Bobby Shmurda gave some valuable words of wisdom based on his personal experiences during his recent visit to a New Jersey High School.
On Thursday (January 2), the “Hot N*gga” rapper shared an Instagram post chronicling his experience as the Principal For The Day with Hot 97 at East Orange High School. Packed with snapshots and video of Shmurda interacting with the young minds at the school, the post shows the New York rapper clearly enjoyed himself. In the caption he expressed his gratitude for the opportunity while remarking on the irony of it all in one fell swoop.
“Principal for a day ha ha ha Principal Shmurda,” Shmurda wrote in part. “So why this is super interesting to me, is because I never graduated from junior high school yeah I know I started early anyway so it is a honor for Principal Whitaker, to allow me to become principal of East Orange high for the day it was a amazing experience yall go check it out YouTube @hot97 principal for the day #PBC.”
In addition to the post he shared, Hot 97 also released a 39-minute episode of Shmurda’s Principal For The Day school visit that also captured his lengthy motivation speech to students during an intimate question and answer session.
Reflecting on his meteoric rise and subsequent fall, the rapper offered a candid account of his transformation, starting with the moment he went from being one of the hottest names in music to facing prison time. He started off in 2014, when Shmurda’s breakout single “Hot N*gga” dominated charts and sparked viral dance trends. But just four months into his success, his world came crashing down.
“I was Bobby Shmurda for like four months, 120 days, then I got locked up,” he recalled. Shmurda admitted that his troubled past as a juvenile delinquent caught up with him.
“I used to get locked up a lot,” he added. “First time I got locked up, I was about 12 years old, 2007, for crack cocaine. My friends were four or five years older than me, and my mom, she used to just cry all day.”
The rapper’s time in prison was marked by chaos and self-destruction. “The first three, four years, I was running around, gang banging, smoking weed, cutting people, doing all types of dumb sh*t,” he admitted.
His behavior led to frequent transfers and disciplinary actions. He continued, “They kicking me out of here, they kicking me out of there, everywhere.”
A pivotal moment came when Shmurda met a notorious figure in the New York criminal world, Nicholas “Fat Cat” Minucci, who’s been incarcerated since 1985. Fat Cat’s words struck a chord with the young rapper.
“This guy that 50 Cent and everybody rap about, his name is Fat Cat, Nicholas Fat Cat, right,” he said. “And he has 40 to life, right? He has 40 to life. He told me, ‘Bobby, you’re like the smartest, stupidest muthaf*cka I ever met.’ I’d be like, ‘Yo, what you mean by that?’ And he’d say, ‘You come up with these whole smart plans to get money, to do this and that, and then you just f*ck it all up for somebody else.’”
Fat Cat’s insight forced Shmurda to confront a hard truth about himself. “I had to stop making people define my behavior,” he explained. “Every time I was about to go somewhere, a miserable person could just define my behavior. If my behavior ain’t going to get there, I’ll do something, and I’m in jail now. You can never prosper with that.”
Check out the video of Shmurda’s speech to the youth in the post below.
