Meech had designs on becoming a rap mogul, and had begun mounting a major push for his prized signee, Bleu DaVinci. They were known as the Black Mafia Family, and over the course of their enterprise they made at least a few hundred million dollars. By the turn of the century, they had a nationwide distribution network, with Terry living in Los Angeles (for proximity to Mexican connections) and Meech overseeing the hub they’d established in Atlanta. The short version is this: Meech and his brother, Terry, had been running cocaine in their native Detroit since the late ‘80s. “There’s a lot of folklore about Big Meech,” said Benny Boom, the video’s director, in a 2015 interview with Complex. They belong to Demetrius Flenory, better known to most-including federal prosecutors, as it later turned out-as Big Meech. Before long, two more Maybachs pull up, only this time they aren’t ferrying famous music executives. Jay-Z, officially retired from music and in his first year as president of Def Jam, is there, too: he drove to the shoot in a sky-blue and champagne-colored Maybach.
Lil Wayne showed up earlier in a red Ferrari Beanie Sigel was tapped for a cameo Cam’ron and Fabolous were hanging around, ready for close-ups.
His debut album, Let’s Get It: Thug Motivation 101, leaked months before its street date Def Jam, the label that signed him when his local mixtape enterprise proved impossible to ignore, seems to be okay with that, since it forced the hit-song-averse Jeezy to keep the obvious smash on the final tracklisting.Īkon, who produced the song and sang on its hook, is milling around in a white tracksuit. This is the video shoot for “Soul Survivor,” a song designed to make Young Jeezy, a pudgy, baby-faced rapper with whispered-about ties to cocaine distributors, bankable beyond his native Atlanta, to New York radio and across the American West.