For the benefit of his nervous fans, Waka Flocka Flame would like to set the record straight about the spate of headlines that proclaimed his retirement from rap: There will be no more rapping for money, which is different than no more rapping at all. “I'm on legend status now,” explains the man behind "No Hands" and "Hard in da Paint," among many other jams. “It's time to talk with upper-echelon substance and cadence about politics, and whatever else is going on.”
Flocka is chock-full of similar realizations and revelations of late, thanks to, he says, a recent reunion with the friends he first came up with. “We were all arguing until we sat in a room and looked around,” he explains. “Bro, we just started laughing. All of us got kids, all of us is well off. We good! So what the fuck are we arguing about? It’s about to be 2019, and I had 32 years of bullshit. For the next 32 years of my life, I’m going to be happy and positive.”
Another revelation: Flocka, a former avowed vegan, is no longer identifying as such—sort of. He has complicated feelings on the matter, and also about whether you should eat fried shrimp tails, and also about whether eating food, any food at all, is even worth your time anymore. He’ll explain. Sort of.
GQ: You say you’re in a more positive mindset these days. Is there anything lifestyle-wise you’d credit to feeling happier than before?
Waka Flocka Flame: I’m reading more books. I got out of the world I wanted to live in before—how many songs I got, wanting hella singles, wanting this car or that car—and got into the world of now.
What are you reading?
Nobody ever taught me about logic. So it’s a book called Possible Worlds: An Introduction to Logic and Its Philosophy. And the other book that got me all on this shit is The Lucifer Effect. It’s a book on how good people turn evil.
Why’d you read that one?
Anything that’s not good is evil. To me, if you’re mad or frustrated, you’re in an evil state of mind. You not supposed to be frustrated or mad. It’s human to be all of those things. But I just needed more insight, more understanding. I’m afraid to talk to people about my problems. So many people that I talk to use my words against me. Even in my most honest times, a million people can feel like I do, but when I say it, the million people don’t say shit. I had to cope with myself, and reading and video games took me where I needed to be. A little kush too.
I saw you tweeted asking if people eat fried shrimp tails. Where’d that question originate?
Bruh, you know where fried shrimp tails originated from? My fucking wife. Do you know how I first met my wife? We got fried shrimp, and she was eating the whole shrimp. I’m like, Damn. I’m about to get laid. She eating the tail of the shrimp. This girl is hungry. But then, you go along, and she ain’t hungry! She just eat fried shrimp tails! So I’m like, Yo, who the fuck else in the world eat fried shrimp tails? When I tweeted that, I got people telling me, “I love them shits, especially when they got spatter on it and they crunchy as hell.” I learned a lot.
Unfortunately I’m allergic to shrimp, so I don’t know how any of that works.
Oh! Sorry to hear it bruh. That’s cool, it ain’t that fucking good.
It sounds like it is, though.
It is. I’m not gonna lie. Shrimp and grits, po’boy sandwich, fried shrimp, grilled shrimp, blackened shrimp. I’m a fucked-up friend. I’m the kind of person that would get a really inflated big-ass shrimp and put it in front of your house. Like, bro, just bite it!
You’d have to inject me with an Epi-Pen afterwards.
Nah, it’s worth eating the shrimp if you got a Pen. Righ?
Only if you’re going to take me to the hospital afterwards too.
Oh word?
Yeah, my throat would close up.
Oh shit, don’t do that. I never told you to do that. [laughs]
You disassociated from calling yourself a vegan in a Paper Magazine interview back in January. Where does your diet stand at this point?
Same as what I was. The food was great, but I didn’t know where it was originally coming from. People were just saying it’s vegan, but when I got deeper and deeper into the findings, I started seeing that some food was crossbred. They’re saying it’s vegan, but it’s GMO’d as fuck. They’re saying anything that has life you can’t eat, but technically water has life in it! Plants have life in it! Everything has life in it! Then they’re saying, “Well, if it don’t bleed...” I’m like, c’mon! And then they started talking about how I can’t eat honey. I can’t eat honey?
