21 Savage has revealed that as a young Hip Hop fan, he took the Gucci Mane and Jeezy beef extremely seriously — and wasn’t shy about taking sides.
During an interview with Shannon Sharpe on his Club Shay Shay podcast that was posted last Wednesday (January 24), 21 looked back on his early rap fandom. He explained that during the long-running feud between the two Atlanta rappers, he took Gucci’s side.
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“I’m gonna keep it real: growing up on the East Side, Gucci made me hate Young Jeezy as a child,” the “a lot” rapper explained.
He went on to say that Gucci’s frequent shouting out of Atlanta’s East Side, where Savage grew up after moving to the U.S. from the UK as a child, made the “Lemonade” spitter a folk hero in that neighborhood.
“Gucci had a big impact. Gucci was the one. And he put [the East Side] on the map,” Savage said. “I used to really be like, ‘Man, fuck Jeezy! I’m from the East Side, n-gga!'”
Gucci and Jeezy had a serious feud that began in 2005 over who had the rights to their collaboration “Icy.” Later that year, Gucci was charged with the murder of one of Jeezy’s associates. Gucci said he acted in self-defense, and the charges were dropped in January 2006.
The years-long battle culminated in a Verzuz in November 2020. There was a tense moment when Gucci put 2013’s Jeezy diss “The Truth” into play. That was evidently where The Snowman drew the line and he stopped Gucci in his tracks, delivering an impassioned speech about the state of the culture.
“See when I called you and extended this invite, my n-gga, I did it as a real man,” he said. “It’s been 20 muthafuckin’ years… you still talking the same shit. The shit we came from in the street, we been through it, dawg. Twenty years and when I said I wanted to do this for the culture, that’s what I wanted to do. I brought you here to show you the world care about what the fuck we got going on because we are the culture. Me and you, where we came from, what we been through, n-gga, us.
“All these kids out here doing what the fuck they do cuz they saw what went on with us,” he continued. “This shit ain’t ’bout me, it ain’t ’bout you. This shit about King Von, this shit about Doe B, this shit about Nipsey Hussle, this shit about muthafuckin’ Pop Smoke, Mo3 and I’m real enough to do that.”
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Fortunately, the two men were able to shake hands as the battle concluded with Gucci saying, “No disrespect. It’s all love.”
