In the late 2000s into the 2010s, Alabama-born, Atlanta-bred rapper Gucci Mane was at the height of his popularity. He performed the iconic party song “Wasted” at the BET Awards in the fall of 2009. That winter, his sixth studio album The State vs. Radric Davis topped the charts, and its smash single “Lemonade” eventually went double platinum (Rolling Stone recently named it one of the Greatest 250 Songs of the 21st Century). He made a scene throwing $10,000 into the air on the red carpet of the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards that hid the dark reality that plagued all these accomplishments – he was deep in the throes of a years-long mental health and addiction crisis that contributed to his recurring incarceration, culminating in a prison sentence in 2014.
In his new memoir Episodes: The Diary of a Madman, written with hip-hop journalist and educator Kathy Iandoli, Gucci Mane gets vulnerable about his life as an architect of modern southern rap while suffering from untreated diagnoses bipolar disorder and paranoid schizophrenia. He writes that he’s telling his story for the people who need the help he’s gotten now – and for the artists close to him, like Big Scarr, Enchanting, and Rich Homie Quan, who all died of drug overdoses before they could.
Today, Gucci Mane follows a strict regimen of medication, rest, exercise, and therapy. His psychological transformation mirrored the physical one the world watched him undergo as he was released from prison in 2016. He was leaner, sharper, and stronger than the version of himself that got an infamously prominent ice cream cone tattooed across the right side of his face. At the time, a spokesperson for Gucci told Rolling Stone the ink that had perplexed the internet was “a reminder to fans of how he chooses to live his life. Cool as ice. As in ‘I’m so icy, I’ll make ya say Brr,’” and noted that it matched a chain he commonly wore. Now, though, Gucci Mane reveals the full truth of the tattoo: that it “was an act of rebellion, but it was also a cry for help,” masked as “genius” marketing. In the following excerpt, Gucci paints a detailed picture of the distress and manipulation that colored one of his most notorious choices, starting from his 2011 court-ordered stint in a Georgia psychiatric hospital ahead of a probation revocation hearing.
The guards came and got me from my cell and walked me out. From there, we headed over to the courthouse. From the cell block to the courtroom, I wasn’t looking at anybody or anything. I was just . . . gazing off to the side. When I approached the courtroom table and sat down, I caught a glimpse of the judge staring at me. He looked at me almost sympathetically. Or maybe he was just disturbed by my current condition. My lawyer filed a petition for mental incompetence, which basically explained that I wasn’t mentally fit to stand trial for my probation violation. Normally, people who get to wear that godly robe need more proof that someone isn’t capable enough before agreeing to that kind of action. The judge took one look at me and that was all the validation he needed. My inner spirit jumped back out of me and stood next to the judge at the bench. As I sat at that table, they both stared at me, with pity.
I guess that’s what you really call feeling sorry for yourself.
The judge approved the petition that I wasn’t fit for trial, but I still needed to go somewhere, since jail now felt like the wrong option to the court. So they had me committed to Anchor Hospital, a psychiatric facility that also treats chemical dependencies. They transported me in handcuffs from the prison to the facility. Once I got there, I thought I was still locked up. I was barely mentally conscious, so I could’ve been anywhere. They walked me in my handcuffs to an examination room. There, they uncuffed me and put a blood pressure cuff around my arm instead. A doctor walked in and introduced himself. He checked my pupils, my heartbeat, my blood pressure. He asked me a bunch of questions, and I don’t know what I mumbled in return. The doctor wrote down some notes. Then I was brought from the examination room to my bedroom.
Mental health facilities rarely have a set floor plan, but most follow a similar blueprint. When you see them in the movies, it’s usually some padded room with people in straitjackets yelling. Or they are walking around in shoes with no laces and eating the paint off the walls and laughing. On the other side of it all is the mental health “spa,” where it looks like the patients live in some retirement community and get to play cards and talk about their feelings. In many ways, Anchor Hospital was a combination of all three. They had common areas for people to hang around, but they also had places for the more “severe” cases. To me, it looked like a dorm with 111 beds, where I had my own room with a bookshelf and a small window. I didn’t wander around too much, especially since I was well known. Plus, I was completely numb anyway. How the hell was I supposed to socialize? It was better than jail, I guess, but I thought my actions should have been a little more limited since everyone was under the impression that I was going through something. Not that I wanted one, but where was my straitjacket? My padded room? I expected something highly restrictive, where I couldn’t leave, but even that wasn’t the case. After about four days, the coordinator at the facility said, “You’re free to go.” Free to go? I still couldn’t feel anything; where was I going?
