Gucci Mane's gentle post-prison demeanor took many by surprise and even fueled a conspiracy theory that a Gucci clone had been released and the real Guwop was still in prison.
As it turns out, Gucci got sober over the course of his 39-month prison stint. "I felt like I couldn’t make music sober, I couldn’t enjoy my money sober," he said in a New York Times feature published Wednesday morning. "Why would I wanna go to a club and couldn’t smoke or drink? I felt like sex wouldn’t be good sober. I associated everything with being high. In hindsight I see it for what it was: I was a drug addict. “I was naïve to the fact that I was numb."
"I can’t say I felt happy my last six, seven years in the music business," he continued. "I was just numb. You told me that I was doing good or told me I was doing bad, you hated me or loved me, either which way I greeted with nonchalance. It was sincere nonchalance — like, I really didn’t care."
Salute to Gucci for sobering up. Here are five rappers more rappers who have kicked their own drug and alcohol habits.
Kid Cudi's first hit was his 2008 lonely stoner anthem "Day 'n' Nite." In 2011 he announced that he had stopped smoking weed. In 2014, he announced that he had quite cocaine, alcohol, and anti-depressants, and that he had originally taken them up because of fame-induced stress.
"I had a problem, I think with any addiction you have to be ready to make the choice, whether it’s cigarettes or anything. You have to just commit and you just have to stick with it," he said in an interview with Headkrack. "I stopped everything cold turkey... I didn’t go to rehab. I don’t believe in these things. Some people need the extra help, not me."
As a youth, Lecrae earned the nickname "Crazy Crae" for his wild drunk stunts. "I tried pretty much every drug there was to try, except for heroin and crack. I was out there," he told Complex in 2012.
Lecrae's grandmother was a Christian. Her attempts to show him the light only made him drink and smoke more and the "emptiness became more profound." He converted to Christianity at age 19, gave up alcohol and drugs, and dropped his debut album Real Talk at age 24.
Macklemore released his debut album The Language of My World in 2005, then fell off the grid for a few years, crippled by addiction to alcohol, oxycontin, lean, and various other drugs. He sobered up in 2008 and started attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. In 2013 he took Rolling Stone to an AA meeting. "It's been a struggle the past year," he said. "It's very important to go into the rooms of AA, smell the shitty coffee and be reminded that without sobriety, I would have no career."
In 2014, the stress of the public spotlight pushed him to take up sleeping pills and weed. His fiancee discovered his sleeping pill habit when she found a pill in his shoe at SXSW. He has since returned to sobriety and is currently teaming up with President Obama to raise awareness for the country's growing opioid epidemic.
Royce da 5'9"
Royce quit drinking in 2012 after it became too detrimental to his career and personal life. His new vices: exercise and Monster energy drink. At one point he was drinking a gallon of Monster per day.
"I thought drinking was what I needed for my edge," he told DJ Booth. "Actually, yeah, I needed it for my edge because I did it so much I became physically and mentally dependent on it. What happened was I had to break myself, take as much time as I needed, to break myself from feeling that way and thinking that way. And it took me a little over two years to be able to make music without feeling super awkward. And not just make music - everything."
Royce called Eminem when he decided to get sober, and they still have conversations about sobriety to this day.
Eminem
Eminem's drug-fueled adventures in his younger years provided inspiration for some of the most colorful and depraved rap songs ever recorded. Eventually he developed a serious pill habit -- 60 Valium and 30 Vicodin pills per day -- that culminated in a near-fatal methadone overdose in 2007.
“When I took my first Vicodin, it was like this feeling of ‘ahh.’ Like everything was not only mellow, but didn’t feel any pain,” he told Vibe . “It just kind of numbed things…I don’t know at what point exactly it started to be a problem. I just remember liking it more and more. People tried to tell me that I had a problem. I would say, ‘Get that fuckin person outta here. I can’t believe they said that shit to me.’ They knew nothing about my fuckin life. Are they out of their fuckin mind? I’m not out there shooting heroine. I’m not fucking out there putting coke up my nose. I’m not smoking crack.”
Eminem sobered up in 2008. Like with Royce da 5'9", exercise helped him get through it. He started cranking out 17 miles per day on the treadmill and slimmed down from 230 pounds to 149.