Wacka was shot in the arm while trying to repel an armed robber at a car wash in Atlanta’s south side. He is still mending his wounds, not to mention dressing up the gaping emotional scars caused from such a near-fatal encounter. And while he an astute observer and writer of life’s underbelly, he certainly didn’t anticipate such harrowing real-life material from which to harness his artistic creativity.
He was bequeathed the unforgettable moniker Wacka Flocka Flame by his benefactor Gucci Mane, and the prolific writer waxes poetically about the gritty side of life for which he came perilously close to becoming an unwitting statistic.
“I write about what goes on. I write about drugs, you got good people. Whatever you put your life in. I write about basketball, drugs, drama, good people. You got good people around here,” says Wacka, born Juaquin Malphurs, a New York native before he moved to Riverdale, Ga. when he was nine. “Whatever you put your mind to, that’s what direction your life going to go in. whatever you put your self around that’s what direction you going to go in. I ain’t grow up in no jungle now. I grew up in a regular life. I just chose to do different things, different stuff.”
After mastering the mixed tape circuit, Wacka is about to blow with his debut album with The Brick Squad – though he will spit out another mixtape. “I done mixed tape to death. I’m doing mix tapes until I get my point across. Just trying to stay Southern for you man,” he says.
Wacka may have the Dirty South coursing through his veins, he’s shown he can thrive in any environment, and that includes the Second City, the site of his most enjoyable performance. “My weirdest performance was Chicago. Because they got so much hype of there, man. It’s like, you could feel like the environment was like gangsta like. I don’t know man. It was just crazy man. It was like performing in front of sharks and shit. If you slip off the rail, you going to fall in the water with the sharks and they’ll eat your ass up. That’s the way they make me feel. But, shit, I jump into the crowd with them though! It was crazy. Security was like ‘don’t get in there! Don’t do it!’ and I was like ‘well, shit, you stay on the stage. It was just crazy man. It was just good.”
Something tells us that, with the album and mixtape on the way and with Gucci in his corner, things are going to get better. Much better. – terry shropshire
