Last year, Bankroll Freddie
was one of the hottest up and coming rappers out of the South.
He dropped his second album with features from massive artists like Megan Thee Stallion
and 2 Chainz, and it looked like he was about to take over.
But last week, Freddie got busted with 21 pounds of weed and is now in FBI custody.
Here’s what’s going on.
On April 15th, Bankroll Freddie got pulled over for speeding in Marion, Arkansas.
Getting a speeding ticket is one thing,
but that was probably the last thing he was tripping on.
When the cops searched his truck, they found 21 pounds of weed,
171 grams of promethazine, and a gun.
According to reports, Freddie also got hit with charges for resisting arrest, speeding,
and not wearing a seatbelt.
It ain’t clear why the FBI is getting involved,
but Freddie might be caught up in a major investigation
now that the feds are working the case.
Freddie has always had a wild life,
and moving weight is nothing new to him.
He grew up in a small town called Helena, Arkansas,
and been in the streets since an early age.
His pops was a gambler and involved in the dope game too,
and he brought Freddie with him everywhere he went.
Like most kids, Freddie looked up to his dad and wanted to be just like him.
He saw his pops making money and buying new cars and clothes,
and Freddie wanted the same thing for himself.
He even told his 1st grade teacher that he wanted to be a drug dealer like his dad.
In interviews with VladTV and DJ Smallz Eyes,
Freddie talked about how crazy his life was growing up in Helena.
Most kids are playing with toys and watching cartoons at nine-years-old,
but that’s when Freddie saw his first murder.
He was walking down the street
when he saw his cousin chasing down her own brother with a butcher knife.
She stabbed him over and over like a horror movie while he screamed at Freddie to help.
Freddie ran away to call 911, but by the time paramedics arrived
his cousin was already dead.
No charges were filed against the woman
because her brother had a history of abusing her,
but witnessing something that crazy is going to leave a mark.
Watching someone get shot is traumatic enough,
but seeing your own cousin get stabbed to death with a butcher knife is next level.
But violence seems like it’s always surrounded Freddie.
He told VladTV that over the years he’s lost over 15 friends to gun violence,
and he’s been shot on two different occasions too.
Not much is known about the shootings because Freddie ain’t gone into detail about them,
but he has talked about the gunshot wounds and it’s clear he’s lucky to be alive.
The first shooting went down in 2017 after a fight in a casino.
According to Freddie there was a fight first,
then the other side came back shooting when he left the casino.
He was driving down the road when someone sped passed and shot out his back windshield.
He ain’t even notice at first, but then a second car pulled up next to him
and started dumping shots too.
Freddie tried to duck out of the way,
but one bullet hit under his arm and another grazed his head.
His homie in the car with him got grazed in the back and in the head too,
but Freddie was lucky to be alive.
If the bullet that hit his side had gone a little to the left,
it would have hit him directly in the heart and killed him instantly.
The second shooting went down in May 2021.
It ain’t clear exactly what happened,
but Freddie got hit in the spine and the bullet traveled up his back
and got lodged in his shoulder.
Doctors managed to cut out the bullet fragments,
but Freddie could have easily been parazlyed from the injury.
Spinal injuries are no joke,
and if the bullet was even half an inch closer to his spinal cord
he probably wouldn’t even be walking today.
Getting shot twice don’t sound lucky,
but Freddie says he’s been in over 30 shootouts,
so it’s crazy that he’s only been hit twice.
He explained that Helena is a small town, so there's nowhere to hide.
There were times that he’d be in three or four shootouts in one day
because he kept crossing paths with his enemies.
Freddie says getting shot is scary because you don’t know if you’ll live or die,
but it actually don’t hurt that much.
He admitted in an interview with DJ Smallz Eyes
that one time he slipped on some ice and broke his ankle,
and that hurt way more than getting shot.
He said he tried to tough it out and walk it off,
but ended up breaking another bone in his foot and had to wear a cast and roll around on a scooter.
Not only did Freddie see his dad sell dope,
he also witnessed him win big with gambling.
His dad shot dice on the block and went to legit casinos too,
but he never knew when to quit.
Freddie talked about how his dad would win like $70,000 racks in ten minutes,
then be dead broke a few days later.
Freddie took after his dad and started gambling heavy around high school.
Every night for a year straight,
him and his homies rented hotel rooms and people came through to gamble with them.
Freddie says he don’t got a gambling addiction like his pops,
but he did admit that he’s lost over $400,000 in dice games.
He says that he don’t gamble heavy like that no more,
but some fans think gambling debts might be why he’s still moving weight
even after his rap career took off.
After he got shot in 2017,
Freddie realized he needed to change how he moved.
His first son was on the way, and Freddie wanted to be there for him.
Music was never really something he considered as an option,
but after he caught a case in Memphis
he had to show the courts he was working on something productive,
so he dropped a couple songs in 2017 and started building a buzz in his city.
