should of, could of’s. And just basically around the time Wes [Westside Gunn] had this opportunity for me, there was other opportunities on the streets.”
As Benny The Butcher explained, he then had a decision to make.
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“I already made my choice not to do it, so I wasn’t doing it around a year before I got signed,” he said. “I wasn’t doing it. I wasn’t fucking around. I was just going back and forth to the studio rapping and damn near 70 percent of my homeboys is locked up right now.”
But that doesn’t mean being a rapper is a cakewalk either. With the newfound notoriety comes fame, which Benny said he never really felt until he was shot in leg while leaving a Houston Walmart last November. To him, he’s still very much a “regular person.”
“It’s OK,” he admitted when discussing fame. “It’s not the best thing in the world. I’m saying fame is one of those things that if you don’t have it, you want it. And when you get it, you’re like, ‘OK, it’s alright.’ It’s not all it’s cracked up to be because different things come with fame. And like I said, I love being a person who people admire or look up to or aspire to be like. That says a lot about what I’ve been doing with my life.
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“But it’s a lot of bad things that come with fame. I’m going to be honest with you, I’m not in love with it, but it’s cool though. And you can’t turn it off, neither.”
For now, Benny The Butcher is content pumping out albums as he focuses on the future. Most recently, he was in the studio with frequent collaborator Hit-Boy and Freddie Gibbs. Until something materializes from that, watch the “Overall” video above.
