Drakeo was convicted of a firearm possession offense but has already served the maximum amount of time he could be sentenced for it. Members of his rap group that appeared on songs and in videos were tied to the investigation of him and pressed to supply information that could be used to prosecute.
But then the twist is that my rap group is my gang? Come on."ĭuring his original trial, the prosecution tried to use his lyrics and music videos against him. "You don't have to be involved," he says. He's being held without bail while waiting for the retrial. The jury didn't buy it, voting 10-2 and 7-5 for acquittal on the two gang charges, but the District Attorney's office has decided to retry Caldwell on them. That's right: LA County contends that Drakeo's musical collaborators, the Stinc Team, constitute a gang.
#PHONE RULER CODE#
The jury hung on two other charges based on California penal code statutes that went on the books in the late 1980s, were added to in 2000 and allow active gang members to be charged for crimes committed by other gang members. He sounds reasonably frustrated.ĭrakeo's given name is Darrell Caldwell and in July 2019, he was found innocent of murder and attempted murder. Drakeo's songs don't belabor the point, but they're barbed. The biggest prison phone service providers are the subject of a class action lawsuit for price fixing, while the latest stimulus bill, which has passed the House and sits with the Senate now, includes a bill to make all calls from state and local prisons and jails free. He's dragged GTL into an artistic endeavor, and in so doing required every outlet that engages with it to delve into the business practices of a industry being challenged on multiple fronts.
The financial arrangement the LA County Sheriff's Department has in place with the prison phone company GTL enables Drakeo's solve for the problem of his incarceration: an album that sounds like it was recorded over the phone and doesn't suffer for it. It proceeds in similarly meta fashion, pitting reality against entertainment and deploying the bureaucratic fact of Drakeo's continued imprisonment as a foil for a musical style that's subtly inventive, as carefree as it is savvy.ĭrakeo, who's still a rising star in LA's rap scene despite having spent the last 33 months in jail, couldn't have made this particular project sound this way if he was home.
Thank You For Using GTL opens with a recording of what you hear when the artist Drakeo the Ruler calls from the LA County Men's Central Jail - a requirement that you consent to being recorded yourself before the call can begin and a read out of the balance on your account with the telecom company. The rapper Drakeo the Ruler titled his latest album after the prison phone service provider GTL, whose lines he used to record it, leaving a trail to follow the money through a controversial industry.
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