Verzuz Cheat Sheet: Gucci Mane x Jeezy

On Thursday, 19 November, the Verzuz battle series—which you can watch right here on Apple Music—hosts two of Atlanta rap’s most influential MC’s, Gucci Mane and Jeezy. The pair coming together to celebrate each other’s catalogues is particularly notable because Gucci Mane and Jeezy have spent a great deal of their careers at odds, their beef stemming from a collaboration on, of all things, 2005’s “Icy”. The song was a perfect introduction to either MC—so much so, in fact, that a dispute over ownership sent them down a long and seemingly unending path of mutual disdain that crossed over from songs to the streets. Since then, the pair have released proper diss tracks, along with a handful of strays about one another over some 10-plus years. And why would a beef that started in 2005 still hold weight a decade and a half later? The answer is in what these men mean to Atlanta and to rap music at large. After “Icy”, each was able to carve his name in hip-hop history as a proprietor of trap music in its original context—the music that detailed the lifestyle of street hustlers in the South. Gucci Mane’s late-aughts mixtape run is unprecedented, and few MCs can boast an album franchise as impactful as Jeezy’s Thug Motivation series. Their respective catalogues are packed with songs that tell the story of Atlanta street music over the past two decades, and their Verzuz face-off will be a celebration of their era’s (and their city’s) hardest music. Get acquainted with what each man has contributed to the legacy of the A with the official Gucci Mane x Jeezy playlist, as curated by Apple Music host Lowkey.