Gucci Mane is largely responsible for one of rap’s worst trends: gleefully mocking people who have died. Now, ten years after his first vicious dig at someone’s grave, he’s showing regrets, and urges fellow rappers to stop the practice in his recent track, “Dissing The Dead.”
In the song, the prolific Gucci implores everyone to stop making songs that jab at dead people. Two years after his infamous 2020 Verzuz moment, when he declared he was “smoking on Pookie Loc tonight”—a reference to a Jeezy affiliate who Gucci shot and killed in 2005 after a botched robbery—he admits he was wrong, and urges his peers to stop following his example, too.
From the song’s chorus:
I know my tongue is a sword
I know I should be more careful with shit that I said
I feel like I started a trend that’s never gon’ stop
They gon’ keep dissing the dead
Gucci doesn’t regret the killing: It’s the posthumous gloating he feels bad about, as he raps:
Why should I cap ’bout my name on a song?
I’m the one put your boy name on a stone
I dissed the dead and I know I was wrong
But I’m shooting like DaBaby, they break in my home
Granted, flexing his Cuban link chain in a graveyard in the “Dissing” video isn’t the most tasteful way to illustrate this mea culpa, but it’s still good to see a veteran rapper show accountability.
Let’s back up a minute for a quick recap of the Pookie Loc story. In 2005, Gucci’s career was taking off, thanks in part to his Young Jeezy collaboration “So Icy.” However, Jeezy wanted the song for his own album, which led to a war of words between the two Atlanta stalwarts. On “Stay Strapped,” Jeezy offered $10,000 to anyone who could steal Gucci’s “Icy” diamond chain.
On May 10, 2005, four assailants dressed in all black tried to rob Gucci while he was at the Decatur, GA home of a female friend. A scuffle ensued, shots were fired, the men fled, and three days later the body of Henry “Pookie Loc” Lee Clark III (who was affiliated with Jeezy’s label, Corporate Thugz Entertainment) was found at a nearby middle school. The day before Gucci released his debut album, Trap House, he turned himself into DeKalb police and faced a murder charge, but witnesses corroborated his claim of self-defense, and the District Attorney eventually dropped the charges.
The two Atlanta rappers continued feuding for years. Though tensions seemed to be easing in 2011, Gucci put a stop to the peace talks when he released “The Truth” in 2012, which contained the following verse:
A ten thousand dollar bounty put on my neck (brr)
I hope you didn’t pay them ’cause they didn’t have no success
He taunted Jeezy, rapping: “Go dig your partner up n—a, bet he can’t say shit.”
“The Truth” was followed by another eight years of barbs until Jeezy and Gucci improbably agreed to square off in 2020 for the most watched Verzuz ever. The face-off was designed to put the beef aside and celebrate the culture. Which is more or less what happened—though Gucci didn’t exactly display the maturity of an elder statesman. He wanted all of the smoke as he played various Jeezy diss songs. Tension ran high as Gucci played “The Truth”—and then gleefully blurted he was, “Smoking on Pookie Loc tonight.” (Thankfully, Jeezy didn’t take the bait, and things cooled off.)
