INTERVIEW

X-Raided - "Prison is not hell..."

X-Raided-Prison is not hell...
You were sentenced to 31 years in prison. It’s a long time. You got used to it?

It’s definitely a long time but, at the end of the day, it’s my fault. I could have been doing something better with my life instead of running the streets.

I don’t think it’s something anyone should ever get used to. There was a time when I consumed myself with trying to be comfortable in prison, on a subconscious level. I wanted clothes and music and things that could serve as distractions from the reality of what I was dealing with. Then one day I realized that I couldn’t get comfortable because prison isn’t a comfortable place to be, and I don’t want to be here. The truth is that anyone who got used to this experience, when they let that person go, you probably wouldn’t want them for neighbor.


How has prison changed your outlook on life?

I think it gave me an appreciation for the little things I took for granted. I thought things were worse than they really were. I thought I was trapped in the hood. The truth is that I could have just left and made a better life for myself. I didn’t have to be there.

Prison taught me a lot about friendship and the value of family bonds. When the smoke clears, there are very few of the so-called homies left to call. It’s your family and your true friends who have to help you out of the hole you’ve dug for yourself. And maybe those are some of the people we mistreated in the first place. They will be the only ones there in the end.


You were convicted of first degree murder due to a gang related homicide. What was your reaction after you heard the allegations?

I didn’t hear the allegations until I was arrested. I knew what I had and hadn’t done, and what I had done was bad enough without the media adding sensationalized elements to the story, for whatever reason. So on one hand I felt remorseful because Patricia Harris was an Innocent victim who died in part of because of my actions. On the other hand, I was young and defiant, so it became an issue of pride and toughness. Everything the gang culture taught me to exhibit. I didn’t know how to express myself correctly, so I became aggressive in the face of criticism, even if it was constructive. I reacted by becoming even more of a hardcore gang member. My homies where some of the only people who weren’t judging me or demanding that I change.

It was in March, 1992. At that time you released your first official album entitled "Psycho Active". Why did you decide to call it that way?

More than anything, I reallly wanted to be a successful rapper. It was my dream to put out an album that would be respected by Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, Scarface and Too Short. Back then, album titles and artwork were a big deal. People put a lot of thought into it. NWA’s "Niggaz4Life", Cube’s "AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted", Geto Boys’ "We Can’t Be Stopped", "Short Dog’s in the House". I was influenced by those guys. Ice Cube and Scarface were my favorite rappers.

I was going through the dictionary looking for unusual words to use in my songs. I was about halfway through with the album by then, toward the end of 1991. I came across the word psychoactive and loved the definition: "influencing the mind or mental process". That’s what I wanted my music to do.


The lyrics were very hard and violent. Was it the result of your personal experiences? You being a gang member?

That, and the fact that I was listening to NWA, Scarface, and the Geto Boys. I don’t think my music was anymore violent that theirs was, no more hardcore. It was just a younger voice and the fact that my songs contained blatant declarations of gang affiliation, which was unusual back then. Most rappers only hinted at their affiliations, if they had any. That was the biggest difference between us. I was an active representative of the Crips on every song on "Psycho Active". No one hand ever done that before.

According to Police, your songs described details of the murder. The album served as evidence at the trial. Did you expect this?

None of my songs decribed details of my commitment offense, but they did use elements of my album against me in trial. The artwork and certain lyrics. I expected that to happen. By the time I went to trial in 1996, it had been four years of everything being focused on X-Raided, the rapper. I understood, at that point, what I was up against.

What is the code of silence? You refused to testify because of it. Is it a commitment for life?

It means different things to different people. The gang culture adopted a lot of mafioso mottos and terminologies. Omerta. But the downfall of the original American mafia families was that its members started wearing wires and working with govenment to take down their own people, for whatever reasons. The code of silence is a fear-based policy. The problem with fear-based policies is that, as soon as someone fears something more than they fear the policy, the policy is trumped. The greater majority of the prisoners I’ve encountered have a co-defendant or informant who told, an in some cases lied on them, because they feared the consequences of the crime more than they feared the consequences of testifying against their affiliates.

The only tongue you control is your own. You have a constitutional right to remain silent, and it should be utilized as policy, simply for the sake of self-preservation. "Anything you say CAN and WILL be used AGAINST YOU". Once you’ve managed to get yourself arrested, there’s nothing an investigator can do to help you. Their job description is to build a case AGAINST you. The best thing to do, at that point, is to ask for a lawyer and choose to remain silent. That’s the best thing you can do for yourself and for any lawyer with the responsibility to defend you.


