A Gangsta’s Pain: Reloaded

When it’s all said and done, there’s no telling how COVID-19 will have affected the artistry of some of our favorite music-makers—except in the case of Moneybagg Yo, who tells Apple Music very plainly that it made him a more focused MC. “I just feel like a lot of my old music the fans didn't accept how I wanted them to accept it,” he says. “I just was in a different stage of my life and I was moving around a lot. The COVID situation had to happen, and by that happening, I sat down and thought about everything and I made the biggest songs of my career—of my life—in the pandemic.”

Here, Yo might be referring to the lead single from his fourth album A Gangsta’s Pain, the Future collaboration and instantaneous smash hit “Hard for the Next.” Or maybe he’s referring to an altogether trippy exploration of relationships through the eyes of a lean addict called “Wockesha.” Maybe he’s just that proud of the hard-charging “Shottas,” where he debuts a completely new flow. But regardless of which songs he’s referring to, the M-town representer claims that the break in action the world was forced to observe showed him exactly who he is. “I feel like by me sitting down and just figuring it out, I'm going to go back to the roots,” he says. “I'm giving them everything they love about Moneybagg Yo.” With A Gangsta’s Pain: Reloaded, the MC added seven more tracks of his undeniable swagger. Below, Moneybagg Yo breaks down the Reloaded additions.

“Switches & Dracs” (feat. Lil Durk and EST Gee)
“When I first made the song, it was a late studio night. Me and Durk, we was just locked in. Some stuff had ended up happening at the studio. I think the police or somebody came and we had to stop, and he was like, ‘We just gonna pick back up on this later,’ but then me and him both so busy. So that's why Durk is on the chorus—I was trying to get him to do a whole verse, but then we had to stop. I just thought it was like a cool idea because at the top of the song, he was like, 'We in here deep as hell…Switches and Dracs.' And I was like, 'Ooh, that’s hard.'”

“Wat Be Wrong??”
“You got people, they'll throw little slick shots on the internet. They'll try to post stuff, try to get your attention, but then turn around and try to U-turn when they see it don't work or they don't get your attention. But I'm like, ‘Nah, you gotta fix it how you broke it. You went to the internet. You got to tell them you sorry.’ A lot of people go through that.”

“Gave It” (feat. Big Homiie G)
“‘Gave it’ is a street term. We say that when something is hard. If you go hard at something or if something fresh or you hop out, you pull up, you hop out with that drip, ‘Oooh, he gave it. He pulled up in this. He hopped out wearing this.’ He gave it, like he dripping. It's like a Memphis term or something like that. It's just relatable for the culture.”

“This Feeling” (feat. Yung Bleu & Ja’niyah)
“Young Bleu, I’m sure you’re familiar with him, but it's another one of my artists, her name is Ja’niyah. I think she the best R&B artist in the world, the best R&B artist I ever heard. And if you go back, you'll hear me saying, like, Ja’niyah, Summer Walker, I love them—and that didn't change. But at the same time, she what they gave in Memphis, she one of them ones. And she actually presented the record to me. She was like ‘Bagg, what you think about this? You want to hop on it?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, I’ll get on it!’”

“Scorpio”
“It was like at the tip of October and I was like, ‘This is Scorpio season.’ I just got real creative with it, and then I was listening to the DMX song. I was on YouTube and when it first came on, I was like, ‘Man, this joint right here a vibe.’ And then I listened and I was like, ‘All right, bet, he's telling a story.’ The pocket that I was in, when I do songs like that, like how I did ‘Scorpio’ and how I did ‘Wockesha,’ I call it my ‘Wockesha’ flow. I didn't even know the world was going to accept me like that, so now that's the Moneybagg style.”

“Another One” (feat. DJ Khaled)
“I already had a song called ‘Another One.’ When I went into Deluxe mode, I was thinking of having fun and not thinking too hard. So what I did was I went back and I dug that up because I feel like the fans didn't receive it how I wanted them to receive it. Me and Khaled was already chopping it up; I sent it to him and he sent it right back the next day.”

“Wockesha (Remix)” (feat. Lil Wayne & Ashanti)
“The song was already outta here and I’d only had Wayne talking at the top. And then it was an Ashanti sample so it just made sense to me. I was like, let me just go put both of them on it and don't think too hard. I dropped it and they was just going crazy about how Wayne killed it and Ashanti, she vibed out on it, and it was just perfect.”