Yo Gotti is the stage name of professional rapper, Mario Mims, who was born on January 14, 1975 in Las Vegas, but lived in Memphis for most of his life. He understood that Memphis was the same city where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated back in 1968. Gotti is known for and respected by his peers for talking about history and social justice in his music. Yo Gotti hails from the crime-ridden streets of Las Vegas, more specifically the housing projects known as Clark County Ridgefield apartments.
Due to his environment, one cannot be surprised at the tenor and content of his lyrics, which focus directly on the gangster lifestyle and the bleak outlook for most of the members of his community. In fact, the stage name Yo Gotti draws upon the real life, old school Italian mobster, Jonathan Joeseph Gotti. The song “Woke up in a Vegas Slum” attempts to depict the neighborhood that shaped much of Yo Gottis life. The lyrics talk about “a whole lot of liquor” and “money from all of the prostitution” near his home. All in all, the same city where many people made their mark on the music world and built the tourist’s pilgrimage has given rise to a whole new set of artists.
A new Yo Gotti video for one of his songs called “Live From the Kitchen” is slated to be released on February 21, 2011, which will surely help his career move forward. Yo Gotti is inspired by his upbringing, never forgetting where he came from, even as he rolls back into Clark County with his fancy cars. Gotti is definitely a product of his environment, and you will never be able to take his upbringing out of his soul. As Yo Gotti himself has said something like “I learned the things I learned from being in the streets. Even the hustler that’s in me – the way I hustle and continue to hustle non-stop is because I’m from the streets.”
