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Believe Me
Since coming home from prison last year, YFN Lucci is set on leveling up. New music, a nationwide tour, and a clearer look at the endless possibilities freedom allows.
Words: Peter A. Berry

“I just wanted to hear myself again,” YFN Lucci says on a chilly evening in Atlantic Records’ cozy Manhattan office this past November. He’s referring to the moment he got back in the studio for the first time after his prison release over nine months ago. It was a humble enough request for a multiplatinum-selling artist, since behind bars, there are only lonely nights, no recording sessions, and more worries than new lyrics.

This time last year, Lucci was fresh out. No more days sitting alone in a cell at Forsyth, Ga.’s Burruss Correctional Training Center. Tonight, he’s seated with his right foot out of its sock and his $500,000 Smiley pendant sitting atop his black sweater like a flattened disco ball. The 35-year-old rapper can record any time he wants, but for now, he’s on a press run in New York City, promoting Already Legend, the first album he dropped since he came home last January. The project, released on Sept. 26, 2025, was an exhale years in the making. Lucci had to endure a prison attack and rumors of snitching and betrayal while inside. “It was my time to finally speak out,” he says. He had to hold his breath, though.

Near the height of his career four-and-a-half years ago, Lucci, born Rayshawn Lamar Bennett, was arrested on 13 RICO charges that could have sent him to prison for decades. With his blend of blood-stained melodies and aspirational theme songs for trap glory, he’d made himself a canonical rap star in the Atlanta continuum—only to have all of that momentum stripped away along with his freedom. Now, after having 12 of the 13 RICO charges dropped, pleading guilty to one violation of the Street Gang Terrorism and Prevention Act, and returning home after nearly four years behind bars, he’s out to continue the level up he began years ago.

More immediately, he’s eating bacon cheese fries from Wingstop! with his team surrounding him. Generally, he’s been in the studio frequently after having his first recording session just two days after his release. Because of his probation, he’s no longer allowed to drink or smoke. His sobriety and all the time he had to spend away from his four children have made him look at life with more clarity. Also, through a more precarious lens. “I just think I’m more mature and more business-minded now,” Lucci shares. “A lot of sh*t don’t matter; only the family, my music, my business and my time.”

On the business side, he’s launched his own label, Already Legend, and he says he’s signed a fellow Atlanta rapper named BHM Pezzy. Lucci is also into real estate. “I’m working on trying to purchase buildings right now, too,” he reveals. “It’s coming. You gotta crawl before you walk.”

On the family end of things, Lucci tries to spend as much time with his kids as possible. “I finally can hold them and be present,” he expresses. “I always spent time with my family and my kids, but just spending more time. I know you can’t never get that time back.”

Lucci is free and sitting on the success of an album that sold 28,800 equivalent album units in its first week of release. By any measure, it’s a series of big wins, however, getting to that point was an Odyssean road coated in violence, discouragement and unflattering speculation. Like many rap stories, that journey began with tragedy.

During a Dec.12 2020 gun battle with another party, one of Lucci’s friends was severely wounded as they sat in a moving car on an Atlanta street. Amid the attack, Lucci’s fatally wounded friend, James Adams, was pushed from the car as he and his team sped away from attackers. Adams died in front of witnesses on a nearby street shortly thereafter. Lucci turned himself in to police on Jan. 13, 2021, for the murder before posting a $500,000 bond and being placed on house arrest. Months later, in May of 2021, Lucci and 12 other men were indicted for a RICO case, with one of the charges being connected to the death of Adams.

While behind bars starting that year, Lucci was separated from his children for the first significant amount of time. He also faced rumors that he had betrayed his friend by pushing him out of the car, though he says he wasn’t phased by the claims. “At the end of the day, it’s an opinion. You weren’t there. So you don’t know the facts,” he maintains. When he wasn’t facing isolation or attacks on his character, he dealt with a literal assault. In March of 2022, he was stabbed by another inmate and claimed that he feared for his life. When Lucci wasn’t fighting for his life, he was facing despair and boredom.

Gilles, an attorney who operates as Lucci’s creative director, remembers using his status as a lawyer to visit the rapper at a time when pandemic-era jail restrictions prevented inmates from seeing friends and families in person. Removed from his wealth, infrastructure and the armor of his inner circle, Gilles could tell Lucci was distressed. “You go from living such a great life to people telling you what to do, when to do it,” Gilles says. “And [prison guards] are oftentimes hell bent on chomping you down the size,” he adds. “This is a chance for [them] to not just put anybody in their place, but to put YFN Lucci in his place.”

Lucci’s place was a cement block cell, and Gilles remembers Lucci telling him about moments he was harassed by prison guards. It’s an understandable thing to get upset about while not throwing away your future at the same time. “I was like, ‘Bro, understand where you’re trying to go,’” Gilles remembers. “’You’re trying to come home and that sh*t don’t matter. Once you’re out, you’re never going to think about these people again.’”

