In an excerpt of Gone ‘Til November, Lil Wayne shares what life was like during his eight-month prison sentence at Rikers Island. The memoir, which comes out October 11, reveals everything from his first day behind bars to finding out Drake had sex with his girlfriend and the celebrity visits he received.
Wayne discusses how he had to talk to the prison psychiatrist upon his arrival just to relieve his shock. “If I hadn’t traded my blue Marc Jacobs jeans, white polo, and gray Vans for green onesies, I wouldn’t have believed this shit myself. I had to talk to the prison psychiatrist when I got here. I told her that I shouldn’t be talking to her because I’m not crazy … but I ended up really enjoying her conversation.”
To those of us who may have thought Wayne was greeted with a prison celebrity treatment a la Martha Stewart, think again. Upon meeting the prison’s captain Wayne said, “As soon as I sat down in the captain’s office, his exact first words to me were, ‘Don’t fuck with my staff! Don’t come in here trying to be what you are. You’re not gonna ‘Lil Wayne’ up in this mothaf-cka!’ After the captain’s great words of discouragement, I was handed a towel, two sheets, a toothbrush, toothpaste, and a green cup. Oh yeah, and a cell, cell 29.”
On finding out Drake had relations with his now ex-girlfriend, Wayne wrote, “As a man, honestly, that sh-t hurt, and not because it was Drake. It could’ve been any man and it would’ve hurt the same. She said it happened way before we got together, but she just never told me. When Drizzy came to see me, he was like, ‘Yeah it’s true … don’t fuck with her like that ’cause I did fuck her.’” Damn!
The somber girlfriend news didn’t create much of a tear in Drake and Wayne’s relationship, as Wayne recorded a verse for Drake while he was behind bars, over the phone. “We want you to be on Drake’s remix. We’re going to do it over the phone. After I finished running it, I was kinda nervous on how it was going to be received. This was the first time that I haven’t been in the studio to hear the playback before a song goes out.”
And in another anecdote, Lil Wayne says he was visited by Diddy and that the visiting area was filled with people trying to get his attention. “Diddy kept his word and visited me today. It was total chaos! Every captain in the building was down there! Even the deps and the warden! Everyone just wanted to see him. It was kind of aggravating, but it is what it is.”
The excerpt concluded with some more famous friends who made time to visit Lil Wayne:
“I have to give props where props are due … big shout-out to Diddy, Chris Paul, and Kanye for coming to see me, especially with their schedules. I know that they had to go through some extra sh-t, because you just can’t walk in this b-tch and say, ‘I want to see Dwayne Carter.’”