Moneybagg Yo Talks New Mixtape, ‘Hard to Love,’ Entrepreneurship, and Making Lil Wayne Re-Do a Verse

variety.com:

Yousef Srour Moneybagg Yo is preparing to be the South’s next mogul. His face is pasted on four different flavors of Rap Snacks, he has his own line of VIOR alkaline water, and he runs his own record label, Bread Gang Entertainment.

At 31, the Memphis-born rapper — whose new mixtape, “Hard to Love,” dropped today — still remembers the hustle of releasing his first one back in 2012, “From Da Block 2 Da Booth.” “We were writing on my CDs,” Moneybagg (real name: DeMario DeWayne White Jr.) recalls. “We were passing them out and getting posters and pullovers and anything we thought was going to put in the groundwork.” Raised on Juvenile and Three 6 Mafia, ‘Bagg has looked to ‘90s hip-hop royalty to cultivate his own ambitions as an entrepreneur.

Eleven years on, ‘Bagg still has that strong work ethic, inspired by 50 Cent’s partnership with Vitaminwater and its $100 million acquisition, and Birdman and Slim Williams’ Cash Money empire. “I thought that was the starter-kit of rap, to be honest,” he shrugs.

He went from sleeping on floors covered with folded sheets and pillows to having the conviction to tell Lil Wayne that his verse on Moneybagg’s “Wockesha” remix needed to be re-recorded. “I don’t know if anybody’s ever told Wayne this,” he chuckles, “but he had actually done a verse before that one, and I was like, ‘Go back in for me.’ He did it and it came back how we heard it — super hard.