On the latest episode of On Record, the West Coast star breaks down the making of My Krazy Life, killing the old YG, and why his sound had to travel.
Twelve years after YG turned his life into a debut album, he’s decided the guy on that record has to go. “The Gentleman’s Club is a story of me trying to kill my old self,” YG tells Boardroom’s Damien Scott on the latest episode of On Record.
That old self is the one fans met in 2014 on My Krazy Life, an audio documentary of a young man going from the block to the top of the rap industry. It was a classic, and it built the myth. The new album takes it apart. The reason is a little humbling. After a stretch of family stress, street trouble, and business problems all at once, YG traced them back and kept ending up at himself.
“I realized a lot of my issues and problems come from within. Self-inflicted. You only realize that when you grow up,” he said. The hardest example is his father’s stroke. YG found himself wondering what he’d done to cause it, until he talked himself out of it. “You don’t got control of life like that. Shit is going to happen. It ain’t your fault.”
Making the album took two years, partly because he built it in reverse. He recorded “Midlife Crisis,” the closer, among his first concept songs, then had to retrace the path that led there. Those songs he writes alone, because he’s too easily distracted otherwise.
It’s a long way from where he started. Around 2011, YG and his producer walked a finished project into Def Jam and heard that it sounded regional. His reaction hasn’t changed. “What the fuck is supposed to sound like? I’m from the West Coast.” So he put the music out for free and drew up a plan. The goal was “to make the sound bigger than the West Coast,” and the method was to bring rappers from the South and East into his world.
Jeezy turned out to be a believer. He’d sit in on the Atlanta sessions, picking favorites, and he told YG to release the first joint from the album as a single. YG said no; Jeezy put it on a mixtape anyway, and YG woke up furious.
But then it took off. “What’d I tell you?” Jeezy asked.
“BPT” was the last song made for the album. Back in Los Angeles, YG played it for his friends in the car, and he knew: “Listen to this shit.” Now that he’s on the road for the first time in about a decade, it still gets the loudest reaction. “Bro, that motherfucker go crazy.”
The album’s biggest moment came late. While it was being mixed, Kendrick Lamar heard it and wanted in on “Really Be.” “He heard all the songs, and he wanted to hop on that one,” YG says. If there was any rivalry, he wasn’t feeling it. “Nah, my personality ain’t never been that.”
Asked what My Krazy Life is to him now, he answers in a word. “Classic.”
The new one has its own influences. One beat sent him straight to Eminem, a hero since childhood, and he’s even floated a feature. It also takes on harder subjects, including “Tiffany,” a song about domestic violence in the trans community that he spent time figuring out how to tell with care. His younger self couldn’t have written it, he says: “Nah. Hell nah.”
There’s a new business partner too. After years at Def Jam, YG joined 10K Projects near the end of the album, and he likes what he’s seen. “They moved real fast and got the business done.” As for what comes after the old YG, he has thought about the name. It stands for young gangster, after all, and that gets awkward with age. “I’m going to just be G. Just gangster.”
Whatever comes next, YG seems ready to let the music do the talking. “Stay tuned.”
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