Daily Stuntz 11/20 — Jeezy and Gucci Mane on Verzuz Last Night
I missed the daily yesterday and it is unfortunate, but as Rafiki said in the Lion King, “it doesnt matter, it is in the past”.
More importantly, last night was the battle between Jeezy and Gucci Mane on Verzuz. For those completely unfamiliar, I will provide a short recap and why I think it is worth highlighting.
Verzuz is a platform on Instagram and AppleTV developed by Timbaland and Swizz Beatz, both super producers and powerful in the music industry, at the start of the pandemic to give people something to look forward to. By using their connections, they could get two artists who people love to come together and trade songs. Prior to this they had battles such as Monica vs Brandy, Snoop Dogg vs DMX, and even Gladys Knight vs Patti LaBelle. This is an example of a very successful new media/content approach as they pull in millions of viewers on Instagram (last night had 1.8M at one point) and dont have commercials, or many sponsors (you can see the Ciroc logo but that is really it). They get artists nobody else gets, do it on their schedule, and had people like Lebron James and Kevin Durant posting about it. The business of culture, influence, marketing, brand, etc is fascinating with changes in technology and platforms, and I wonder in what other industries could a platform like this happen.
Jeezy and Gucci Mane are both Atlanta rap legends who helped pioneer the Atlanta sound (I still have my 2005 Jeezy album “Lets Gets It: Thug Motivation 101” and its still excellent) but unfortunately have been in a feud for 15ish years that includes multiple songs attacking each other, fights between the rappers and their groups, and even a murder charge against Gucci for killing a friend of Jeezy (charge was dropped due to lack of evidence). So in addition to being Atlanta legends, most people if not everyone assumed these two would never be in the same room as each other without major issues, so this event was even bigger.
To add to the story, Stacey Abrams made an appearance at the start of the event asking people to vote in the Georgia runoff. If you had told me at the start of 2020 that Jeezy and Gucci Mane would be performing in the same room preceded by Stacey Abrams asking people to vote I would have said you were crazy, but that would be true for a lot of predictions about this year. One of my favorite moments was when Gucci Mane asked her to clear his record and she handled it about as well as she could.
Throughout the event they both played their classics and new stuff (I thought Jeezy had a better set) but Gucci played his songs attacking Jeezy and it seemed to be getting tense. Then as things were wrapping up, Jeezy (who made the initial invite / olive branch ) and Gucci put on the 2005 song “So Icy” that they made together before the issues started and seemed to bury the feud. Similar to Stacey Abrams asking people to vote and talking with Jeezy and Gucci, I thought I would never hear So Icy and many of the 1.8M viewers were commenting on how huge this was to see these two legends move past 15 years of fighting.
Whether or not rap/hip-hop is your thing, lets take a win in 2020 when it is given to us. Two artists critical to a city and sound were able to move past serious issues that have resulted in at least one death and come together to move forward. In honor of Jeezy and Gucci, reach out to one person today that you may not have connected with in a while and just say hi. Lots of people are struggling and with Thanksgiving travel being risky according to the CDC/HHS, folks are not going to see their families so that contact might mean more than you know.
