OMB Peezy was sitting at home on March 1, 2021 when he heard a knock on the door. Staring back at him was a squad of police telling him he was under arrest for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime. Peezy, who’d just gotten off a seven-year probation stint, says he didn’t understand why cops were outside.
“I was just trying to figure out what the fuck was going on, why the police at my door for,” Peezy tells HipHopDX. “Because if I done did anything, I would have been gone. If I was guilty of anything, you wouldn’t have caught me at my muthafuckin’ house, straight the fuck up.”
Despite Peezy’s protests, Atlanta police and U.S. Marshals took the Alabama rapper to the Fulton County Jail with bond set at $60,000. As Peezy was led away in handcuffs, he remembers saying one sentence over and over again: “Y’all got the wrong one, baby.”
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Peezy’s arrest came off the heels of an incident on February 21 in a scrapyard at 598 Wells Street in Atlanta, Georgia. Rising rap stars Roddy Ricch and 42 Dugg were shooting a music video for their new single “4 Da Gang” when gunshots broke out, leaving three men injured. Ricch and Dugg were not harmed.
After news of OMB Peezy’s detainment circulated through social media, support from other rappers flooded his Instagram comments — from Dee Watkins and Luh Soldier to Seddy Hendrix and Dugg’s 4PF labelmate Rylo Rodriguez.
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Despite fans speculating about if Peezy had beef with Ricch or Dugg, he says people are jumping to conclusions without facts.
“I don’t have no smoke with Roddy Ricch,” he says. “I don’t have no smoke with 42 Dugg. Nobody from CMG [Collective Music Group], no none of that. They love me over there in Roddy Ricch hood; I love them back too.”
“But you know, the internet will try to run with it and try to make their own story and shit. But I don’t have no problem with them people and they don’t have no problem with me. Like real talk, it really isn’t no beef; never was no beef.”
Peezy says the first day he met Ricch and Dugg in person was at the music video shoot. He’s currently out on bond with the case ongoing but must wear an ankle monitor and go without a passport as the legal system looks into what happened.
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For Peezy, this came at an inopportune time — four days before his latest album, Too Deep For Tears, was scheduled to drop. Instead of delaying the project, he decided to release it as scheduled. To Peezy, delaying the music would’ve shown a sign of weakness.
“I feel like they trying to stop a n-gga,” Peezy says with contempt. “They can’t ever stop the n-gga’s dream. Hell no. And then, you know, I still got my son to feed. Man, I got bills and shit.”
Born LeParis Dade, OMB Peezy’s issues with the law date back to his formative years growing up in the streets of the South. Peezy spent his childhood in Mobile, Alabama and says that town left a permanent imprint on him.
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“Mobile part of the struggle,” Peezy says. “We don’t have too much of nothing unless you getting it out the streets. Like growing up down in that muthafucka, it was normal. You in that shit, you don’t know an alternative until you see different.”
He left the trenches of Mobile when he was 12 for the allure of the West Coast. His mom, who’d recently been released from jail, asked him if he wanted to start a new life in Sacramento, California. His response was simple: “Hell yeah.”
A few days later, his mom and aunt rented a U-Haul van and drove all the way to California with him and his little cousins sitting in the back. At first, he found it difficult picking up the West Coast lingo and assimilating into the lifestyle but soon figured it.
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“I’m an Aquarius,” he says. “We adapt to shit.”
OMB Peezy had one more issue to tackle – his name. Peezy says he used to get clowned when adults read his birth name aloud and he was tired of squaring up with other kids because of it.
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“I got a girl’s name, you feel me,” Peezy says in jest. “I didn’t like that shit. You know how many fights I had to get into because of that fucking name?”
In juvenile hall, Peezy got into dustups as a kid, leading to on-again, off-again run-ins with the law. For the last seven years, Peezy has been under probation for simple battery and other minor crimes committed when he was a teenager.
After a long time dealing with the police, he thought he was free to live his life without interference. But two days after getting off probation, he found himself caught up again.
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“As soon as I get off, it’s like I’m on an ankle monitor; I’m back in it,” Peezy says in an exasperated tone. “I can’t go nowhere. I couldn’t even enjoy my freedom.”
The frustration boils over from a life under the microscope of law enforcement as he continues being trapped in its vicious cycle. Music was the way out for Peezy and he uses his latest album to give voice to these agonies and other traumas he continues to battle.
Many songs on the album touch on these themes, but it’s “Soul Ties” that gets to the heart of Peezy’s mistrust. Throughout the track, he details navigating betrayal and his paranoia about people who don’t have his best interest in mind, sung with earnest melancholy as if he can’t sleep without one eye open.
His gifts as a rapper have allowed him to ease the agony caused by the system’s tight chokehold. But when he speaks about his stint in prison, it’s the one time during the conversation where Peezy isn’t smiling or cracking jokes, remembering the pain suffered during those years.
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“My number in California was 4811531; I know that muthafucka by heart,” Peezy says sternly. “I been knowing that muthafucka since I was 15. Once you in that system, you in that muthafucka. They don’t give a fuck if you a rapper. They don’t give a fuck if you done changed your life, and you got a career. You still a felon in them people’s eyes, you still a number.”
While the case has yet to go to trial or move forward, Peezy says he’s not worried. Right now, he’s focused on releasing the deluxe version of his album, headlining shows with 10,000 people and partying with beautiful women.
Time will tell if he gets the chance.
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Revisit Too Deep For Tears below.
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