Imagine Me
Since coming dwelling from jail final yr, YFN Lucci is about on leveling up. New music, a nationwide tour, and a clearer have a look at the infinite potentialities freedom permits.
Phrases: Peter A. Berry
“I simply needed to listen to myself once more,” YFN Lucci says on a cold night in Atlantic Information’ cozy Manhattan workplace this previous November. He’s referring to the second he received again within the studio for the primary time after his jail launch over 9 months in the past. It was a humble sufficient request for a multiplatinum-selling artist, since behind bars, there are solely lonely nights, no recording periods, and extra worries than new lyrics.
This time final yr, Lucci was contemporary out. No extra days sitting alone in a cell at Forsyth, Ga.’s Burruss Correctional Coaching Middle. Tonight, he’s seated along with his proper foot out of its sock and his $500,000 Smiley pendant sitting atop his black sweater like a flattened disco ball. The 35-year-old rapper can document any time he desires, however for now, he’s on a press run in New York Metropolis, selling Already Legend, the primary album he dropped since he got here dwelling final January. The mission, launched on Sept. 26, 2025, was an exhale years within the making. Lucci needed to endure a jail assault and rumors of snitching and betrayal whereas inside. “It was my time to lastly communicate out,” he says. He needed to maintain his breath, although.
Close to the peak of his profession four-and-a-half years in the past, Lucci, born Rayshawn Lamar Bennett, was arrested on 13 RICO fees that would have despatched him to jail for many years. Along with his mix of blood-stained melodies and aspirational theme songs for entice glory, he’d made himself a canonical rap star within the Atlanta continuum—solely to have all of that momentum stripped away alongside along with his freedom. Now, after having 12 of the 13 RICO fees dropped, pleading responsible to at least one violation of the Road Gang Terrorism and Prevention Act, and returning dwelling after practically 4 years behind bars, he’s out to proceed the extent up he started years in the past.
Extra instantly, he’s consuming bacon cheese fries from Wingstop! along with his staff surrounding him. Usually, he’s been within the studio regularly after having his first recording session simply two days after his launch. Due to his probation, he’s not allowed to drink or smoke. His sobriety and on a regular basis he needed to spend away from his 4 youngsters have made him have a look at life with extra readability. Additionally, by way of a extra precarious lens. “I simply assume I’m extra mature and extra business-minded now,” Lucci shares. “Lots of sh*t do not matter; solely the household, my music, my enterprise and my time.”
On the enterprise aspect, he’s launched his personal label, Already Legend, and he says he’s signed a fellow Atlanta rapper named BHM Pezzy. Lucci can also be into actual property. “I am engaged on making an attempt to buy buildings proper now, too,” he reveals. “It is coming. You gotta crawl earlier than you stroll.”
On the household finish of issues, Lucci tries to spend as a lot time along with his children as potential. “I lastly can maintain them and be current,” he expresses. “I all the time hung out with my household and my children, however simply spending extra time. I do know you may’t by no means get that point again.”
Lucci is free and sitting on the success of an album that offered 28,800 equal album models in its first week of launch. By any measure, it’s a sequence of huge wins, nonetheless, attending to that time was an Odyssean street coated in violence, discouragement and unflattering hypothesis. Like many rap tales, that journey started with tragedy.
Throughout a Dec.12 2020 gun battle with one other celebration, one in all Lucci’s buddies was severely wounded as they sat in a shifting automotive on an Atlanta avenue. Amid the assault, Lucci’s fatally wounded good friend, James Adams, was pushed from the automotive as he and his staff sped away from attackers. Adams died in entrance of witnesses on a close-by avenue shortly thereafter. Lucci turned himself in to police on Jan. 13, 2021, for the homicide earlier than posting a $500,000 bond and being positioned on home arrest. Months later, in Could of 2021, Lucci and 12 different males had been indicted for a RICO case, with one of many fees being related to the demise of Adams.
Whereas behind bars beginning that yr, Lucci was separated from his youngsters for the primary important period of time. He additionally confronted rumors that he had betrayed his good friend by pushing him out of the automotive, although he says he wasn’t phased by the claims. “On the finish of the day, it is an opinion. You were not there. So you do not know the details,” he maintains. When he wasn’t dealing with isolation or assaults on his character, he handled a literal assault. In March of 2022, he was stabbed by one other inmate and claimed that he feared for his life. When Lucci wasn’t combating for his life, he was dealing with despair and tedium.
Gilles, an lawyer who operates as Lucci’s artistic director, remembers utilizing his standing as a lawyer to go to the rapper at a time when pandemic-era jail restrictions prevented inmates from seeing buddies and households in individual. Faraway from his wealth, infrastructure and the armor of his inside circle, Gilles may inform Lucci was distressed. “You go from dwelling such an awesome life to individuals telling you what to do, when to do it,” Gilles says. “And [prison guards] are oftentimes hell bent on chomping you down the scale,” he provides. “It is a likelihood for [them] to not simply put anyone of their place, however to place YFN Lucci in his place.”
Lucci’s place was a cement block cell, and Gilles remembers Lucci telling him about moments he was harassed by jail guards. It’s an comprehensible factor to get upset about whereas not throwing away your future on the identical time. “I used to be like, ‘Bro, perceive the place you are making an attempt to go,’” Gilles remembers. “’You are making an attempt to come back dwelling and that sh*t do not matter. When you’re out, you are by no means going to consider these individuals once more.’”
To assist Lucci escape the jail partitions—a minimum of, mentally—Gilles started maximizing the establishment’s four-book monthly restrict, bringing Lucci copies of books like Don Miguel’s The 4 Agreements: A Sensible Information to Private Freedom or 50 Cent and Robert Greene’s The fiftieth Regulation. Throughout some visits, Gilles would carry an empty inexperienced e-book to the cell. They known as it, “We Are Making Historical past,” and in it, he would take notes he made concerning future Lucci releases, potential authorized methods and extra.
The e-book served as a means they might each look to the long run. However earlier than that, Lucci needed to beat the case in entrance of him and put to relaxation conflicts from the previous. Specifically, a Younger Thug feud that had turned lethal when members of Thug’s alleged crew, YSL, had shot and killed Donovan “Nut” Thomas Jr., an in depth good friend of YFN Lucci’s, in January of 2015. The homicide was a central a part of the RICO case in opposition to Thug. Lucci was arrested on separate RICO fees only a yr earlier than Younger Thug was. For his half, Lucci was open to shifting previous their points, with a little bit encouragement from one other native Atlanta famous person.
“[21] Savage, reached out to me whereas I used to be incarcerated and he requested me, ‘How you’re feeling about getting on the decision with [Young Thug], [and] y’all talk about y’all variations, and simply see?’” On account of authorized stipulations, Thug and Lucci couldn’t have literal contact, but a truce was made, they usually each landed tracks on their newest albums, UY Scuti and Already Legend, respectively. It’s the form of reconciliation that, a minimum of vaguely, calls to thoughts Gucci Mane and Jeezy’s feud-ending Verzuz battle.
It arrives at a time when individuals have stated Atlanta hip-hop—a scene stricken by the deaths of Takeoff, Hassle and Wealthy Homie Quan—is weaker than ever. On the subject of how he views the town’s spot within the tradition, Lucci is agnostic, however hopeful. “In a means it may very well be true, nevertheless it’s all about unity,” he says of Atlanta rap’s perceived decline. “As soon as all people begins coming again collectively, it will be good.”
If you happen to let naysayers inform it, the way forward for the area’s rap scene is doubtful. In Lucci’s thoughts, his standing as an space titan will not be. That’s after all the implication of his newest LP title, Already Legend. As lucid as it’s unsparing, the album is a diaristic bloodletting that distills all of the frustrations of his time between jail partitions. “It was actual straightforward as a result of I had rather a lot to speak about,” he says of recording the mission. The burden of his experiences is simply buoyed by his hovering melodies that make the catharsis exhilarating.
For tracks like “Follow What You Preach./RoboCop.,” he condemns the Atlanta District Lawyer’s workplace whereas lamenting bonds damaged by his RICO fees. With its muted bassline and stern piano keys, it appears like readability. In the meantime, on “JAN thirty first (My Reality),” he addresses the day his good friend was killed. Lucci says he did not let discussions concerning the incident have an effect on him, however the tune’s mournful piano bassline and his personal confessional bars inform a narrative of a dormant ache that by no means left his jail cell: “Look, they are saying I threw my mans out?/If you on a transfer typically it do not go the way it deliberate out/Tribulations received me this far/Relaxation up ’trigger your grandson made it this far.”
Though it’s extra celebratory, the hook for his album’s title observe tells an analogous story of trauma and triumph: “Look what I did/I took each loss after which I turned that to a revenue/I am unable to attain my targets with all people in my pocket/I am unable to belief a soul, however I do know ache, however I am unable to block it.” He won’t be capable of block the ache, however he may be capable of transfer previous it. No less than sufficient for some much-deserved self-congratulations. “It’s not no one giving me my legendary standing; that’s how I really feel about myself,” he raps. “I’ve been within the recreation 10 years. I’ve received hits, and I’ll get extra hits.”
With jail and a brand new album behind him, he can look to the long run, which he hopes contains proudly owning half of Atlanta on his option to changing into a Rick Ross or Jay-Z-esque mogul. “They began with music, however they received a lot different sh*t,” he explains. He’s additionally all for an appearing profession, although he hasn’t signed up for any appearing courses but. Proper now, he has a couple of new songs out, “You Particular.” and “On My Thoughts.,” and he is on the street for his Already a Legend Tour. The trek goes all through February. He says the last cease might be at Atlanta’s State Farm Enviornment, the place he beforehand carried out this previous August. After years away, the importance of that specific present isn’t misplaced on Lucci. “It was emotional,” he tells. “I knew I used to be again.”
He is again onstage, however he hasn’t returned as the identical man he as soon as was. Throughout his first days returning to the studio, Gilles remembers a extra bright-eyed Lucci affirming that he didn’t want medicine. He additionally observed a brand new form of sobriety. “He’s actually sober now as a result of he is received to be,” says Gilles, who compares Lucci to Tupac Shakur in his authenticity. “However I feel there’s additionally the sobering that comes from what he needed to survive the ordeal. So at the moment I have a look at [Lucci] as someone [who says], ‘Certainly not am I going to f**okay this sh*t up.’”
It’s tempting to separate Lucci’s life into earlier than and after, even whether it is reductive, however Lucci is aware of there’s been a change. “Again then I took a variety of sh*t personally, however now I do know it ain’t private; it’s enterprise,” he admits. If there may be an outdated model of Lucci, there’s additionally a brand new one. And there’s additionally rather a lot to rejoice.
“I feel [the younger version of me] could be very pleased with me,” Lucci insists. “All the pieces I stated I used to be going to do, I have been doing it. And I ain’t achieved.”
Take heed to YFN Lucci’s Already Legend Album Gifted Version
