Wealthy Homie Quan Was the Lacking Hyperlink of Southern Rap

Quan was born Dequantes Devontay Lamar and raised in East Atlanta. He was a fan of James Patterson’s Alex Cross books, and grew up as a star heart fielder, which I all the time discovered cool, since you don’t hear an excessive amount of about Black baseball studs anymore. He advised Rawiya Kameir in 2015, “I performed from 14 to 18—like, I used to be superb at it. I used to be Mr. Baseball my freshman yr. We had been good and we had nice expertise. I don’t wanna say it’s a white sport now, however it’s. I really feel like quite a lot of us [Black players] get neglected but it surely’s the best way it goes, although.” Quan has mentioned he turned down a chance to play in faculty, and he ended up hanging round Atlanta the place he bought despatched to jail on housebreaking fees, which is the place he began writing poetry that later morphed into music. Seamlessly mixing rapping and singing, he would go on to be one of many faces of one in all Atlanta’s biggest eras, the warped and wild and gaudy early 2010s—an period that lives in my thoughts because the picture of Quan’s arm wrapped round Thug, medallions on his chains the dimensions of a hockey puck, within the video for “Way of life.”

Not too lengthy after Tha Tour Pt. 1, Quan and Thug drifted aside for causes that had been by no means made solely clear. A joint tour for the mixtape by no means materialized. Quickly sufficient, Quan retreated to the background. The explanations responsible had been a molly habit, Atlanta avenue politics, and label points, made worse by a leaked music, from the Wealthy Gang periods, the place Quan alluded to what feels like rape: “I don’t need your ho, simply need that cookie from her/She tried to withstand so I took it from her/How are you gonna inform me no?/You will need to not know who I’m.” He later apologized for the strains, however they all the time caught with him.

He had a couple of hit-or-miss comeback initiatives, particularly the emotionally resonant Wealthy as In Spirit, which has its moments. And, although he was out of the highlight, I by no means considered Quan as a World Star–period artifact. It all the time felt like every day that the new Wealthy Homie Quan music would seem on my Instagram feed and he can be blasting out of each speaker once more like nothing had ever occurred. That was the best way issues had been imagined to go. Ideally aspect by aspect with Thug. They might lastly go on that tour, arms locked, matching designer outfits, Birdman within the shadows with greenback indicators for eyes. It most likely by no means would have occurred, however that didn’t cease me from dreaming about that Hollywood ending. Hardly ever does rap get to expertise these.