When I went vegan, I was on this positive thing. I wanted to be positive. To me, vegans was the people who didn’t talk bad on people. They wasn’t chastising us and shit like that. And then as I was eating vegan, people started piggybacking off of my stories to companies. So I’m like, Hold on, they’re actually piggybacking on what I’m saying and making dollars off this? I didn’t like that.
To me, vegan is what you watch, what you hear, what you eat, what you drink. If you don't have all those things in order, you're not vegan. You can eat plant-based all you want, but if you curse people out, watch people killing in movies, sex shit—that’s not vegan. You can't say, “I'm a vegan but I'm going to go watch a movie with a fucking lion killing a zebra.” That's not vegan because your subconscious has to eat vegan too. I'm not into that. I flex to different diets. I’m a conscious eater. Conscious eaters are flexitarians.
Are you eating seafood or meat? Or are you sticking to the vegan diet, just without calling yourself a vegan?
I don't eat beef and I don't eat pork. I rarely eat chicken. Seafood, yeah. What I don't do is indulge. I ate vegan, but I didn't love it. It's not convenient to eat plant-based. It's not convenient the way that they told us to eat three meals a day. You don't need all that food to live. You need proper water. That’s what I learned. It's really about that water.
So how much water are you drinking every day?
At least a half a gallon.
Do you have a dietician or something?
I'm just friends with a lot of trusty scientists. I don't have time for a doctor to tell me shit he has to look up in a textbook. I want it from the scientist that confirms the words in the textbook.
Can you take me through a normal day diet-wise?
Yesterday, I didn't eat nothing until about 2:00 P.M. The best breakfast is two glasses of water. After that, I went to a spot where they had avocado toast. Then I didn't eat shit until that night, when I had four pieces of shrimp and some kind of sauce with hella onions and zucchinis and shit like that. Eating ain't that important no more. Anybody that knows me will tell you, “Yo, that nigga Waka Flocka is starving. He don’t eat.” And that's because I know you don't need it to keep going.
And you feel good?
Amazing. I went 17 days without eating, just water and herbs. I was doing two or three shows a day.
I’m sorry, what?
Seventeen days with no food. Straight herbs and water. I fed my body with what my organs needed. Once you feed your organs with the right nutrients, why you eating food?
I don’t know, I feel like you have to eat! But maybe I’ve been wrong the whole time.
Think about this: They say we need this many nutrients, iron, calcium, magnesium, etc. If you charge your body with that every day, what's the point of eating? You eat to get those vitamins, herbs, and minerals. If you can get the raw version of them, why are you eating an animal?
If someone came out with a pill like you see in sci-fi movies where you take it in the morning and don’t need food for the day, is that something you’d do?
But who is “someone?” Who is making this? That's the question of the day. Like, with chicken, you don't know what the fuck is in that chicken—it's got steroids, this, that, and the third—oh my God. My wife just put some tights on and it just took my breath. I’m sorry.
That’s quite alright. Do you have a designated workout routine right now?
I'm sticking to my healthy diet for right now. I'm doing everything to get my house in order. I've got a sauna, a steam room, and I'm getting into hydroponics in my backyard. Once I get all this shit right, It's going down.
I’m going to end this with the corniest question you’ve ever gotten in an interview. Have you ever eaten a meal with no hands?
You know what's funny? In 2013 or 2014 in South Carolina, we were drunk as hell and we went to a diner after a show. I was around new fans and they were like, “Waka Flocka is in the building!” It was definitely a drunk college kid, he was like, “Everybody’s gotta eat their meal with no hands. Whoever finishes in the last three has to pay for the meals.” That shit was so lit. Everybody had their heads down eating and shit. I did it with them.
Who won?
It damn sure wasn’t me. I paid for the meals.
It’s hard to compete against drunk college kids.
Oh no, I’m killing them bro. I’m the most ghetto nigga you ever seen win in beer pong. I’m a legend when it comes to that.
This interview has been edited and condensed.