I asked if I was heading back to jail. I wasn’t. Apparently, the hospital couldn’t legally hold me. When the doctor had evaluated me a few days earlier, he concluded that my taking drugs had triggered a mental health crisis. They noted that I seemed to have a mental health condition (back then, words like “bipolar” were pig latin to me), but even with a diagnosis, it took a back seat to the fact that I willfully took drugs. That meant the situation was technically my fault and not something they could help me with any longer. I guess addiction wasn’t enough for them. The recommendation was outpatient treatment, but other than that I could go home. In that condition. No jail, nothing.
So this was like a “get out of jail free” card for me. It somehow wasn’t even in violation of the court if I left the hospital. So I did. Why wouldn’t I? Nobody in their right mind would say, “Nah, I’ll just stick around here for a while.” The thing was, I wasn’t in my right mind; maybe if I were I would have had the sense to demand that I stay and get some help. Instead I was ready to break free. I called some of my people and said, “Come get me.” By the time I was back outside, I caught up on all of the news about me being checked into a crazy hospital. Now everyone was looking at me like I was a madman.
I was mad. Angry at the whole situation, including the publicity. Back in the news for more bullshit. Now everyone knew I was unhinged. I felt self-conscious. I felt ashamed. I was mad at every person involved: the judge, the doctor, the person reading the news article. I was paranoid that the world was looking at me like I was crazy, so I wore this façade like I didn’t give a damn. If everyone was looking at me and I felt nothing on the inside? Then I might as well give them all a show.
A few days later, I was walking down Tenth Street heading over to Patchwerk Recording Studios, which was about five minutes away on Hemphill Avenue. I looked up on my walk and saw a sign that said “Tattoos.” I already had my set tattoo artist at another place. I never used to trust anyone else, but that day, nothing seemed to matter. I had never been to this other studio, but I just walked right in.
“I want to do some rock ’n’ roll shit,” I said to the guys in the parlor. “I want an ice cream cone on my face. Right here.” I pointed at my cheek, just a little under my right eye.
“Three scoops and a ‘Brrr’ . . . on the cone. Right here.”
I spoke confidently, trying my best to hide that there was something clearly wrong with me.
One of the artists looked at me a little confused. “We can’t even do a tattoo like that,” he said. “We don’t do tattoos that close to the eye.”
He’s lying to you. Your tattoo guy will tattoo your eyelids. Don’t listen to him.
I stood there emotionless. “Nah, but this is what I want.” I tapped my cheek with my finger.
After a little back and forth with them, they finally agreed to it. When the needle reached my skin and I felt nothing, the defeat returned to my body. I just sat there while the artist inked me up. When it was finished, I looked in the mirror. The tattoo looked much bigger than I’d imagined it would be. There were some red lightning bolts coming out of the top of the ice cream into my brow line, because I’d said I wanted some rock ’n’ roll shit. Well, there it was. By the time I walked into Patchwerk, everyone knew about the tattoo. The news had already spread. Before the day even ended, people were randomly showing up to the studio to stare at my face.
I got a call from somebody. I think it was someone from my record label.
“You’re a marketing genius,” he said. “This was so smart of you to do.”
It wasn’t just my label, either. People around me seemed to be so impressed by this move. I had never felt more offended by a bunch of compliments. I was mad at myself and them for it. Deep down that ice cream cone on my face was an act of rebellion, but it was also a cry for help. I didn’t exactly do it to make the judge understand that I was having a mental health crisis, but I did want the world to recognize it. I wanted everyone to see that I was in distress. If the headlines said that I was crazy, then this was me confirming it.
