Jeezy has explained how a bad experience during his drug-dealing days took his hunger to another level, transforming him into a “whole ‘nother animal.”
The best-selling author joined Maverick Carter’s Mavericks show, where he remembered his entrance into the streets and the time his older cousins, who he looked up to, “manipulated” him.
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“My loyalty got me in a lot of trouble. I was going to make this play with my older cousin,” Jeezy began. “He was like, ‘These my people.’ I was like, ‘Let me bring my strap.’ He was like, ‘Nah, you good.’ But it’s big cuz — you trust him like, ‘Iight cool.’
“We meet these guys in a semi-trailer truck. I give him the money and he gives me this laundry bag, and this laundry bag has the work in it but it’s covered in a blanket.”
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He continued: “I get back to the house, me and my man start to cut this shit open… and it’s sheetrock. This is all my money. I’m broke! I was more hurt than anything because I felt like I had so much respect and admiration for [my cousin].”
Jeezy went on to say that he believes his cousin was in on the swindle deal, which made him go from hustling to “thugging” in the streets.
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“So along with the trust issues I had before, now I know I can’t even trust the people I respect,” he continued. “So that turned me into a whole ‘nother animal. At first, I wasn’t really thugging; I’m just hustling. Now, I’m thugging.”
Watch the clip starting around the 2:15 mark below.
The turbulence of the streets and Jeezy’s years as a hustler may have played a role in him developing a depression that went undiagnosed for nearly a decade.
“I learned that vulnerability is power,” he told the Tamron Hall Show earlier this month. “I thought something was wrong with me, thinking I come from poverty, this is just how it is. I didn’t understand trauma and all these different things so when I started to get the words for it, I started to understand and grab tools, [and] I started to become better.
“I started my journey and that’s why I’m expressing it and putting it in the book because I didn’t know I was depressed for like eight years of my life straight.”
Jeezy elaborated by admitting that he felt “numb” at times due to losing so many people close to him.
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“You wake up and you just want to go back to sleep forever, you know?” he added. “And I was leaning into my vices. And that’s what street life does to you. You know what I’m saying? When you lose 200, 300, 400 people like gone forever, you just get numb.
“And I wasn’t able to get in touch with my emotions and I was wondering why. Thank God for my kids, but there was a time I was just cold. That’s when I was Young Jeezy.”
