Freddie Gibbs’s 14-year career in the rap game is a testament to patience, persistence, and perseverance. In 2006, he was due to release his first album with the illustrious Interscope records, but a series of unfortunate events led to Interscope nixing the deal. Getting dropped from a major label right out the gate crushes most freshman rappers, but not Freddie. Instead of sulking off into obscurity, Gibbs stepped up to the plate and started banging out more hits than Mookie Betts.
From 2009 to 2012, Gibbs completed a total of 10 mixtapes. Also in 2012, he finally released a studio album under Young Jeezy’s CTE label. Eventually, Gibbs went on to found his own label, E$GN, where he continues to make new, critically-acclaimed music that has a dedicated cult following.
On a fresh episode of GGN, Gibbs sat down with Uncle Snoop with a blunt tucked behind one ear and a second being burned. Snoop kicked things off by asking Gibbs about his solo career.
“I’m gonna stay solo. I ain’t made to be in no group. I like to work the way I wanna work,” Gibbs said before clarifying that he loves doing collaborations with other artists, too. “At this point, I’m doing a job. I do whatever the fuck I want every day. I can’t complain.”
Much later in the interview, Snoop asked about Gibb’s movie ambitions. Although the Indiana-born rapper hasn’t starred in a feature film, Snoop gave some advice on how to avoid becoming a played-out trope in a Hollywood project.
“Before I did Starsky and Hutch, I used to always get killed in all my movies,” Snoop recalled. But after a fateful meeting in Las Vegas with the blaxploitation action legend Fred Williamson, Snoop decided to make a permanent change in his film career.
According to Snoop, Williamson told him, “From here on out, when you do movies, there are three things that are gonna happen: You’re gonna win all your fights, you’re gonna get all the girls, and you’re gonna live at the end.’ I took that philosophy with me, and every time I got a movie, I had to make sure that was implemented,” Snoop said. “You’re not finna kill me in a movie, cuz.”
“My shit was Jimmy Bones,” Gibbs said, referring to Snoop’s 2001 horror flick Bones.
“I died like a motherfucker two times in that shit. That’s the bullshit I’m talking about!” Snoop said through a tickled grin. “Gonna pick a movie where they killed me twice!”
Later in the interview, Snoop and Gibbs discuss the complex politics of taking a shit while sharing a toilet in a prison cell, how a hater may have sold-out Wakanda during Avengers: Infinity War, and why Wolverine has the coolest superpower of all the comic badasses.
Check out Snoop’s full GGN interview with Freddie Gibbs above, with a candid Q&A “Inside the Smoker’s Studio” sesh and all. And stay tuned for new episodes of GGN featuring Redman & Method Man and other MVPs — all premiering here on MERRY JANE.
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