EST Gee is one of the hottest up-and-coming street rappers
and he got a pretty crazy story behind his music.
First, he was headed to the NFL,
then to the top of the streets,
and now he’s putting Kentucky on the map with his music.
This, is the true story, of EST Gee.
EST Gee was born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky.
Growing up, both of his parents were hustling in the street
and Gee was surrounded by crime 24/7.
He says his dad had a gold tooth,
a tattoo, and had already been shot by the time he was 11 years old.
Gee’s family was doing what they had to do to survive,
but their influence would eventually lead to Gee jumping off the porch just like them.
Like a lot of kids growing up in the hood, Gee’s home life was rough.
His pops was in prison for part of his childhood,
and he had to stay with his grandma after his mom lost custody of him.
But all of the struggle just made him try even harder to get it out the mud.
His first opportunity came from football.
Gee was a three-sport athlete and played basketball and football,
and also ran track.
But football was where he excelled the most.
Gee was the #1 ranked linebacker in the state
and was so good on the field he earned a scholarship to play for Indiana State University.
That made him the first person in his family to make it to college.
He later told Pitchfork:
“All everyone care about in Louisville is making it to college sports.
I had to try to make it for my people, especially ‘cause I never been bad at nothin’.”
Gee played a couple of seasons at Indiana State University
before transferring to Stephen F. Austin University.
Everything was looking up for him, and there was even a chance he would go pro
after college ball.
But then something went down that cost him his scholarship and freedom.
The whole time he was in school, Gee was living a double life.
Everyone knew he was putting in work on the field, but he was putting in even more in the streets.
Gee ain’t want to rely on anyone else for his success,
so he used his connections in Louisville to start pushing weight.
Selling a little weed is normal for college students,
but Gee was moving different.
When the feds caught up to him in 2016,
he was caught with 12 pounds of weed and thousands of dollars in cash.
Gee got hit with a drug trafficking charge that made him lose his scholarship.
At first, he was looking at a potential 10 year sentence.
But his lawyer eventually got the charge reduced to a class D felony
and he accepted a plea in exchange for five years probation.
Everything could have been over at that point,
but Gee managed to avoid jail time.
But staying out of prison wasn’t his only issue.
He also had a son on the way.
With his opportunity for an NFL career gone overnight
he had no other skills to support himself and his family.
So back in Louisville, he hopped right back into the streets.
He said in an interview
“Anything that a n***a feel like a street n***a is supposed to do,
I done did it. Period.
Anything being sold, anything being shipped,
anything needing protected, I done did it.”
Even though he couldn’t make it out through football,
Gee knew he ain’t want to spend the rest of his life caught up in the streets.
So while he was on house arrest for the trafficking case,
he bought some recording equipment and set up a studio in his bathroom.
He got inspired to start making music about his life
after seeing Lil Baby perform on TV.
Baby comes from a similar background,
so Gee knew he had a shot at making it in the industry too.
At first, he was dropping tracks under the name Big Gee.
But then he changed it to EST Gee
after forming Everybody Shine Together Entertainment with his homies.
Fans connected to the music instantly.
Gee used everything he had been through in life as an inspiration
to create hard-hitting, authentic tracks.
One of the people who helped bring him into the rap game was a dude named YOG Peso.
Gee and Peso played football at the same high school and were super close.
They dropped a collab track in 2018 called The Come Up and planned on dropping more.
But just when their music partnership was set to take off,
something serious went down that led to a 27-year-old studio owner
getting shot to death.
Peso and Gee were supposed to meet up at Quality Over Quantity Media to record new music.
It’s not clear what exactly happened, but their crews got into a fight
and someone started letting off shots.
Bryan Owsley, AKA Big O or Coach O
was a football coach who helped start Quality Over Quantity Media.
He was caught in the crossfire and killed, but police don’t believe he was the target.
Coach O’s murder led to a split in the Louisville music scene
that’s still going on today.
Peso and his camp rep the West End area of the city,
while Gee comes from a set called Newburg.
After their crews got into that fight,
the two sides been on their own wave ever since.
Even though he lost an old friend to the streets, Gee was only moving forward.
His mixtapes were buzzing in the city, and he was building a fanbase outside of Louisville too.
Then Louisville superstar Jack Harlow heard his track New Number
and hit him up to collaborate.
But Gee already has a bad reputation in the city.
The police warned Harlow to stay away from Gee, but Jack ignored them and linked up anyway.
Teaming up with one of the hottest rappers in the world
was the biggest move in Gee’s career yet,
but that ain’t mean his struggles were over.
