Cover Story – PAUSE Meets: Moneybagg Yo

Tell me about your life growing up. Where did you start rapping and how did that neighbourhood inspire your music?

I started in Memphis, Tennessee, walking home in the neighbourhood I’m from. It’s just a really typical cliche story and everybody has kind of a similar one, but they do it in their own way, they have their own exit routes and the ways they got out of the streets.

With me, I feel like mine is different, and my motivation is most definitely my kids. We didn’t have money so I feel like I had to hustle. I was in a group with 8 people, but there were too many egos and too much going on, so I ended up getting out of the group. When I got out of the group, that’s when I took off. I took off as soon as I exited the group… I started getting $2500 a show. That was the whole point in doing it, but then I realised “Damn, I’m stuck in this rap sh*t, I can’t let the fans down. I’ve really got people who love me.” I couldn’t just get $2500 and quit. It went from $2500 to $15,000 and up, it was like a movie… real motivation. I’ve actually got a movie coming out explaining my whole process.

You said that you got out of this group… for some people, is that a difficult thing to do?

I mean if you know your end goal, it’s fine. Some people let it get the best of them and some people deal with it differently than I did. I feel like I knew I was a real superstar, I knew. Some people’s minds don’t even stretch that far, like, they just want people to know them and I want to make “X” amount of dollars. My situation was way different. I’m one of God’s favourites so that’s why I feel like out of the whole group, I surpassed everything.

You had your eye on the prize! Tell me about your rap name Moneybagg Yo, where did it spark from?

Just running around the hood, getting money, hustling. My homeboy, he’s locked up right now, his name is Brick Game Rico… free Rico! He’s getting ready to come home and he gave me the name in the 12th grade. We were just in school, and he was going for like ‘Rubberband Yo’ and ‘Blood Yo’, this and that, and then he came up with ‘Moneybagg Yo’. That was it, it just stuck. Boom. It was like, “Moneybagg Yo, he gets to the money”; that’s what we do! I didn’t even know that I wanted to take it as a rap name, people just started calling me Bagg around the hood. That’s when I started taking rap seriously.

So, when you got in the game and realised that you were in it and had to keep going, what kept your mindset going? What is your day-to-day mindset?

Like I said, I knew where I wanted to be and where I wanted to go, and I just knew the level that I was on and the hustle that I had in me. When you’re a hustler anyway, you will always find a way to get through something, and like I was telling you, I didn’t even know how I was going to be in the situation that I’m in now, I just knew that I was going to be something. I played football and basketball, I just knew that I was going to be something. I dropped out of school in the 12th grade.

I failed school because I had my daughter, she’s 13, and I felt like I couldn’t make money in school, so I was like “Man, I’ve got to get out of here and figure something out.” This is how that turned out.

You have your own label Bread Gang. Being an artist and running a label, how do you balance both?

I feel like, at this point in time, the platform that I’m on and with people paying so much attention to me, I don’t really have to do too much with the artists but post them, put them on the platform, shout them out, bring them to the shows and get their stuff distributed. You don’t really have to do too much. They’re not taking away from your craft when you’re at this point, when you’re at this level of the game.

You trying to make it and trying to get where I’m at, don’t do that, like saying “I’ve got an artist”. It’s too early for that. When you get to my level, it’s time to start reaching out and looking back and pulling people up the ladder. That’s where I feel like I’m at in my career right now. You always want to do stuff like that because it will help your whole situation live. Look at Cash Money, it’s the same situation.

Have you always had this business mindset?

It got sharper over time! I had to lose some money, had to mess it up, blow it and then get it right back. There were a lot of lessons learned.

You and Yo Gotti and CMG The Label teamed up to release a compilation album called “Gangsta Art” on July 15th. Tell me more about that.

Of course, I’m a part of the label, it’s Yo Gotti’s label, but I’m a part of it. I’m a big factor, a big puzzle piece to the label… humbly speaking. I just feel like it was to help others, like I’ve got some of my Bread Gang artists on there as well. There are a lot of CMG artists on there too that I’ve collaborated with. It’s just trying to put the world on what’s going on.

Going back to what I was telling you, we’ve got to keep the whole situation going… after us, what’s there going to be? It’s really just about having fun, it was some summer music, stuff like that. We’re getting ready for the fall.

What kind of artists do you look to sign?

I feel like you’ve just got to be confident, and dedicated and you have to have a good mindset. You can have the talent but that doesn’t mean too much. There are a lot of talented people in the world, and there are a lot of people who can do something, but how far does your mind stretch? How do you think?

You can rap and get this money, but you can blow it and be in jail two weeks after on some dumb sh*t, or be dead. You’ve got to be a thinker, you’ve got to be ready to think. This is a thinker’s game for real, a game of chess.