Jeezy has shared more details about his new memoir and elaborated on the meaning behind its title.
In a candid sit-down with Good Morning America, Jeezy said he wanted his new book Adversity For Sale to inspire people to follow their dreams, and said he hopes the memoir can demonstrate that failure is never the end of the road, but the beginning.
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“I think people always tell you about their success stories, but one thing that I’ve learned about life is that in every failure there’s a lesson,” Jeezy said. “And every time I ever failed it set me up for my next task. I think to share your failures with your community and your peers and people that love you. They’ll just start to understand that it’s never too late, and that they can always push through, because sometimes you get in situations where you think it’s the end when it’s really the beginning.”
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He continued, “This book is for people who want to do better today than they did yesterday because, especially being a Black man in America, coming up we always had to fight to get our voice heard, and I think this book can help anybody who has to fight to get to where they’re trying to be. Because you have to start from the bottom to get to the top. But once you get to the top you gotta know how to stay there. Success is about you.”
In a separate interview with Yahoo! Newsto talk about the book, Jeezy reflected on his turbulent breakout in music, which coincided with him transitioning from a drug dealer to a full-time rapper.
The Snowman’s dope boy hustle had earned him a lot of money and notoriety, but with that success came an unshakable paranoia as he swapped the streets for the studio in an attempt to realize his rap dreams. Like his hero 2Pac, death was around the corner for a young Jeezy.
“I just knew that there wasn’t no other way if I didn’t figure it out,” he said. “I was going to end up in prison or probably dead like the rest of my friends.
“A lot of my music … was me just wanting to be heard. I was writing my music as if I wasn’t gonna be there anymore. So I was like, ‘This better be the best I ever said.’ And so that’s what Trap or Die and Thug Motivation was, because I was preparing myself for the worst.”
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He added: “And when it popped, I understood, and now I was like, ‘OK, I gotta sustain this.’ So I just carried that same energy into all my next projects.”
Adversity For Sale hits bookstores on Tuesday (August 8.)
