Fetty P Franklin Bets on Himself — and It Feels Like He’s Winning

Like 42 Dugg, BigXthaPlug, and innumerable D-Boys before him, Fetty P Franklin’s most formative rap moments unfolded behind prison walls. After an inmate effectively told him he didn’t have bars, the then 18 or 19-year-old Fetty returned to his cell, wrote some raps and eventually spit it for other inmates. To even Fetty’s surprise, they liked what they heard. “I’m like, ‘Man, y’all fake as hell, y’all just gassing me up,’” he remembers. “But I kept writing.” And he’s still writing. And still rapping. Just with bigger audiences. 

Since the late 2010s, Fetty has used a mix of blunt, motivational street raps and sly charisma to become a gleaming gem in Charlotte, N.C. Now, instead of prison wall cyphers, he’s taking trips to Atlanta for recording sessions, and instead of competing with inmates, he’s trading bars with folks like DaBaby. They met on the set of their “SDA” video shoot last year. “He told me it’s hard for people to keep up with him,” remembers the 36-year old. “It’s hard for motherf—s to keep up with me, too.” That confidence has been part of his music since his first project, I Ain’t Playing, was released in 2018. By the time he unloaded his DaBaby joint project, Kirk Franklin, his skills and his confidence had only leveled up. He’s fortified both with Bet the Bank on Frank, an album laced with streetwise raps and a vaguely Young Dolphian combo of mic presence and wry humor. 

For this one, he cruises over bando beats that oscillate between soulful and ominous. Or some combo of both. While he hails from North Carolina, the cowbells feel Memphis-indebted, and flute flourishes layer it in subtle adventure. His bars themselves are immediate with a dexterity and specificity that belie his viscous baritone. Cruising through sinister bells and hi-hats pulled from a trap dungeon for "Soup Kitchen," Fetty traces the roots of his Block Boy IQ, instinctive shootout logistics, and the silly notion that anyone in the streets enters them without knowing its risks. “I got my game from some winos in the crack house/If you don’t want a n—a dead, don’t pull your strap out/We all gotta roll the dice, you better not crap out/We all gotta take a risk, you ain’t special,” he raps, adjusting the last word to rhyme in a way that sounds deliberate rather than clumsy. 

Adding to his general knack for relatable, everyday hustle raps and introspection, Fetty infuses the tracks with repeatable hooks. “Grind It Up”  and “How Many” are quietly infectious enough to get a lot of spins from now through the end of the summer. Taken together, he feels like a link in a lineage that includes Dolph, Moneybagg Yo and other 2010s rappers that left their mark with gimmickless, unashamed street rap that blended anthemic song structures with bars that could only come from folks with a jail record — or the savvy to do their dirt while completely evading the law. 

Fetty’s music feels extracted from the tradition of the Jeezys and Young Dolphs, but he says JAY-Z’s the one who gave him the game. While some rappers glamorized the hustle, Fetty appreciated HOV’s ability to assess the criminal underworld from both the dark side and the even darker side. He appreciated his business acumen, too. “As a hustler, I had to get to the person who had more — the supplier,” he says. “I guess Jay-Z would be the supply because he’s the biggest in it to me.”

As his raps and jail record suggest, Fetty was into the streets before he was into music. His father was in them too, landing a lengthy prison bid for an otherwise successful stint in the drug game. At age 16, Fetty had dabbled in hip-hop, but it took years of accumulated street stress to pull himself out of the life he’d one day rap about. 

“I said, f—k it. I’m tired of going through this s—t. I ain’t about to go to prison for none of y’all n—s. I ain’t going back again. I’m tired of being on the news. Tired of the police looking for me. Tired of getting in the shootouts. Tired of losing everything,” he says. “You just get tired of the s—t.” 

Beginning with tracks like 2017’s “I Go Hard,” the video for which he shot on house arrest, he began what he hopes is a permanent transition from the block. The success of “Pusha Man,” a track he dropped with fellow North Carolinian Trap Dickey, only reaffirmed his decision. Bet the Bank on Frank reaffirmed it again. 

After multiple stints in prison, Fetty looks to stay out of it while making his latest drop his greatest. “I know what [my] album Frank did, and I know what Kirk Franklin did. So I’m like, well, s—t, I’m here now. The world basically showed me that they wanted more of me,” he says. “I’m gonna bet what I got on me because I trusted myself way more than y’all.”