Max emerges from the backseat, pausing for a beat to take in the scene before him. It’s the only real breather he will take for the next 18 or so hours. Max uncorks his trademark Donald Duck cackle—Shh-shh-shhh—and disembarks from the truck, his energy turned up to 100. And with that, we’re off to the races.
“Make me look like Trump!” Max yells out, to no one in particular. The commotion swirling around him is certainly presidential. Well-wishers click their camera incessantly and thrust their phones in his face, eager to be the first to post a “Max B Home!” video on Reels or TikTok. Max alternates between giving daps or hugs depending on who’s in front of him at any given second. It’s like being in a moving mosh pit until we finally make it to the elevator bank, where a few personal security guards filter out the extras and funnel everyone into a car headed up.
Max and his wife Allison.
Inside the elevator, Max is unfazed, and focused on the woman he got out of the car with, a petite girl in a bright red tracksuit and matching hair. This is Allison Wingate, Max’s wife—they connected during his incarceration and were married this past Valentine’s Day. Max is cooing sweet nothings to her, like an uptown Pepé Le Pew, for everyone to hear. French Montana can barely contain his amusement. “He like a walking movie theater, I swear,” French says with a laugh.
For French and most of Max’s friends and family, a morning like this once seemed unlikely to ever come. But now it has—in a stroke of divine timing, on French Montana’s actual birthday. Everyone around Max appears to be in a state of disbelief as they moved through a packed itinerary meant to welcome him home in style. I wondered if he’d have preferred more time to bask in the moment, or to spend the day relaxing and catching up with his family instead of the schedule laid out before him—dinners, appearances, and a Jets game. Does Max B even watch football like that?
Max’s mother Sharon, a family member, and Max.
Max B and his kids Carter and Chloe.
“I like the action, I like the motion,” Max tells me when I ask, sounding like Tom Sizemore in Heat. “She wanted it quiet,” he said, gesturing to Allison. “I said, ‘Baby, it ain’t going to be quiet.’ No, there’s no quiet. This is a movie, 24/7. We out here, we outside.”