Back In Blood
by Pooh Shiesty (featuring Lil Durk)

Album: Shiesty Season (2020)
Charted: 13
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Songfacts®:

  • Memphis native Pooh Shiesty (birth name Lontrell Williams) has known the rap industry all his life. His father founded the Memphis-based Mob Ties Records and rapped under the name Mob Boss, welcoming his son into the studio from a young age. After graduating from high school, Shiesty focused on music, and on June 19, 2020, he signed to Atlanta rapper Gucci Mane's record label, 1017 Eskimo. This collaboration with Chicago rapper Lil Durk is his breakthrough single.
  • The song finds Shiesty and Durk threatening their opps and boasting about their weaponry in their respective hometowns. During the hook, Shiesty calls out rappers who pretend to be thugs on social media when they're nothing of the sort; he claims to be a proper gangster willing to shed blood.
  • YC, also known as TurnMeUpYC, supplied the beat. He is best known for producing Moneybagg Yo's "Said Sum." He explained to Genius that one day when he was in the studio with Moneybagg, Pooh Shiesty and Lil Durk were laying down tracks in two other rooms in the same building. YC sat in on Pooh's session for a while as he worked on a beat, and the Memphis rapper overheard it playing in his headphones. He said,"Hol on, YC. What’s that? Lemme hear it! You keeping all the good s--t away from me?"

    YC played the beat for Pooh and then AirDropped it to him. Within a few weeks of receiving the instrumentation, Pooh and Lil Durk had recorded "Back in Blood."
  • Pooh Shiesty released "Back In Blood" on November 6, 2020, the day that Chicago rapper King Von passed away after being shot. Von and Lil Durk were close friends and labelmates, and the song's video pays tribute to the late rapper. Directed by regular Chi-town collaborator Jerry Phd (aka Jerry Production), the clip shows Pooh Shiesty and Lil Durk dancing in the trenches of Chicago. Von makes a short cameo appearance in the clip.
  • On October 13, 2020, Pooh Shiesty was arrested in connection to a shootout in the parking lot of a South Florida apartment complex in Bay Harbor Islands, Florida. Genius recounted how a January 26, 2021 news report, which allegedly showed Shiesty engaged in the shootout, helped boost sales and streams of the street-rap cut. They surmised that fans were paralleling the incident with the track's gun-toting lyrics.

    Shiesty pleaded guilty to federal conspiracy charges and on April 20, 2022, he was sentenced to 5 years and 3 months in prison.

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