To help Lucci escape the prison walls—at least, mentally—Gilles began maximizing the institution’s four-book per month limit, bringing Lucci copies of books like Don Miguel’s The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom or 50 Cent and Robert Greene’s The 50th Law. During some visits, Gilles would bring an empty green book to the cell. They called it, “We Are Making History,” and in it, he would take notes he made regarding future Lucci releases, potential legal strategies and more.

The book served as a way they could both look to the future. But before that, Lucci had to beat the case in front of him and put to rest conflicts from the past. Namely, a Young Thug feud that had turned deadly when members of Thug’s alleged crew, YSL, had shot and killed Donovan “Nut” Thomas Jr., a close friend of YFN Lucci’s, in January of 2015. The murder was a central part of the RICO case against Thug. Lucci was arrested on separate RICO charges just a year before Young Thug was. For his part, Lucci was open to moving past their issues, with a little encouragement from another local Atlanta superstar.

“[21] Savage, reached out to me while I was incarcerated and he asked me, ‘How you feel about getting on the call with [Young Thug], [and] y’all discuss y’all differences, and just see?’” Due to legal stipulations, Thug and Lucci couldn’t have literal contact, yet a truce was made, and they both landed tracks on their latest albums, UY Scuti and Already Legend, respectively. It’s the sort of reconciliation that, at least vaguely, calls to mind Gucci Mane and Jeezy’s feud-ending Verzuz battle.

It arrives at a time when people have said Atlanta hip-hop—a scene plagued by the deaths of Takeoff, Trouble and Rich Homie Quan—is weaker than ever. When it comes to how he views the city’s spot in the culture, Lucci is agnostic, but hopeful. “In a way it could be true, but it’s all about unity,” he says of Atlanta rap’s perceived decline. “Once everybody starts coming back together, it’s going to be good.”

If you let naysayers tell it, the future of the region’s rap scene is in doubt. In Lucci’s mind, his status as an area titan is not. That’s of course the implication of his latest LP title, Already Legend. As lucid as it is unsparing, the album is a diaristic bloodletting that distills all the frustrations of his time between prison walls. “It was real easy because I had a lot to talk about,” he says of recording the project. The weight of his experiences is only buoyed by his soaring melodies that make the catharsis exhilarating.

For tracks like “Practice What You Preach./RoboCop.,” he condemns the Atlanta District Attorney’s office while lamenting bonds broken by his RICO charges. With its muted bassline and stern piano keys, it feels like clarity. Meanwhile, on “JAN 31st (My Truth),” he addresses the day his friend was killed. Lucci says he didn’t let discussions about the incident affect him, but the song’s mournful piano bassline and his own confessional bars tell a story of a dormant pain that never left his prison cell: “Look, they say I threw my mans out?/When you on a move sometimes it don’t go how it planned out/Tribulations got me this far/Rest up ’cause your grandson made it this far.”

Although it’s more celebratory, the hook for his album’s title track tells a similar tale of trauma and triumph: “Look what I did/I took every loss and then I turned that to a profit/I can’t reach my goals with everybody in my pocket/I can’t trust a soul, but I know pain, but I can’t block it.” He might not be able to block the pain, but he might be able to move past it. At least enough for some much-deserved self-congratulations. “It’s not nobody giving me my legendary status; that’s how I feel about myself,” he raps. “I’ve been in the game 10 years. I’ve got hits, and I’ll get more hits.”

With prison and a new album behind him, he can look to the future, which he hopes includes owning half of Atlanta on his way to becoming a Rick Ross or Jay-Z-esque mogul. “They started with music, but they got so much other sh*t,” he explains. He’s also interested in an acting career, though he hasn’t signed up for any acting classes yet. Right now, he has a few new songs out, “You Special.” and “On My Mind.,” and he’s on the road for his Already a Legend Tour. The trek goes throughout February. He says the final stop will be at Atlanta’s State Farm Arena, where he previously performed this past August. After years away, the significance of that particular show isn’t lost on Lucci. “It was emotional,” he tells. “I knew I was back.”

He’s back onstage, but he hasn’t returned as the same man he once was. During his first days returning to the studio, Gilles remembers a more bright-eyed Lucci affirming that he didn’t need drugs. He also noticed a new kind of sobriety. “He’s literally sober now because he’s got to be,” says Gilles, who compares Lucci to Tupac Shakur in his authenticity. “But I think there’s also the sobering that comes from what he had to survive the ordeal. So today I look at [Lucci] as somebody [who says], ‘Under no circumstances am I going to f**k this sh*t up.’”

It’s tempting to split Lucci’s life into before and after, even if it is reductive, but Lucci knows there’s been a change. “Back then I took a lot of sh*t personally, but now I know it ain’t personal; it’s business,” he admits. If there is an old version of Lucci, there’s also a new one. And there’s also a lot to celebrate.

“I think [the younger version of me] would be very proud of me,” Lucci insists. “Everything I said I was going to do, I’ve been doing it. And I ain’t done.”