Trap Back is a mixtape by American rapper Gucci Mane. The mixtape was released online on February 5, 2012, coinciding with Super Bowl Sunday, at 10:17a.m.—a reference to Gucci Mane's label, 1017 Bricksquad. It was Gucci Mane's first major recording project following his release from jail at the end of 2011, after spending a total of six months incarcerated that year. Trap Back was conceived as a "comeback mixtape" to revive the rapper's reputation and career, which had stalled for years due to ongoing legal troubles and other personal setbacks.
Hosted by DJ Holiday, Trap Back features 19 tracks of trap music by nine producers: Mike Will Made It, Zaytoven, Southside, Sonny Digital, Lex Luger, Polow da Don, Fatboi, and K.E. on the Track. Lyrically, Gucci Mane raps on the mixtape about topics familiar to his past work, such as drugs, sex, and life in the trap. There are guest appearances from Future, 2Chainz, Waka Flocka Flame, Jadakiss, Yo Gotti, Rocko, and Chilly Chill. According to reviewers, the mixtape's musical moods and lyrical tones fluctuate from the menacing and sinister to the playful and humorous.
The recording sessions marked Gucci Mane's first sustained collaboration with Mike Will Made It, who was at the time an up-and-coming producer in the Atlanta hip-hop scene. While the two had previously worked together on individual tracks, Gucci Mane's lead producer had usually been Zaytoven; Mike Will had never before been as deeply involved with the rapper's musical direction or recording process until these sessions. In addition to producing five songs, Mike Will stayed in-studio for the duration of the sessions to provide the rapper with both encouragement and, at times, blunt critiques. Though Gucci Mane was unaccustomed to recording with a producer who had such a demanding, unvarnished approach, he came to appreciate the creative results of their collaboration.
Trap Back, and especially the song "Plain Jane", were popular successes for Gucci Mane. On the mixtape website DatPiff, Trap Back has been designated "2×Platinum" with over 500,000 downloads. Critics generally praised the mixtape for Gucci Mane's clever lyricism and its innovative production, particularly Mike Will Made It's contributions. Most reviews cited the mixtape as a marked improvement compared to Gucci Mane's recent preceding material. In retrospect, critics and Gucci Mane himself have described the mixtape as the launch of a mid-career resurgence in both the quality of his music and his popularity.
Background 2009–2011: major-label releases and personal troubles
By 2009, Radric Davis—better known by his stage name, Gucci Mane—had established himself as a major figure in underground hip-hop. At that moment in the rapper's career, industry insiders and observers generally believed he was poised for a major commercial breakthrough. As several critics wrote in hindsight following the 2012 release of Trap Back, Gucci Mane had seemed likely to cross-over from a hardcore hip-hop audience into mainstream pop success. According to Andrew Nosnitsky, Gucci Mane had "the type of feverish, mixtape-driven buzz that had previously predicted mainstream takeovers from 50 Cent and Lil Wayne."
Gucci Mane achieved a modicum of success with The State vs. Radric Davis(2009), his first record for major label Asylum Records after a series of releases on independent record labels. But the follow-up The Appeal: Georgia's Most Wanted(2010) underperformed sales expectations. His next album, The Return of Mr. Zone 6(2011), was delivered on a much lower recording budget and minimal promotion but sold about as well as The Appeal.
Gucci Mane had numerous legal issues in these years, as well as problems with his drug use and mental health. In his memoir, he said his "usual routine" in this time period was a repeated pattern of rebounding "straight from jail to the studio." He was drinking lean and other recreational drugs, often in prolonged binges, during which he was prone to extreme seclusion and self-imposed social isolation. His drug use occasionally manifested, in his own words, "bizarre behavior" that included "violent outbursts" but also where [he] would zone out and gaze into space." He was briefly committed to Anchor Hospital, a psychiatric facility in Atlanta; this incident, along with a new face tattoo of an ice cream cone that he got days after leaving the hospital, prompted the press to portray Gucci Mane as an erratic and "crazy" personality.
2011: incarceration, recording, and release from jail Gucci Mane served his third major stint in jail in 2011. On April 8, 2011, Gucci Mane was arrested during a visit with his probation officer on charges of misdemeanor battery and violation of probation. According to a report from the DeKalb County Police Department, the charges stemmed from a January 2011 incident when a woman recognized Gucci Mane and got into his car. Once she was in the car, the police report states, Gucci Mane offered her $150 to go to a hotel room with him. After she refused, he shoved her repeatedly until he was able to push her out of his moving car. The woman had already threatened to take legal action—and eventually reached a settlement of $58,000—but did not file a complaint with police until April. Gucci Mane disputed aspects of the police report in his 2017 biography.
Following the arrest, Gucci Mane spent three months in jail. He posted a $5000 bail but was held in Fulton County Jail for violating probation. He was sent to Georgia Diagnostic and Classification State Prison (GDCP) where, during his processing as an incoming inmate, his head was shaved to conform to prison rules. He spent three weeks in solitary confinement, which he later described as "three of the worst weeks I ever spent locked up." He was transferred back to Fulton County Jail and spent the remainder of his jail time there.
