Pooh Shiesty’s first attempt at writing a “First Day Out” song came while he was still locked up.
During his three-year bid in USP Canaan in Pennsylvania, he wrote raps whenever he could—using scraps of paper, napkins, or even t-shirts—and started crafting what was supposed to be his triumphant return to the scene.. But then he stopped.
“How the fuck am I going to talk about something that ain’t even happen yet?” Pooh told Complex, calling in from Dallas over Google Meet. (Despite recent social media chatter, Pooh has not been arrested again, according to representatives at his label, Atlantic.) “I’m not even out yet. I was like, ‘Man, I’m forcing it too much. Fuck it—it’s gotta come natural.’”
So he sat on his rhymes, and didn’t try again until he was released in early October, after serving his time for a gun charge, locked up just as his debut mixtape, Shiesty Season, was taking off. Within 48 hours, he was back in the booth.
“FDO,” which emerged from that session, was released two months later and was an out-of-the-gate smash. Within a week, it briefly surpassed Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” on the Apple Music charts during the peak holiday season, eventually debuting at No. 1 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. By the start of the new year, it had reached No. 12 on the Billboard Hot 100, making it the first major rap hit of 2026.
What makes the song’s success so refreshing is its almost old-school, meat-and-potatoes approach. “FDO” is nearly the antithesis of what a contemporary rap hit is supposed to sound like in 2026: there’s no hook, it runs over five minutes,and Pooh raps in a highly skilled but unabashedly street manner. (Standout line: “Feel impatient, I might do a demonstration off GP / I ain’t shot nothin’ in like four years; I ain’t sent a hit in three.”)
At a time when questions about rap’s future, sonically and commercially, drive the discourse, one of the biggest new songs is a full-throated street rap hit. It’s indebted not only to a specific strain of trap music, but to the lineage of the “First Day Out” song: at times subversive, at times deadly serious, and almost always exuberant in its celebration of release from prison.
“I ain’t gonna say their opinion don’t matter or nothing, but the internet just be talking. Who are they to say that?” Pooh said in response to chart discussions. “Nobody been charting, OK? So they goin’ off stats and statistics, but not over here. With me—what I got going on in my program—I’m focused. I know what I’m gonna do, what I got to do, and how I’m gonna do it.”
The history of “First Day Out” songs
There are spiritual ancestors to the “First Day Out” song that go back to the ’90s—2Pac’s “Out on Bail” comes to mind—but the first “First Day Out” song as we understand it today begins with Pooh’s mentor, Gucci Mane.
After being locked up for a parole violation, Gucci came home and recorded “First Day Out,” opening with what might be the hardest couplet of his career:
“I'm starting off my day with a blunt of purp / No pancakes, just a cup of syrup”
Of course, rappers of a certain ilk—Chief Keef, Kodak Black, Young Nudy—took the formula and ran with it. (In 2016, Gucci himself would release a sequel, “1st Day Out tha Feds.”) Not every “First Day Out” track is literal, in the sense that it’s recorded on a rapper’s actual first day out. Instead, the songs function as snapshots: moments of exultation, shit-talking, and defiance—against the law, against haters, against anyone who doubted them.
In 2016, Tee Grizzley shifted the form, adding a dramatic storytelling arc to the template. He also delivered the subgenre’s biggest hit to date, peaking at No. 48 on the Billboard Hot 100.
In some ways, “First Day Out” is a meme now—shorthand for a rapper returning to form after coming home from prison. (As of publication, Fetty Wap’s own “First Day Out” is being widely discussed.) The trope has become so familiar that some rappers have tried to find ways to subvert the pressure that comes with releasing a “first day out” record. (YFN Lucci’s mournful “JAN. 31st (My Truth)” comes to mind.)
Pooh Shiesty was aware of this baggage and was reluctant to use the title “First Day Out” at all. “I really didn't want to do a ‘First Day Out’ because ‘First Day Outs’ were played out,” Pooh said. “Especially when a lot of people don't come home and perform the right way or produce the right way.” In a small act of defiance, Pooh purposefully titled the song “FDO,” leaving it open for multiple interpretations—“First Day Out,” “Free the Operation,” or “Fuck the Opps,” as he put it.
When asked what his actual first day out was like, Pooh was almost at a loss for words, before scrambling and trying to describe a day that was a blur of activity—food, movement, family, women.
“That’s the best day of my life besides the day I got signed,” he said. “I didn’t go to sleep my first three days.”
Within that flurry, Pooh entered the studio with producer TP808 and began recording what was supposed to be a “First Day Out” record. But midway through the session, he stopped and made an executive decision: the song didn’t have the right spirit. It was, as he put it, a “calm type of pain” record—which was wrong for the moment.
“I’m like, ‘nah, this ain’t ‘First Day Out’ vibes.’ I was just getting my feet wet, trying to get back in the studio—first time back in the studio,” Pooh said. “Then I ended up switching it up. Me and TP caught that vibe, caught that chemistry. I had to warm up a little bit, but it got right back hot and we snapped.”
“I got bags full of this shit, bro.”
At one point during our conversation, Pooh reached into a bag and pulled out sheet after sheet of yellow paper. These pages hold most of the rhymes he wrote in prison, wedged between shadow-work journaling entries. Hip-hop was a constant part of his sentence—both writing and listening. Listening to the catalogues of a wide range of rappers, from Kevin Gates to DMX to Lil Durk, helped sharpen his craft.
“It’s just like music—like my newspaper,” he said. “How people pick up the newspaper every day and read, that’s how I treat music. That’s how I was treating it in there for sure. “That’s why I slick know how to rap. You can say it inspired me a little bit, because it let me know what I want to hear, what I don’t want to hear, and what’s good.”
And yet, there’s a world where most of those rhymes written in prison never see the light of day. Like Gucci, Pooh prefers rapping off the top—punching in and spitting lines in the moment. In fact, all of “FDO” was created on the spot, fueled by the adrenaline of being home. The track carries an off-the-cuff spirit reminiscent of Guwop’s original. Speaking on Gucci’s reaction to the song, Pooh said it captured that same raw energy.
“I think he was in Russia or somewhere when it dropped and he heard it. Man, he went crazy,” Pooh said. “He couldn't believe it. He couldn't believe that shit, man. He know what a nigga got in him, but it's like be a surprise every time, because especially when it been so long.”
And now Pooh is locked in on his debut album. Despite his success—two songs that cracked the Billboard Hot 100 and a double-platinum project—he has yet to release a full-length album. He feels there’s another level he hasn’t reached yet.
“I want to show how versatile I know I am...Good production, good quality, good features, good content, good substance, a lot of substance. I don't rap no more. I talk,” Pooh said. “I used to try to rap. I don't do that no more. I vent. That's why I say ‘I don't rap when I'm told. I rap when I got shit to say.’”