Curren$y’s Recipe For the Good Life

Curren$y is standing in the TSA line at the New Orleans airport on his way to Los Angeles, where he’s scheduled for a photo shoot. His latest album, Never Catch Us, has just arrived and, par for the course, is a master class in lyricism, highlighted by his native Nawlins drawl and nonchalant delivery. Produced by longtime collaborator Harry Fraud, the 12-track project is also another staunch reminder of Curren$y’s stranglehold on his fierce independence. 

In between humble brags about his luxury car collection (he’s now up to 47), stacked bank account, and copious amounts of weed are endearing bars about his mother, who he often calls his “angel investor.” As he raps on “Duct Tape”: “Cash we got it out/My mama the proudest.” And that couldn’t ring more true. 

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“None of this would have happened without her,” he admits. “When I was at my lowest and just ready to do whatever I had to do to survive, I had kind of lost my dream. It had gotten to the point where it was just about keeping the things you have, keeping the lights on and shit. 

“So at that point, you gotta stop even worrying about your dream. Then she stepped in and was like, ‘Through your years of being successful, when you were with No Limit Records and stuff, you was just giving me money for no reason. I was just putting it to the side.’” 

And she gave it all back. 

“She said, ‘If people see you doing odd jobs and all this scrambling, then they won’t believe your music and they won’t believe your rap, so when they see you, you still got to look like it’s going on for you,’” he explains. “She was basically like my first record deal.” 

Curren$y’s time with No Limit and Young Money/Cash Money Records was brief. He signed to the former in 2002 and by 2004 had inked with the latter. Although he released his first mixtape, Sports Center, Vol.1, via No Limit in 2004, he signed to Lil Wayne’s Young Money Entertainment that same year. It became painfully obvious that not only was he not the label’s biggest priority, but he was always destined to be independent and do things his way—so he did. By 2007 he’d branched out on his own, then founded Jet Life Recordings in 2011 and has continued to thrive under his own umbrella. A dizzying number of mixtapes and albums later, he’s afforded himself the freedom to navigate his career the way he sees fit. 

“It panned out,” he says. “People can argue that I could be bigger if I did other things, but then I would be compromising what I want to do. The decisions I make and the people I don’t do music with and shit, that’s the stuff I choose not to do because it’ll take me out of the zone that I’m in. I like where I’m at.”

And that means he’s comfortable with his level of fame. He’s known but not so known that he can’t go to the grocery store without getting bombarded by fans. That’s especially important to him because of his lifelong obsession with Hot Wheels, something that began as a kid when he’d go on grocery store excursions with his mother. 

“I still wanna go to Walmart and different grocery stores so I can see the Hot Wheels section,” he says with a wide-eyed innocence. “I wanna do the Hot Wheels hunting on my own because on Amazon, you’re cheating. I can buy one for some crazy price or I can find the motherfucker by mistake in a Walmart and only pay a dollar for it. That’s why they call it a treasure hunt.”

But life wasn’t always like this for Curren$y. There were times his electricity would get shut off or he didn’t have enough money for rent. 

“If I woke up and saw my ceiling fan wasn’t spinning, then I already knew what type of day it was gonna be,” he remembers. “If I woke up and it was still spinning then I would just sleep some more ’cause I’m like, ‘Alright. This is a regular day.’ But if I wake up and it’s not spinning, I already know that it’s about to get hot as fuck in that apartment and it’s time to move.” 

But without those character-building moments, Curren$y wouldn’t be equipped with the work ethic he has today. Granted, there’s still a healthy amount of fear attached to losing everything, but it keeps him motivated. 

“I don’t ever want to not be like this,” he says. “It gets better and better every day, but I would never want to revert back to the way it was. I’m terrified of that and that’s OK. We got to be scared of some stuff. I’m scared of Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ and I’m scared of going back to zero.” 

With 47 cars, including a vintage Mercedes-Benz collection inspired by Miami Vice and a rare 1999 Ferrari 355 Spyder that was used in the film The Boiler Room, a sprawling home with an “insane” Hot Wheel racetrack, a media room, an arcade, a RC racetrack, and all the studio equipment he could ever dream of, those lean days feel like a distant memory, although he’s acutely aware that it could all vanish at any moment. 

Despite his success, he remains grounded and tapped in with those he calls his “listeners.” As he once said, he became a millionaire by being “chill.” Perhaps it’s the weed or his personality but whatever it is, it’s working and he never takes his “listeners” for granted. 

“They changed my life and made a way for the people around me to be able to provide for their folks,” he says. “It means the world to me that they cared enough about the music I was making in a climate where music changes all the time. 

“There’s so many other people you can listen to and I don’t have to necessarily share fans or my listeners—I don’t even refer to them as fans—I don’t have to share listeners because they don’t really give a shit what else is dropping if I’m dropping. If I got something coming out, they’re gonna stop and lock into the project.” 

And the same goes for Never Catch Us. The collaboration with Fraud provides a certain familiarity for his audience due to the duo’s outstanding eight-project history. Their chemistry is so innate, they were able to record the newest album without ever stepping foot in the same room. 

“It makes me remember the first time,” he says. “I remember when I first met him and we did Cigarette Boats [2012]. The acclaim we received from that project was crazy, and we did all that in one day. Like, the first day I ever gave him a high five was the day that I rapped on those five beats. I rapped until it was time for me to go back to my hotel. We’re on autopilot at this point.

“Real best friends don’t have to see each other every day and when they do, it’s like nothing never changes. There’s no real distance. Now, we could pretty much work telepathically.” 

He doesn’t have to stray too far from his New Orleans compound either, which is by design. After dabbling in rap as a teen, he briefly quit and got a job at Toys R Us following a friend’s murder because it “felt safer.” He wanted to feel that way at home, too. 

“I’m pretty much in the house,” he says. “Anything that I would have left to do is right here.”

And his mother? She lives directly across the street from him in a nice home, where he admittedly uses her driveway to store a few of his cars. 

In many ways, Curren$y is a survivor; he survived the blog era (2007-2012), made it out of poverty, escaped a potential major label trap, and avoided getting swept up in street life.

“I couldn’t have drawn a better situation than this, and it was provided through this,” he says. “As soon as I started just talking about what I was doing and making content based around what was going on in my everyday life, people related to me because they realized, ‘Oh, this dude is kind of like me.’” 

One of the most impressive qualities about Curren$y isn’t his rap prowess or business acumen—it’s the fact he wants everyone around him to win.

“Everybody actually knows the secret to success,” he insists. “They’re like, ‘Yo, believe in yourself. Stay true to yourself.’ And people just think it’s cliche, but if you actually apply that, it’s there for you. It’s so easy that it’s difficult. It’s so easy that it’s hard to do because people can’t believe that that key was given to them from birth.

“This was the key to a good life. But nobody can believe that’s in plain sight. They think there’s got to be some other conniving, sneaky way to get to it, but nah, this is it. It’s just as simple as being good.”

Curren$y begins his 4:20 tour on April 18 in Austin, Texas.

To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, click here.