Gucci Mane recorded and released several projects between his release from jail in July and his return to jail in September. Although the three months at GDCP had been one of his shortest stints behind bars, there were significant developments in the Atlanta hip-hop scene during his brief absence—notably, the rise to prominence of the producer Mike Will Made It and the rappers 2 Chainz and Future. Gucci Mane was already a longtime associate of Mike Will: the two had collaborated on several songs since first meeting in 2006, when Mike Will was a junior in high school, and Gucci Mane himself had even coined the phrase "Mike Will Made It" on the track "Star Status". With Mike Will's encouragement, Gucci Mane collaborated with Future on a song called "Nasty", followed by a track with both Future and 2 Chainz called "Lost It", and finally an entire collaborative mixtape with Future called Free Bricks, which was released less than a month after Gucci Mane's release. Gucci Mane also recorded a collaborative album with Waka Flocka Flame, Ferrari Boyz, and a collaborative mixtape with Oakland-based rapper V-Nasty, BAYTL.
In September, Gucci Mane pleaded guilty to two counts of battery, two counts of reckless conduct, and one count of disorderly conduct. He was sentenced to six months in jail and ordered to attend anger management classes. He later said though I felt I'd done nothing wrong, my lawyer advised me against trying to fight it. After the year I'd just had I knew he was right. I was the boy who cried wolf by that point. Telling my side of the story would have just pissed off the judge." After three months in DeKalb County Jail, he was released in December for good behavior. Upon his release, Gucci Mane told XXL is the last time I think I'll ever be in jail" and said the first thing he did after his release was change his clothes and head into the studio.
Recording
Upon his release from jail, Gucci Mane felt determined to revitalize his career with a "comeback mixtape". DJ Holiday, the host of Trap Back, said Gucci Mane contacted him out of the blue early in the morning to ask him to work on a new mixtape:
Trap Back was recorded in Atlanta's PatchWerk Recording Studios. In addition to Mike Will, Trap Back features beats from Zaytoven, Southside, Sonny Digital, Lex Luger, Polow da Don, Drumma Boy, Fatboi, and K.E. on the Track.
Role of Mike Will Made It
Zaytoven had long been Gucci Mane's most closely associated collaborator, but Mike Will was the central producer on Trap Back. With production credits on five songs—"Walking Lick", "Plain Jane", "Get It Back", "Okay With Me", and "North Pole"—Mike Will contributed the most beats to the project. But beyond his individual credits, he took a more hands-on approach to recording than other producers Gucci Mane had worked with. Mike Will remained in-studio throughout the entire recording sessions for Trap Back, even when Gucci Mane was working on other producers' beats.
Mike Will helped to keep Gucci Mane's morale high, even in the face of personal tragedy. Less than a week after Gucci Mane's release from jail, his close friend and 1017 Records labelmate Slim Dunkin was shot and killed. Because Slim Dunkin had been on his way to meet Gucci Mane when he was killed, Gucci blamed himself for the incident and almost fell into a "downward spiral" of despair and hopelessness. However, he stayed motivated and focused on music with Mike Will's encouragement, who he said "wanted to see me come back and win just as bad as I wanted it."
Gucci Mane said Mike Will was a "perfectionist" who expressed his opinions directly when he thought Gucci could do better in his lyrics or vocals. Gucci Mane had written raps in prison, but Mike Will deemed them not good enough, prompting Gucci to start over with freestyling. Gucci Mane was unaccustomed to recording more than one take on a track, but Mike Will made Gucci rerecord vocals until he felt the performance was strong enough.
For example, Mike Will said he liked the way Gucci Mane freestyled over "Plain Jane" in rehearsal, but was surprised when Gucci Mane completely changed his flow during recording. Mike Will asked Gucci Mane to redo the vocals the same way he had practiced—which Gucci Mane did, but only on the last verse. Mike Will then rearranged the order of Gucci Mane's vocals on the track, putting the last verse first. Mike Will said these critiques and edits mark the "difference between being a beat maker and a producer", because producers are able "to put the whole record together and make sure it comes out right." Gucci Mane said he appreciated Mike Will's critiques, and both have said they had a high level of mutual creative trust during the mixtape's recording sessions.
Contents Intro from "Big Meech"
Trap Back opens with a phone call recorded from prison: a message to Gucci Mane from the Black Mafia Family boss Demetrius "Big Meech" Flenory, known for his affiliation with rapper Jeezy. Since 2008, Meech has been serving a 30-year sentence without the possibility of parole for organized trafficking of cocaine. Meech's appearance on Trap Back was considered surprising, given that Gucci Mane had famously beefed with Jeezy. In an interview with Atlanta hip-hop station Hot 107.9, Gucci Mane said that despite his disputes with Jeezy there had never been any conflict between himself and Meech.
Music Trap Back is one of numerous Gucci Mane releases with the word "trap" in the title, a slang term for a house used to sell drugs. As its title suggests, Trap Back is a mixtape of trap music, a style of Southern hip-hop that Gucci Mane had been associated with since its inception. Like earlier trap music, the production on Trap Back is propelled by electronic 808 percussion. But according to Anthony Walker of Dummy, the mixtape also marked a sonic transition from trap music of the preceding two years—when Lex Luger's style dominated the genre—with new prominence given to sub-bass percussion and synthesizers: