When Jay “Jeezy” Jenkins had to choose between Arrendale State Prison and the National Guard’s Youth Challenge program for drug possession in 1994, he had no idea what lessons he’d learn along the way.
In his new memoir, Adversity for Sale, Jenkins reflects on the trials and tribulations that led to his successful career. After years of stealing cars and dealing drugs, he chose to attend the Youth Challenge program in Fort Stewart, Georgia and immediately knew it would be no “walk in the park.”
“You’re basically in the Marines or the Army and people are telling you what to do. You gotta shine your boots,” the rapper, 45, tells PEOPLE exclusively. “I don’t know about anybody else [but] I’m just not good at being told what to do. And I’m coming from a place where I’m basically a boss. But maybe a few weeks in I’m like, ‘Hold up, I’m working out.'”
“It taught me structure. And it took me out of the environment that I was in for me to become even more focused than I was because I thought I was focused, but I really wasn’t. I didn’t have a plan. I just was going through the motions,” he adds.
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When the nine-month program was nearly over he was taken on a field trip to a naval base and was onboard a ship when he had a moment of reflection: “I remember standing there and saying to myself, ‘Man, if you go back home and you don’t figure this out… because I don’t want to end up like my friends.’ My friends became junkies and they were getting killed and all these things.”
He continues, “So it was all this stuff in my head. I just remember standing there and it was for a brief moment, I would say at least about 10 minutes, I actually contemplated jumping in the water. I had never had suicidal thoughts, but I [thought], ‘Well, s—, if I just jump in the water, I ain’t gotta deal with this. I ain’t gotta go back home. I gotta do none of these things.'”
Something inside him told him, “‘No, bro. You gonna have to man up. You gonna have to go back home. You got to figure this out.'” When he left the youth program, he was “ready for anything.”
Jenkins got to work and started to build up his career as a rapper. He made his debut in 2001 as Lil J with the release of Thuggin’ Under the Influence and has released 10 studio albums since. His mission with the release of this book is to document how he “failed” his way to “success” and provide a message of hope and resilience.
Jeezy Adversity for Sale.
Courtesy of HarperCollins Leadership, an imprint of HarperCollins Focus
Writing about his experiences and reading them all over again as he recorded the audio version also served as a form of therapy for the rapper.
“I felt like I dealt with it on the surface. But now I’m digging deep,” he says. “I was just going through all these different emotions that I didn’t go through when these things happened because I was numb and I just felt like I just had to keep moving,” he says.
After years of watching people around him getting killed, being sent to prison and seeing one of his good friends die by suicide, the trauma caught up to him: “I let myself go. I was drinking and my discipline was gone.”
“I didn’t know what depression was then. I didn’t have the tools to understand what depression was. Because I was thinking, ‘We’re from the hood, we don’t deal with that,'” the “Holy Ghost” rapper says. “I didn’t know nothing about therapy. I didn’t know nothing about counseling. I didn’t know none of this stuff. I was just dealing with all this myself. And the only thing I knew that could help me with it was my vices.”
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This inspired his 2008 album The Recession.
“When I shook all that stuff I was in, I was in the best shape of my life. My decisions were sharp, keen, my moods were precise. I was just a different person. And I fell in love with it. I’m like, ‘This is who I’m supposed to be.’ All the other stuff, I don’t wanna do that anymore. So I’m gonna stay here. That’s where I’ve been ever since.”
Adversity for Sale is available now.
If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please contact the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by dialing 988, text “STRENGTH” to the Crisis Text Line at 741741 or go to 988lifeline.org.
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Source: HIS Education