On the phone from L.A.’s Men’s Central Jail on a Wednesday afternoon, Drakeo the Ruler says, “My judge has coronavirus. I’m trying to figure out what’s going on. I’m supposed to be in court on Friday. But my judge has coronavirus. What are the odds of that?”
Then, as he does with improbable regularity, he starts laughing, loudly and warmly. “What are the odds of that, bro? Two days before court? Like—what?”
In the years since breaking out as the inimitable new star of California rap, Drakeo, 26, has been through a legal nightmare. In 2019, he was acquitted on charges of murder, attempted murder, and conspiracy to commit murder. Rather than dropping the case, however, the L.A. district attorney decided to reprosecute Drakeo on two “gang”-related charges that the jury had been hung on. His case has become a nexus of notorious prosecutorial tactics: the “institutional racism” of California’s gang laws, and the mind-boggling use of rap lyrics as evidence. Drakeo has been incarcerated ever since; he’s facing 25 years to life.
Now, in the latest twist, his case is stalled by a global pandemic. On the phone, you can almost feel him turning this over before filing it away as another painful oddity. “I’m cool,” he insists. “It’s just—not knowing when I’m going to trial. When I’m gonna get a chance to get out of here. That’s just kind of weird.”
During the interminable wait for hearings he would think, “Man, I gotta do something.” He did more than something: His album Thank You for Using GTL, recorded over the phone from MCJ and released last month, is one of the best of the year. It pulls you into Drakeo’s mind: the insanities of his case, the impossibilities of his imprisonment, the joy he still holds on to. The album (and coverage of it) has also brought attention to the practices of GTL, a.k.a. Global Tel Link, a giant in the prison telecommunications industry.
In a typically fawning review, the Washington Post aptly described the strange sorcery Drakeo pulls off: “After a minute or two, the music sounds less like talk radio and more like a secret being whispered in your ear.” Over a prison phone line, Drakeo pulled off the rarest of feats: a consciousness-raising album that absolutely bangs.
On that same line, I speak to Drakeo. Every few minutes, a recorded female voice cuts in to offer a reminder: “This call is being recorded.” His producer, JoogSzn, is patched in via cell phone from elsewhere in L.A. There’s a long lineage of rappers, including Gucci Mane and Max B, who have recorded from prison, but the pair insist they didn’t take direct inspiration from anyone in particular. “I’m not the first who did it,” Drakeo says. “I’m just the person who did it the best. My shit is different than everybody else.”