Jay Jenkins, better known to the world as Jeezy, has never shied away from talking about his life in his music.
The famed artist is letting the public in on his childhood as a military brat, struggles growing up in Georgia and career in the music industry in his new book, “Adversity for Sale: Ya Gotta Believe.”
In the memoir, which is Jenkins’s first book, he opens up about the adversities he faced in his personal life, and the lessons he learned that enabled his success as a rapper and businessman.
“When I was coming up, I loved the Master P’s, the 8Ball and MJGs, Da Brat. My thing was to listen to music before I went to school every morning. A lot of people would listen to it because they liked it. I would listen to it because I was learning things from it. So those were my books, because I hated reading back then.”
A photo illustration shows hip-hop artist Jeezy, in sunglasses, facing the camera.
In his new memoir, Jay Jenkins, better known as Jeezy, opens up about adversity and the lessons that enabled his success. (Illustration: Alex Cochran for Yahoo News; photos: Getty Images)
“And when I stumbled upon Tupac,” Jenkins continued, “that was a game changer because now you got somebody that you listening to, that actually has values and morals and he stands for something. I ain’t never seen no shit like that.”
Jenkins was born in Columbia, S.C., and spent time growing up in Hawkinsville, a central Georgia town southeast of Atlanta. He later relocated to Okinawa, Japan, because of his father, who was in the military.
In the book, Jenkins talks about what traveling away from the hood meant to him.
