Freddie Gibbs handled his loss to Nas in the Grammy’s Best Rap Album category well. Dressed in a salmon colored Alexander McQueen suit, Gibbs delivered a concession speech at a pre-show party.
“I might’ve lost today,” he joked. “But I’m undefeated in court.”
Gibbs was alluding to him being acquitted of sexual assault charges on September 30, 2016, after spending 37 days in two different European jails. Gangsta Gibbs faced up to 10 years in prison after he was charged with sexual abuse of a defenseless or psychologically impaired person.
The charges stemmed from an incident that occurred several months prior in Austria. Gibbs and a friend allegedly had sex with younger girls and were later accused of abusing them. He was arrested by French police before a performance at Le Rex in Toulouse while on his Shadow of a Doubt tour.
In an interview with XXL, Gibbs spoke candidly about how it felt when he heard he was acquitted.
“I walked in the courtroom with my head held high and I walked out the courtroom with my head held high ’cause I know I didn’t do shit,” Gibbs said “The whole time, it was a four-hour trial, I knew I was winning the whole time. It’s like, when Floyd Mayweather is cruising in a fight, that’s how I felt the whole time. My lawyer kept winking at me and like, ‘Yeah, we’re good.’ So basically, they just wasted four months of my muthafuckin’ life for this and I’m about to slam-dunk in y’all faces. It was a great feeling. I was going home, my daughter was there, Erica was there. It was great. It was just like, I’m about to go home. But that shit really took a lot out of me. When I got home I didn’t want to do anything. I didn’t want to be involved with this rap shit really because I felt like if some fans can do this shit to me, I’m just going to chill.”
With the case behind him, Gibbs has quietly been making his case for why he deserved to be included in the Grammy category.
In November, when the Grammy nominees were initially announced, Gibbs took to Twitter to gloat.
“I told y’all niggaz,” he tweeted. “I actually told y’all last year too.”
Gibbs’s Alfredo album was highly praised upon its release. It debuted at number 15 on Billboards 200 chart and was placed in several publication’s best albums of 2020 year-end lists. Alfredo’s ten tracks were exclusively produced by The Alchemist and the album featured Rick Ross, Benny the Butcher, Tyler, the Creator, and Conway the Machine.