Boosie BadAzz, a prolific and popular Southern rapper whose career started in the 1990s, built a reputation that lent credence to his chosen name. He has had many run-ins with the law, and has served time in the notorious Louisiana prison known as Angola. He has also kicked up plenty of controversy, including a well-documented history of bizarre, homophobic and transphobic rants.

Last year, he found himself staring down the possibility of another stretch in prison, having pleaded guilty to a federal felony gun possession charge. It would mean years away from his children, and years away from making music and money. The tough facade he projected through his music was slipping. Boosie, 43, was worried, he said.

Then came an offer he could not resist.

Two lobbyists reached out to the rapper’s lawyers, saying they could use their proximity to President Trump and others in his orbit to help Boosie secure a pardon. He paid them $600,000 for their services. But the pardon never came.

“I was in a bad position, and they preyed on me, bro,” Boosie, whose legal name is Torence Hatch Jr., said in an interview. “They were chasing the money.”

Now, he wants the money back — half of it, at least. He has a signed contract that entitles him to such, he said.

The lobbyists disagree. Two right-wing operatives with tarnished histories of their own, they say they did exactly what they had promised for Boosie and owe him nothing.

After Boosie’s claims were widely circulated this week in news reports and on social media, one of the lobbyists challenged him to a public debate with journalists in attendance. “He has smeared us unfairly,” the lobbyist, Jack Burkman, wrote in an email to The New York Times. (The dispute was reported by the political news website NOTUS.)

In a separate statement, Mr. Burkman said that he and his partner, Jacob Wohl, had undertaken a “massive, highly tailored advocacy campaign across Congress, the executive branch and leading political influencers and media figures” in an attempt to secure a pardon.

“In 25 years,” he added, “we cannot think of a single client for whom our firm has done more work than Boosie.”

He was an unusual client in other ways, too.

Boosie found fame and commercial success as an early practitioner of a Southern strain of hip-hop that took over rap music roughly two decades ago.

First as Lil’ Boosie and then as Boosie BadAzz, he has pumped out hundreds of songs. His music draws upon the lessons and the pain of a hardscrabble youth in Baton Rouge, his Louisiana hometown, where he has remained a beloved figure.

Many rap listeners can recognize him instantly because of his distinctive voice, raspy and high-pitched (like “a frog on helium getting bear-hugged by a bodybuilder,” as a Pitchfork critic put it). And there’s the high-and-tight haircut he’s so closely associated with that barbers know it as a “Boosie fade.”

But his career has been marred by controversy and legal setbacks.

He was sent to the Louisiana State Penitentiary, or Angola, in 2009 after pleading guilty to a third-offense marijuana possession charge. His stay was extended after he was caught trying to smuggle in codeine.

In 2012, his lyrics were parsed in court by prosecutors who tried to present them as evidence in a murder case against him in Baton Rouge.

Boosie’s lawyers presented no testimony in his defense, saying the prosecution’s case was weak and that jurors would understand that his lyrics existed in a liminal space between fiction and unassailable truth. The jury deliberated for just an hour before finding him not guilty.

The saga over the pardon began in 2023, when police investigators in San Diego came across an Instagram Live video posted to the account of a reputed gang member. It appeared to show Boosie filming a music video, a gun visible in the waistband of his pants, the authorities said.

The police tracked him down and pulled him over. In a search of his vehicle, the officers found a nine-millimeter Glock 19 pistol, the same type of weapon that had been spotted in the video. After he was arrested, the police said he had been openly threatening his personal security detail.

He was charged with felon in possession of a firearm, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years. Prosecutors recommended two years.

That was when his lawyers heard from Mr. Burkman and Mr. Wohl.

The men are registered lobbyists who have represented more than three dozen clients, according to data maintained by the government watchdog group Open Secrets. Their roster includes technology, pharmaceutical research and energy concerns, as well as numerous individuals who have been accused or convicted of wrongdoing.

But Mr. Burkman and Mr. Wohl are more widely known for peddling right-wing conspiracy theories and more shadowy political efforts.

Last year, they both pleaded no contest to charges in Michigan stemming from an effort to suppress Black voter turnout in the 2020 election by using robocalls with messages saying that voting by mail would lead to personal information being disclosed to debt collectors, among other things.

In a copy of the contract between Boosie and the lobbyists, shared with The Times by one of Boosie’s lawyers, Mr. Burkman’s firm committed to “crafting a compelling and comprehensive narrative for the pardon petition.” They noted that he had accepted responsibility for his wrongdoing, that his criminal record was nonviolent and that he had a number of charitable endeavors.

If a pardon was not obtained by a certain date, Boosie could ask for $300,000 back, according to the terms of the agreement.

But the contract, which appears to have been signed in September 2025, set a deadline of Jan. 31, 2025 for the lobbyists to secure the pardon — an apparent typo. And Mr. Burkman and Mr. Wohl maintain that Boosie never returned the signed agreement to them until after he initiated arbitration proceedings.

“We continue to believe that Boosie very much deserves a pardon,” Mr. Burkman said in a statement, adding that the pardon campaign had been complicated by circumstances that included “other unfortunate allegations against the client in other jurisdictions.”

In January, a judge sentenced Boosie to three years of supervised release and 300 hours of community service.

In the interview, he said he would still welcome and appreciate the president’s intervention.

“I’m loved all across the world and I can’t even go overseas and make money,” he said, referring to the restrictions imposed by probation.

That prospect dimmed further in May, when he was charged with aggravated assault and accused of beating a security guard with a hookah base at a Houston club. Federal probation officials asked a judge last month to revoke his supervised release.

Boosie said he was not afraid to fight for his money, even if some in his family rather he did not. It’s simply a part of business.

Still, he said he saw other things as more deserving of his time and attention: His music and his business interests. He has nine children, including some who have followed him into the entertainment industry. And there’s the 88-acre compound outside Atlanta he christened Boosie Estates, with mansions he built for himself and his family and a body of water stocked with catfish and bass, called Lake BadAzz.

“I was just going to take my money,” he said, “and walk away.”

Georgia Gee contributed research.