Do you trust people?

Yes. There are phenomenal people in the world. Expectation is an inherent part of trust. You expect that the person you trust wouldn’t betray you. But the person you trust has that same expectation. The only way to really be able to trust people is to have a healthy relationship with your own spirit. If you don’t have any garbage in your own life, you won’t be introducing any to someone else’s. Everything I need to trust people for is within the realm of realistic expectation. I don’t want anyone to do anything that would jeopardize their experience for the benefit of my own. Unrealistic expectation is the biggest reason you wouldn’t be able to trust someone; asking, or being asked, to do or be something that we either shouldn’t do or be. I don’t exepect my dog to be a cat, I expect him to be a dog. There is no room for disappointment in the regard. The same is true with us. We can only be human, for better and for worse. You can trust that. It’s not a bad thing, it’s just a thing.

The gang is like a family, so they say. How do you think, why young people are so eager to join its rank? Are they looking for acceptance?

Gangs are nothing like families. That’s the biggest lie we’ve told ourselves. Families involve symbiosis, idealistically speaking. A correctly functioning household doesn’t encourage violence and victimization. Correctly functioning human beings in a family don’t harm each other, emotionally, physically, psychologically or spiritually, and especially not on purpose.

A gang is a parasite. An organism that grows, feeds, and is sheltered on or in a different organism while contributing nothing to the survival of its host. Young people join gangs primarily as a result of a lack of education, be that at the parental or guardian level or with the kids themselves. There needs to be a discussion about what gangs really are and where gang life really leads. Kinds don’t have enough of a sense of time and space to appreciate the totality of a prison sentence or even of death itself. These are dark topics, but it’s time we start talking to kids about what is really happening in gang culture and the differences between street gangs and prison gangs. There needs to be a discussion about history, their place in America, their constitutional rights and how they came to be. Kids join gangs because their lack of awareness of their own value, as well as the value of human life in general. It’s not about acceptance as much as it’s about feeling unaccepted.


You lived fast. Too fast probably. And it’s not the first time that you have a problems with the law. Do you feel like a different person now?

I’d been in trouble before, for the same reason as now – being an active gang member. I just don’t feel like a different person. I have a very little in common with the young man I was when I started this experience. In terms of maturity, education, physicality, everything… I’m a completely different person.

Prison in hell? How did you find yourself in that place?

Prison is not hell. There are people all over the world suffering all kinds of horrors that I’m not being subjected to because I’m a protected by the Constitution. I got my GED. I’ve graduated vocational and self-help programs. You don’t do that in hell. I’ve done anger management, Breaking Barriers, Alternatives to Violence, and I’ve fasted and prayed during the Holy Month of Ramadan. And I’m not done. I’ll do more, and I’ll do better, because prison is whatever you want it to be, and I want it to be a learning experience.

No one put me in prison. I didn’t have to behave the way I did. I could have woke up on any given morning desiring something else for myself. I could have simply decided to do something better with my life. I found myself in prison because I was an active gang member with a calious disregard for human life. I needed help, education, discipline… But it’s true that people had tried to give me those things and I was unreceptive. I did this myslelf and I have to undo it.


Have you thought about committing suicide?

I’ve given death due consideration at different points of this experience, for different reasons. I believe that anyone with the courage to kill themselves is in possession of the courage they need to endure their adversity. I believe adveristy is just an opportunity to show the world what we’re made of. I know all adversity isn’t created equal. Some people choose to end their lives and move on for health and quality of life reasons. That’s a different animal. For me, though, it wasn’t an option. I had too much life left to live and too many dreams left to pursue. The same is true for any young person having those types of thoughts. You have to be willing to let someone know that you’re struggling so they can help you just like people were able to help me.

"X-Raided stabbed seven times in prison riot" - that's the headline of one of the American newspapers from 2010. Why did you become a victim of that attack?

Prison is a volatile place. Certain elements in the environment wanted me to give them money for drugs and to produce music for them. I was trying to change my life. I couldn’t afford to do it. The stakes were too high. I knew they were envious, I knew they were plotting, but I also knew that I had to focus on my own life and get myself ready for parole.

I’d risked my life over a color and streets that didn’t belong to me. I came to the conclusion that, if my life just had to be in danger, it would be in danger for my family. I refused to do what they wanted so they tried to kill me. They did not succeed.