In late 2019 he suffered another setback that almost ended his life.
In September 2019, EST Gee had just linked up with Sada Baby for a video shoot.
When Gee and his brother left the spot, the opps slid thru
and let off shots into Gee’s whip.
He got hit four times in the stomach, and grazed in the left eye.
His brother got hit in the leg but luckily it wasn’t too serious.
Gee said in a No Jumper interview that he thought he was gonna die,
but his brother kept him awake and talking until they got to the hospital.
He spent two weeks in the hospital recovering,
then had to have a bunch of surgeries to restore the vision in his eye.
In the same interview, he said the situation was taken care of
and implied that justice was served in the streets.
No one knows who the shooters were, but a dude from West End named Hblocc Duke
rapped about it on a diss track called EST (Everybody Shot Together).
In the video for the song, Hblocc used footage of Gee laid up in the hospital
with an eyepatch and staples in his stomach while he rapped “We get on EST for free,
ask Gee about that freeway
We the reason for that bad eye and that zipper on his stomach
and a couple of his dead homies.”
The bar about Gee’s dead homies is allegedly about a dude named Austin Floyd
that Gee was close with.
Floyd was murdered back in October 2020,
and a lot of people believe West End was behind the hit.
Then a dude from Newburg named Warren Freeman
was arrested for killing a West End affiliate named Reginald Johnson.
Freeman’s case eventually got dropped,
but it looked like Johnson’s death might have been payback for Floyd.
There were bodies dropping left and right around Gee,
but he kept his focus on the music and kept leveling up his career.
He put out tracks with top artists like Lil Baby and Lil Durk,
but then tragedy struck again.
In March 2020, Gee’s mom passed away from cancer.
Then one week later, his brother was gunned down in the streets of Louisville.
Gee’s life has been a roller coaster full of highs and terrible lows,
but he never lets the bad times keep him down.
He fought through the pain of getting shot and losing his mom and brother,
then signed a massive deal with Yo Gotti’s CMG label in 2021.
Complex asked him in an interview
if all the pain and death he’s been surrounded by has changed him.
Gee told them “You asked if my run-ins with death changed me,
and I think they might have changed death. If you asked the devil,
‘Did Gee change you?’ he’d probably be like, ‘Hell yeah.”
It seems like no matter what happens,
Gee finds a way to rely on himself and make it through.
But now the feds are after the entire EST crew,
and 10 affiliates have already been arrested, including Gee’s manager Eric Mosley.
In September 2021, Eric Mosely’s hotel room was raided by the FBI.
They searched the room and found a kilo of coke, two pistols, and $100,000 in cash.
Mosley got hit with serious charges like possession with intent to distribute
and possession of a firearm by a prohibited person.
Then the FBI went after nine more EST affiliates
in an investigation they called Project Safe Neighborhoods.
During the arrests, the cops allegedly found drugs, guns, a stolen car,
and over 100K in cash.
According to police, EST ain’t just a music collective,
it’s an organized crime group that runs heroin, fentanyl, and other drugs through Louisville.
They also say EST is responsible for several murders, including a three-year-old girl.
Authorities revealed that Eric Mosley and other EST affiliates
bailed out a dude named Kevon Lawless.
Lawless is accused of killing a dude from West End named Brandon Waddles
and his daughter Trinity Randolph.
He was convicted of attempted murder back in 2017, but was later released on parole.
The checks that paid for Lawless’s bond
were under the Everybody Shine Together Entertainment name,
and Gee rapped about him on his track Sky Dweller.
Lawless is known by the name Lil Kada, and on Sky Dweller Gee raps
“They want 1 mil for Lil Kada, know I’m coming to get you baby
know my heart might get me killed but it got me here, so risks I’m takin.”
Gee wasn’t named in the indictment, but a lot of people he is close with got wrapped up in it.
For right now it seems like his legal situation is all good,
but it only takes one dude snitching to bring the whole thing down.
Eric Mosley is facing up to 10 years,
and the other EST affiliates are probably looking at similar sentences.
Lawless is out on bail now, but he could get the death penalty if he’s convicted.
But one thing’s for sure though, none of this is gonna stop Gee from his grind.
He dropped two albums in 2021, Bigger Than Life or Death part one and two
- and even Jay-Z reached out to show him love.
Now he’s got a collab project with 42 Dugg in the works
and his career is in a better spot than ever.
If he can avoid the legal issues and petty beef,
there’s no telling how far he’ll take it.