Only sohh idiots who hated the south believed that nonsense
The influence was most definitely there but I think Gillie overplayed it trying to act like he WROTE for Wayne... as I've always said when it came to this... Wayne been writing since a kid. He never needed nobody to write for him.
But the switching of the swag is super evident but it's hard to quantify cuz Gillie don't have hits or fans of his music like that (not trying to be funny).
Like most of us here, I'm prolly a rap "nerd" so to speak... so mfs like us may have tapped into different sources or been around for all this to really see the change and influence in Wayne etc...
There was a random Gillie freestyle I peeped way back in HS where you could hear it clear as day... couldn't find it last time I tried to look.
Wayne's last verse on "Oh No" comes to mind for me off the top of my head where you can hear the heavy Gillie influence... (and see it... Wayne would screw his face and lips like Gillie back then pause
) also lil shyt like sayin "bul" back then or calling any or every truck a "Jeep" was dead giveaways that I only noticed from meeting and hanging with a bunch of Philly cats when I went to college.
I say all that to say I highly doubt Gillie wrote a bar for Wayne... but when you hanging out and tied in with another artist and y'all cool and really vibe, there's going to be similarities that rub off. There's plenty of Young Thug verses where you can literally sub in Future voice and it would sound the same.
EDIT: Dude linked the XXL where Gillie spoke on it before shyt got crazy...Gillie was just salty from being exiled from the camp at a time Wayne was the hottest shyt out and THEN start saying he wrote for him.
1:35 mark til the end
This is the freestyle I saw way back in the day and could clearly notice that Wayne was influenced with the flow and even facial expressions.