How Tee Grizzley Went From Prison to Being Praised by LeBron James & Jay-Z

Young Hollywood, what is going on? Your host, David Mendez, with my man. Tee Grizzley, from Detroit. What up though? What's the deal?

What's going on?

I just got to I got to get this out of the way. You came in, the drip is on point.

Man, I ain't gonna lie, man, this is like, this is real light, man.

This is light work for you?

This is light. Okay. I'm usually heavy. This this kind of I was chilling for it.

Are you serious? All right, if we can just get a close-up of one these chains right here. Which one's your favorite?

Um, I like this one. Still got me on. Look at you see the back of it? Okay, yeah. You got me on the back of it.

That's fire. Okay. Well, before that, I see you living nice right now. Before this, you you went through some pain, some hard times. You served some time, but really that kind of just catapulted you, changed your life. Yeah, for real. Talk to me about that.

Now, for me growing up, you know, you a kid, you want to have fun, you know, you excited about life. And the only people who looking like they having fun and really like living their life is the people that's in the streets. That's when I'm like, boom, this this is what I want to do. If these are my options, this is what I want I want to be in the streets because this is the most fun. Right. Boom. But I always been good in school. I'll do my work first before anything. You know what I'm saying? Because it was it wasn't it was never hard to me, so why not do it? You know, and having that type of mentality got me to college. Right. So when I got to college, I got a real glimpse of you can really like live a good life and make something of yourself. But I was broke. I didn't have nothing. You know, so some of them habits from the streets came with me. You know, and that's how I caught my case. And when I got locked up, it was just so depressing in there. It was just like, I just knew that this was a place I didn't want to come back to. So I'm making it my business to make sure I never come back here and try to keep people I love from coming here.

So after you get released, how quick was that process from first day out from being released?

The process was a week process.

What's that moment though, just seeing those those views go up, getting co-signed by Jay-Z?

When the video ready, I'm at work and a dude just told us like we about to close, by winning time and ain't nobody really going for like that. So, like the same day we dropped the video, views is like you could just see it going viral right before you. Yeah. Like as soon as we drop it, it's just build and build real quick. Next thing you know, people calling for shows and all this money coming in and you see LeBron rapping your music, Jay-Z. You on BET, you you get invited, you get nominated for awards. It's it's just crazy. It was a crazy process.

What what's that transition been like? Cuz I mean you were serving time and then pretty much instant superstar.

The hardest part for me is trying to see who are the right people to be around me. Okay. You know, because like the money and the fame, it's not really new to me. And when I say that, like, I was always popular in high school and in my neighborhood. So I'm not new to the attention. And as far as money like my people sold drugs and they weren't smart time people, so I'm used to being around money. But when I came home, I wasn't broke long enough to see who was messing with me when I was broke. You know what I'm saying? That's that's the beauty of people always from that. Yeah. You only can hide who you is for so long.

So you have a new album coming out called Activated. Activated. What should people expect out of this?

When I made my first mixtape, I was in prison. I had a lot of time to think. Okay. But for this album, it's like I'm out. I'm having a lot of fun. And I just really was like full of energy. I got more to talk about and say more. Right. I'm exposed to more stuff, so the stuff you hear, the content you hear, stuff I'm talking about, the way that I'm rapping. It's just more it's just more. More to it this time. Yeah.

You have a lot of collabs on this album, maybe it's a collab or a song. What song are you excited for the people to hear?

I'm excited for the people to hear all of them for real. Right, right. But there has to be like one song on there that's just like this is fire. When I first heard the song, I went crazy for him. Okay. I went crazy for the song with me and Jeezy. Jeezy. The OG. Yeah. I want I was excited about that. I was excited about the song with me and Loochie. Was really excited about the song with me and Chris Brown. Me and Rich The Kid got a good one. Me and Lil Pump got a good one on there. I'm excited about all of them. All of it. All of it.

All right, guys. Well, that's all the time we have. Tee Grizzley, thank you for stopping by.

Appreciate you for having me, bro.