ADVERSITY FOR SALE

For a rapper as focused as Jeezy, with a recognizable, detailed style, his engaging memoir is a surprising hodgepodge.

Even passing hip-hop fans are aware of Jeezy (previously known as Young Jeezy) and his former exploits as a drug dealer, which he chronicled regularly in his music. The author revisits those tales in rich detail here, revealing how he started dealing marijuana at an early age on his aunt’s porch, with his cousins as his first suppliers. “On the block, on my bike, posted up on the corner of Poplar Street or with Gold Mouth in his car overnight—wherever, whenever, whatever. I was constantly serving, hustling nonstop,” he writes of his early days of drug dealing. Throughout, he ably captures the lifestyle—not just the cars and the money, but also the anxiety and paranoia. While the storytelling is mostly gripping, a couple of times, Jeezy reaches a cliffhanger worthy of a TV finale with car chases and armed confrontations and then notes, “let me just stop right there because I could go on and on. Like I said, everything that happened in Macon could fill a whole other book.” Why couldn’t it fill this book? The author seemed determined to make this a cross between a memoir and an advice book. Unfortunately, his advice is often banal: “I’d always tell people whenever you feel stuck, just take one simple step in any direction. It doesn’t matter, just get moving; and then once you start moving, just keep taking those steps and keep going. You’ll be amazed at how far you can go.” The outcome of the car chase or more about why the FBI staked out his house would make for better reading.

Jeezy shows that his grand storytelling abilities extend beyond music in this entertaining yet uneven book.