Atlanta rapper Gucci Mane has been committed to a mental facility after being deemed unfit to attend a probation hearing.

In a Fulton County, Ga., courtroom Monday, the MC (government name: Radric Davis) filed a special plea of mental incompetence, claiming he was in no state to fight prosecutors’ efforts to revoke his probation, TMZ.com reported.

In the plea, Gucci, 30, asserted that he was “unable to go forward and/or intelligently participate in the probation revocation hearing.”

The trap rapper was ordered into custody by a judge and committed to a mental health treatment facility where his condition was  being evaluated.

His commitment is the latest setback for Gucci Mane. Despite critical props and growing fame (thanks to the No. 4 debut of his September album “The Appeal: Georgia’s Most Wanted”), he has run afoul of the law several times, with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporting that the performer has been incarcerated in Fulton County “at least five times since 2005.”

In November, Gucci was arrested in Atlanta after police said he resistied arrest during a traffic stop. Officers said they used pepper spray on him after he assaulted another person during an argument. Charges of interference with government property, obstruction of officers, reckless driving and other counts, however, were eventually dropped. In May, Gucci Mane was released from an Atlanta jail after serving six months for violating probation on an assault charge.

Last month, another once prominent rapper, DMX, was also ordered into a mental health facility as a result of an “undiagnosed” mental condition.

-- Chris Lee

Photo: Swizz Beatz (left) and Gucci Mane perform during the 2010 BET Hip Hop Awards on Oct. 2 in Atlanta. Credit: Taylor Hill/Getty Images.

In 2010, three of the top MCs in mainstream rap have had major career turning points thwarted by legal drama. T.I., Lil Wayne and Gucci Mane have dealt with it in very different ways.

After a jail term resulting from 2007 gun charges, T.I. slipped up again last month when he was arrested on drug possession charges, just as his feature film “Takers” was topping the box office. (He will learn Oct. 15 whether his probation will be revoked and whether he has to return to prison.) After releasing the world-beating “Tha Carter III” and his poorly received rock album “Rebirth,” Lil Wayne nursed his active online personality from Rikers Island, where he’s serving a term on other gun-related charges, and released an odd collection of pre-jail tracks, “I Am Not a Human Being.”

Radric Davis, the 30-year-old Atlantan who raps as Gucci Mane, finished a six-month term in May for a parole violation stemming from assault charges. But unlike his peers, after his release, the droll and gruff-voiced rapper promptly cut his most confident and revealing album yet.

Davis’ jail stint forms the psychological backdrop of “The Appeal: Georgia’s Most Wanted,” his third full-length. But instead of a grim narrative of confinement, the subject is instead ground both for triumph and serious self-assessment. On the patio of the W hotel in Hollywood, nursing a glass of his favorite (and recipe-indeterminate) lemonade concoction, Davis admitted that the clink offers plenty of time to reevaluate what matters.

“I changed a lot in there,” Davis said. “I know this is serious now and I have a lot to get off my chest. This record is painful and gothic and epic, but it’s the soundtrack of my past.”

If you suspected that Gucci Mane's stint in the clink might have tamed his resplendent looniness, try again. In his new video for the slurry and goofy-swaggering single "911 Emergency," not only does he inaugurate a magnificent new trend in eyewear (blinged-out Croakies), but he also wears them on his face. And ostensibly while stealing your girlfriend to boot.

We'd say, "Yr doin it wrong," but Gucci's probably right on this one too.

-- August Brown