Nobody did.
Instead, the whole situation went viral, from going to jail, to (briefly) being committed, to getting the ice cream cone tattooed on my face. These were all bad things, but somehow they were made good in the eyes of the people being amused by them. Locally, I felt that the most. In Atlanta, people were watching me like I was in a comedy skit. People I knew were trying to come see me, just so they could see the tattoo. Sometimes they would tell other friends, “Aye, bring Gucci over here,” just so they could look at my tattoo. They didn’t think, Man, what’s going on with him? Is he okay? No, they just wanted to see what I did to my face. I believe in my heart that they knew I was in a fucked-up place; it was impossible not to see that. Meanwhile, I was just stumbling around, showing off my face, and feeling disgusting inside. People interviewed the tattoo artist about my visit, so he got his little fame off it. I didn’t even remember pictures being taken during the ink, but they were. And even in those pictures of me getting the tattoo and right after I got it, you can see the numb look on my face. I look like I’m not even there. My eyes are in a daze. I would never have made that decision if I was thinking rationally or processing what was going on around me. It’s like you’d never catch me walking into some barbershop because I saw a sign that said “Haircuts,” and yet I went and did this to my face at a place that said “Tattoos.”
I remember Martin Luther King Jr. Day was just a few weeks after I got the tattoo, and so people took photos of Dr. King and put my ice cream cone tattoo on his face. That picture showed up on party flyers in Atlanta, and it was all over the internet. I even had fans who went and got the same tattoo on their faces! Everyone thought I’d crafted the greatest plot twist of all, where I flipped the news in my favor and had my fans all in on it too.
All it cost me was my dignity.
The reality was everyone saw dollar signs, so eventually I did too. Now those party flyers were leading to packed nights at the club for the promoters. I was getting shows booked on the strength of people wanting to show up and see this tattoo in person. I was sitting in the middle of a downward spiral, and I was being congratulated for it. On top of that, people saw an opportunity to make some money off me. That’s when I believe the manipulation started. My rates for appearances on songs started dropping, not because of the dip in my popularity. If anything, I was getting even more popular now that I had this thing on my face. But it was easier to negotiate on my behalf if I wasn’t lucid enough to chime in. So let’s say, for example, a Gucci Mane feature was $20,000 on any given day. I had people around me making deals for a Gucci feature for $10,000, and then they would pocket $2,000 for a commission. If they asked me for a verse, I’d just record one and hand it off. When I say I had no idea what was going on, I mean it. The one thing I could do effectively was record a verse.
Even in my worst state, I could do that much.
I could also show up to local places and do these little performances. I couldn’t travel far, not with my probation. I was unfit for travel even if I could tour. People around me still wanted to make their money, so they started booking me for club appearances in Atlanta. That gave fans an opportunity to see the tattoo in person. People started telling the clubs they had to pay a fee—like $10,000, for example—and they’d deduct $2,500 from it and have me thinking it was just $7,500 to show up. Then when I’d get to the club, some of my other “friends” would show up and I’d just start handing out money. The next day, people would say to me, “Do you remember handing each of your friends $1,000 a piece last night?” I didn’t. Nobody was giving that money back, knowing I had no idea what I was doing, and knowing that I had no business being in the club like that. I was never the type of person to walk through some small club for $10,000 and then lose half the money by the end of the night. That just wasn’t me, but I wasn’t there mentally.
So really, did Gucci Mane even show up?
A few months later, in April, I was arrested again for an incident that happened back in January. I didn’t even remember it happening, but I knew it was going to have major repercussions for me, given the charge. This time, I tried to do right. I entered into a ninety-day rehab program, and I dried myself out. I dressed respectably for the hearing, and I tried my best to show that I was a changed man. I showed them all of the music I’d released and how productive I was. I had mental health professionals with me, explaining to them that the drugs mixed with a mental health condition assisted in the crimes, but I was off the drugs now. I wanted to prove to the courts that I could really change and that I didn’t need jail, I just needed a little help. But by then it was too late, and they weren’t going to listen. It was one thing when my attorney was telling them I wasn’t in a good mental place to be tried, but it was another for them to have me sober so that they could sentence me and I could feel it and hear it with a clear mind.
