When his next album failed to connect and news came that he’d been arrested again, I figured that was it. In the days that followed, he failed to show up to the photo shoot for the story, which SPIN ultimately scrapped for the print edition and published online instead. Gucci dodged or shut down anything too personal he abruptly ended the call when I started fishing, looking for anything to open him up. Later, when we finally talked over the phone, the conversation was brief. In L.A., our proper interview never materialized. I remember being struck by how closed off and guarded he was generally, and how dramatically he came to life when we were in the studio and there was music to be made.

Gucci visited the BET Awards gifting suites, but skipped the actual award show, hanging with the folks in the lobby instead. We hustled in and out of a Hollywood nightclub with Suge Knight and hit the studio with Pharrell. Late one night, he invited me to join him and a young woman he’d just met for an intimate conversation at a small lounge table that felt better suited for two. Those days were strange-Gucci spent a lot of time standing around the lobby of the W Hotel in West Hollywood, surveying the scene and not saying much. A year or so later, I went to Los Angeles to shadow him during BET Awards weekend for a feature slated to run in SPIN. When I first caught up with him for a 15-minute phone interview in the spring of 2009, Gucci was fresh out of Fulton County Jail and riding a wave of excitement into what would prove to be the best summer of his career. He has released more mixtapes than anybody, got in more trouble with the law than anybody, spun off more protégés, recorded more regional hits. Born in the outskirts of Birmingham but made in the streets of Atlanta, the marble-mouthed MC with the snot-nosed flow has spent the better part of the past 15 years overcoming just about every obstacle thrown his way-including many of his own making. Love him or hate him, one thing’s for damn sure: there’s no denying Gucci Mane.

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