“Ain’t you that—”
“Yeah. I am that motherfucker.”
People around Memphis recognized me from different places—the TV commercials, the motorcycle rallies, or wherever I’d last made an impression. That exchange became the opening of the song.
The rally verse has a whole history behind it. I used to show up at the big motorcycle rallies with my crew. One that stands out was Little Sturgis. The way I remember it, anything went.
We brought two RVs, a DJ, and a sound system. One guy handed out beads, another worked the lights, and we filmed and photographed the topless rally partying. Then I sold the footage through iamthatmotherfucker.
The middle finger was part of my brand. It went on hats, shirts, and merchandise, with the slogan: “Fuck you, I got enough friends.”
So when the song says I sold them back the weekend, that’s what it means. They’d been there raising hell with us; afterward, they could watch it again.
The Icy K verse started with a car, not a music meeting. I went to Orange Mound to buy a car advertised on Craigslist for my stepson. I deliberately came up a hundred dollars short and returned in my Crown Vic.
Icy K started flipping through my CDs: DJ Quik, Ant Banks, Too Short, Geto Boys. He couldn’t believe what Johnny C was listening to. That’s the moment behind “Goddamn, Johnny C—what you know about them?”
He invited me to his apartment—forties on the table, weed in the air—and played me his music. Later, I went with him to Select-O-Hits and Johnny Phillips, who was kin to Sam Phillips. I negotiated more money for Icy on each sale and never charged him for it. I helped with management and advice for free. That’s what “Got him more off every sale, never charged him for the deal” is about.
It didn’t stop with Icy. I started helping other Memphis rappers too—creating CD artwork and J-cards, the printed inserts that went with their releases. Player Fly worked at my house. I’d go into studios and point out things that needed fixing, like bass pushed so hard it clipped on ordinary speakers. That’s the history behind the line about word getting out and my phone not sitting still.
Then there’s Stank.
I met him through his car and bike wash on Elvis Presley Boulevard in Memphis. The wash is still there. Today, he’s president of Street Hogs MC, with chapters in New Orleans, Houston, Dallas, Memphis, and Mississippi.
A cut is the vest carrying your club’s patches. As I understood the expectations around Memphis, white riders wearing club colors were supposed to have approval from the Outlaws, the white one-percent club in the area. I rode with an all-Black MC and understood those expectations didn’t apply to me.
I wore my cut into the redneck honky-tonks anyway. Some white club members took exception to it.
I wasn’t at the sit-down they requested with Stank. The way it was relayed to me, threats went as far as cutting my head off over those patches. Stank stood up for me and reminded them where they were: Memphis. More of us than you.
That’s where the line about him standing by me when I wasn’t there comes from. My brother had my back without me having to ask.
After that, I felt untouchable.
There’s plenty of swagger and humor in this song. There are also real miles, real history, and a brotherhood behind the words.