They sentenced me to six months in jail.
I think about those white kids who shoot up schools and are considered “mentally ill” and put into facilities instead of prisons. How people want to call them “troubled” and say that we should all feel sorry for them because they are going through things due to their mental health, even if the lives of other kids were lost. How even the courts will sympathize with them. And then there’s me: a young Black man with clear mental health issues, committing what I’d like to believe were far lesser crimes and being constantly thrown into jail with a mood disorder diagnosis. I felt it on both sides. My probation officer was a Black woman who I felt very obviously didn’t like me. I felt she was jealous and spiteful. She didn’t seem to like how I made my money, and she made that very clear. And then we had the old white judge, a man who didn’t look at me, he looked through me. I had no one on my side in that equation, whether they looked like me or not. Sometimes I wonder if the court was just as amused to give a jail sentence to a Black man with an ice cream cone on his face as the people around me were to stare at it.
I didn’t need to be in jail or prison, but I didn’t need to be out there roaming the streets either. Part of me feels like the judicial system was just so sick of me. They got tired of me showing up to court after committing some crime and then being thrown back into jail and back out on the streets a short while after that. I was a celebrity, but still a civilian who had to have jail time and probation, just like everyone else. The courts didn’t want to hear about my mental health woes, but they knew they couldn’t have me stand trial in an altered state, either, so once I was lucid, it was game on. They didn’t sympathize with me or see that I needed real medical attention with consistency. They just saw me as this guy with no regard for the law whatsoever, so what should they do? Punish me. I do believe that the healthcare system cared enough to want to help me, they just didn’t know how to do it. The hope was that a doctor would evaluate me and say, “Look, he has bipolar disorder, and during these episodes he commits these crimes of aggression.” It might have been the correct diagnosis to save me from the spiral. That wasn’t what happened. Instead, they said that my drug abuse made me spiral and become violent. Maybe that was true, but their solution was for me to simply “stop taking drugs and you won’t have those episodes.” That wasn’t true either. Not when I had a lingering mental health condition. When I was in that spiral and feeling like nothing was helping to bring me joy, pain, sadness . . . anything outside of anger . . . telling me to stop taking drugs would only make me want to start taking them even more.
The truth is: I should never have been released from the mental health facility. I should never have been given that option. I wasn’t well at all, and the tattoo was the visual representation of that. I was spiraling, and I can say now that I was in a psychotic episode, but at the time I didn’t even know that I was in it. I don’t doubt that other people could tell, but they still let me out to wander the streets. Even before the ice cream cone, people saw me getting more and more tattoos on my face and nobody asked any questions. I should have been scolded for leaving the hospital. I should have been told to stay there and figure my shit out, and after I got the tattoo I should have been advised even more strongly to seek treatment. But when you’re feeling numb and that act of rebellion becomes something everyone loves (even if it’s for the wrong reasons), you start to believe it was a good idea too. You start buying into the “marketing genius” of it all.
What’s worse is that my team watched this all go down, and I don’t recall that anybody ever said a word. I’m not holding everyone accountable here; I’m sure they were good people at the end of the day. But I think after the tattoo incident and more jail time, everyone kind of gave up on me before even trying to save me. It was almost like they saw this man falling apart, so how could they figure out how to keep the business moving? I was clearly in a daze.
It’s embarrassing to think about it all now, but what it really signiied was that through all of this—through all of those viral moments, show appearances, songs, tattoos, crimes, whatever—I still felt nothing. I desperately wanted something to “wake me up,” because I felt like I was asleep the whole time.
Eventually, I came to embrace that tattoo on my face. It’s a reminder of a time in my life that I will never revisit. It’s a reflection of the greatest lesson that I had to learn: sometimes when you need help, the only person you can rely on is yourself.
From EPISODES: The Diary of a Recovering Mad Man by Gucci Mane with Kathy Iandoli. Copyright © 2025 by Radric Davis. Reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster, LLC.