I learned a lot from that situation. There are those who say that I should have told the prison administration what was going on, that I should have removed myself from the situation. At the time, I was still operating with a gang mentality. I had been taught to stand and fight. I was taught not to run to the cops when a situation got heated, to handle it like a gangsta. So that’s what I did. I wasn’t affraid of those guys. It never crossed my mind that they could beat me u por kill me, individually or collectively. They didn’t strike any fear in me. But they should have. Everyone should have something to live for that activates in the face of a legitimate threat. Everyone should fear losing something they love, especially their own life. So I learned that an absence of fear could cause me to make bad decisions, and having that absence could jeopardize my ability to stay free when I parole. I can’t just allow myself to be available to someone who intends to do me harm because I believe I’ll win the fight. I can’t even afford to have a fight. At this point, I’m more affraid of getting in trouble that I am of what anyone will think about me and the decisions I make, and it’s that very fear that’s going to allow me go home and stay there.

That situation also taught me what it feels like to be victimized. I had never been victimized in my entire life. No one had ever done something to me when I was just trying to mind my own business. I gained perspective and realized that I don’t want to victimize anyone, be that in the way I was victimized or in the way I victimized the Harris family.


Now, how would you describe your music? Would you call it gangsta rap or more conscious rap? Your music has evolved over the years.

I make Hip-hop music. If I write a song resonates with someone on a gangsta level, they call it gangsta rap, and if I write something that resonates with someone on a conscious level, they call it conscious rap. That has nothing to do with me. I’m an artist. My music has evolved over the years because I evolved. I don’t need to be categorized as a gangsta or a conscious rapper. It is enough for me that I have the privilege to be an artist. Whoever my music touches, it’s a blessing. If I have a social, political, gangsta or artistic opinion, it’s all just my perspective being transmitted. The receiver will perceive what they please. I just want to make thought provoking music.

Is rap music going in the right direction? Scarface said that it’s "sounding stupider and stupider" these days...

There is nothing wrong with rap music or the direction it’s moving. Drake, Kanye, Nipsey, Hussie, Stalley, Lupe, Kendrick Lamar, Lacre and many others are writing intelligent lyrics. There’s someone somewhere in the world going through something that, whenever they get in a studio, they’re going to make the music take a leap forward. It happens every five to ten years.

I love uncle Scarface, but I don’t think rap music sounds any more stupid than it ever has. Hip-hop has always had multiple faces. There’s party songs, fight songs, love songs and ignorant songs throughout Hip-hop history. There has always been stupid rap music. Rapper’s Delight is intellectually interior to The Message. The Beastie Boys made a career out of making stupid Hip-hop. Biz Markee made a song called "Picking Boogers" and he’s a legend. Slick Rick made some seriously stupid songs, and we loved all of them. He’s creative genius. Have you ever heard of the Fat Boys? LL Cool J was serious, Rakim was serious, KRS was serious and NWA was serious. Eazy E made some stupid songs and we loved him. So did Uncle Luke and 2 Live Crew. The same is true right now. No one’s forcing you to buy Waka Flocka Flame and Chief Keef. You can listen to Jay-Z, Pusha-T and those other creative artists who put into their lines. Someone made a song about Pee Wee Herman dance back in the day and it was bangin. And for every Stan, Eminem wrote ten "We Made Yous". It’s not fair to expect 17 year olds to making intellectually stimulating music anyway. They’d be the exception, not the rule. People have unrealistic expectations. Rap music will be fine. Someone will show up with something to say. It just might be me. Why not?


You are set to be released in 2016. What will you do as a free man? Did you think about that?

I’m extremely excited and grateful. We don’t all get a second chance, but thanks to people like Elizabeth Calvin and the Human Rights Watch and everyone involved in the passing of California Senate Bill 260, I got mine.

I want to be with my family, above everything. I want to do some youth advocacy and be an asset to community leaders who need a voice that has been on both sides of the experience. I want to make some good, lasting music, too, and write books, as well. I want to do everything. I think about it all the time.


And how would you like to be remembered as an artist and as a human being?

As an artist, I want people to remember me as a creative contributor to my genre, in my time and beyond, and that, as a person, I never gave up. I made mistakes and corrected them as best as I could. I want to remembered for that.

Thank you for your time.

Journalist: Kamil Mrozinski
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