He still wasn’t taking music too serious,
but in 2019 he recorded a freestyle to Act Up by the City Girls and everything changed.
Freddie posted the freestyle, and Pierre “Pee” Thomas from Quality Control Music
tapped in immediately.
Freddie appeared on an episode of Big Facts and told them
“I post it on my page, and that n***a Pee hit that ***** instantly.
He shared it, like, ‘This n***a hard.
Then everybody went to calling my phone like, ‘Pee post yo ****.”
Even though he wasn’t really even a rapper at the time,
Pee obviously saw the potential.
Freddie said “So, then he hit me up the next day, like, ‘Call me, send me your info.’
Boom! I get on the phone with him, and he’s like, ‘N***a, I’m finna fly you to L.A.’
I’m like, ‘****! Bet!’ N***a flew me to LA, and the rest been history.”
Freddie dropped his debut single Drip Like This,
followed by his first Mixtape Saved by the Bales in July 2019.
Drip Like This popped off a little bit,
but then Quality Control put Young Dolph and Lil Baby on the remix and the track went crazy.
Right now it got almost 20,000,000 plays on Spotify, and it launched Freddie into the mainstream.
In 2020, he kept the momentum going and released his debut album
From Trap to Rap with features from Lil Yachty, Moneybagg Yo,
and other established artists.
Unfortunately he couldn’t go on tour like he wanted to because of the pandemic,
but behind the scenes he had more deals in the works.
When up and coming rappers have a hot song or album,
they usually try to ride that wave and release as much music as possible,
but Freddie went MIA for ten months with no new music.
Fans were confused at first, but then in January 2021, he made a comeback.
Freddie announced he signed a deal with Motown Records
and dropped the single Add It Up to celebrate the event.
On the track he brags about his cars and jewelry, and raps
“I ain’t dropped in ten months and n***a, I still ain’t went cold yet.”
Then a couple of months later, he dropped his 2nd album Big Bank
and a single with Megan Thee Stallion.
Within a couple of years, Freddie went from just a random hustler in Arkansas,
to one of the most exciting new artists in the game.
It seemed like everything was going his way, but now he’s being held by the FBI
and could potentially be facing life in prison.
Even though Freddie’s pops introduced him to the streets as a kid,
his family tried to keep him out of trouble.
After his cousin was murdered in 2009,
Freddie went to live with his mom in Conway, Arkansas
to get away from the violence in Helena.
But by that point, Freddie was knee deep in the streets
and went back to Helena every weekend.
Helena is a small town, but that don’t mean it ain’t dangerous.
Back in 08, the crime rate was over five times the national average,
and it’s still a wild place today.
People usually talk about crime in bigger cities like Chicago and New York,
but some of these small towns you never hear about can be way worse.
Freddie says his cousin was killed on July 5th, 2009,
and ever since then July 5th is “retaliation day” in the city.
And just a couple of years ago, he lost another homie on the same day.
Growing up surrounded by crime and violence,
Freddie just adapted to his environment.
He told the Arkansas Democrat Gazette
“We were some hotheads back then
and were getting in trouble and doing stuff we didn’t need to be doing.
I was in the streets real bad.”
In 2020 he went on Off the Porch and said
he started robbing houses when he was just 12-years-old.
I was young, I was like 12.
We was kicking doors, you hear me?
We was, you know, flat screen popping,
We was - man, we had all the flat screens
breaking in houses, getting TVs computers.
Breaking into schools getting computers.
You know silly **** we was doing **** like that.
After he blew up with music,
it looked like he had moved on and left it all in the past,
but obviously that ain’t the case.
Right now there ain't too many details publicly available about the case,
but rumors started flying as soon as the news broke.
Freddie talked about losing hundreds of thousands of dollars from gambling before,
so he might have turned back to pushing weight to pay his debts.
He told VladTV back in 2020
that he has five kids with five different baby mamas, and those expenses add up quick.
In a lot of interviews since he signed to Quality Control,
Freddie talked about how much legit money he’s making now
and how he’s been able to back out of the streets.
But maybe that was all a front and he never really left the game.
He claimed in that Off the Porch interview he was booking four shows a week
for over $20K bands each,
and that was before he dropped his second album or worked with any big names.
I got four shows every week, you what I'm saying?
Man ****** go crazy, I book Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
20 bands, 25 bands like I'm getting crazy money
bro I'm like geez.
For someone who’s as well known as he is,
it’s kinda interesting that Freddie was riding solo with over twenty pounds of weed.
Moving that much weight is crazy enough,
but he was allegedly pulled over just for speeding and the cops found the drugs after the fact.
Freddie’s been around the dope game since he could walk,
so you would think that he would know better
than to be speeding while driving around with that much work.
Now that the feds are involved, who knows what will happen with the case.
It’s probably gonna be hard for Freddie to beat the charges unless he cooperates with them
and cuts a deal.
Hopefully he gets a good lawye r to help him out of the situation,
but it’s still too early to say what might happen.
This case is still developing so stay posted for updates.