JOE COSCARELLI Let’s start with the title track, “GMFU.” This is the place you put years of angst, everything you’ve been through recently — Takeoff’s death, your own shooting, your marriage collapsing. What was your mind-set going into recording a clearing-the-air song, and how does it differ from the mind-set that you’re in now?
OFFSET I got lost. I went through so many hits, and I feel like it became a blur to what my passion is, which is music, you know? The personal takes went so far on things that have happened in my life that I’ve taken full accountability of before, and it’s like, sometimes I can’t escape the matrix of this narrative. And so when I made this album, I got in a bag where I was like, you know what, I’m going to just focus on this music. I don’t really hear all the noise. I am a great person. I know this. I have Black women around me that know I’m a great man at the end of the day: my mother, my creative director-slash-manager. And I got children that I look out for, that I’m a great father to. And sometimes other things blur that, and it bothers me.
Because you got to understand, when I first started, I was the knucklehead in the group. I was going to jail. I ain’t been to jail in over 10 years. I straightened that, and it was so hard to stray from that to become a professional. And to grow up. My music is my pulse, my heart. That’s all I have. And so I wasn’t treating it that way, because of all the other things that was happening. I went into the dark space, gambling. When I gambled, it’s just like, OK, this is just about this — I don’t have to see no tabloids or worry about somebody saying something about me. It blinds you as if it’s not an issue, and it really is an issue.
COSCARELLI This villain narrative out there — is it because of your personal life?
OFFSET Yeah, it’s the past relationship. What’s so crazy is we good — me and her good. It was a patch of time that happened. We have children. We see the bigger thing. Me and her cool. But it’s more the people, you know what I’m saying, more than what’s actually happened in real life. Like, I have no issues with my ex. I salute everything that she’s doing.
JON CARAMANICA But that doesn’t travel as well on the internet as when you’re not good. People are obviously going to amplify the negative. Are you trying to be proactive to demonstrate that things are good now?
