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A rapper made 2 viral music videos on Rikers Island. Experts say it might make him a target.
By
Jessy Edwards
Published Nov 13, 2023
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Still shot: "NYC's Boldest"
By
Jessy Edwards
Published Nov 13, 2023
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Brownsville rapper Taquan Jones was alone in his Rikers Island jail cell one day earlier this year when he had a big idea. Instead of laying around waiting for news on his case, he could make a music video.
Jones was arrested in November 2022 on gun possession and other charges. Making a video in the violent city jail was an ambitious goal. Still, he started putting together possible scenes and shots in his mind. Gothamist interviewed Jones in a series of phone calls made to and from Rikers over September and October this year.
“I was just sitting there thinking like, nobody ever did this before. Not even Lil Wayne,” he said, referring to the multi-award winning rapper who wrote an album and a book during his eight-month stint at Rikers in 2010. “He's been on Rikers Island before. A whole lot of other artists have been on Rikers Island before but nobody made a whole music video.”
In the months that followed, Jones pulled it off. His videos, “NYC’s Boldest” Parts 1 and 2 were picked up by a major hip-hop website and today have been seen by more than a half a million people.
Jones’ first video shows him rapping and dancing with other detainees in a gray-painted concrete cell, sometimes wearing his city-issued beige jail uniform, other times wearing designer clothes and jewelry. In some scenes, men are wearing ski masks and holding long, sharpened plastic knives. The video ends with a scene of men selling small bags of marijuana through an interior window in the jail. The song title, “NYC’s Boldest,” is a reference to a complimentary nickname given to city correction officers.
Still shot from "NYC's Boldest."
Still shot: "NYC's Boldest."
Jones has since pleaded guilty to second-degree attempted criminal possession of a weapon and is serving the remainder of a three year prison sentence upstate. But the video drew attention to chaos and lack of supervision inside the jails, and prompted a crackdown by the New York City Department of Correction. And while people in the music industry are watching Jones’s star rise, some worry the acclaim could make him an ongoing target for law enforcement.
“I think he's one of a kind,” Jones’s manager Picture Perfect told Gothamist. “I just never thought in my mind that somebody could pull something like this off.”
The scenes give a rare look into life at Rikers, the jail facility that now holds more than 6,000 detainees pre-trial and which is notoriously violent, dirty and lacking in programming and professional development.
Jones won’t say how he assembled enough contraband equipment inside jail to shoot the video, and how he smuggled the footage out. But he managed to get the final video into the hands of a talent scout at a major hip-hop website: WorldStarHipHop. By May, the fully-produced 3-minute video clip was on YouTube – shared with WorldStar’s 26 million subscribers.
“It went viral”
The video propelled Jones - who goes by the rap name Tay627 - to fame. Just a few months later, he made a second video – this one more of a party track. Today, the videos have more than half-a-million views combined on YouTube alone.
In a July appearance on the Drinks Champs podcast, G-Unit rapper Tony Yayo said the video showed “why they want to shut down [Rikers] Island,” he said, referring to the city mandate that the jails close by 2027. But in the same breath he admitted, “the video is good.”
Tay627’s talent was also recognized by Picture Perfect, a WorldstarHipHop artist scout. The music mogul helped launch New York “princess of rap” Ice Spice with her breakout hit “Munch (Feelin’ U)”, and produced Cardi B’s video for “Bodak Yellow,” which has more than 1 billion views.
Still shot from "NYC's Boldest."
Still shot: "NYC's Boldest."
Picture Perfect gave Jones’s videos a platform on WorldStar. “When he showed me that first cut of the video, a light bulb went off in my head,” he said, praising Jones’s tenacity while facing years behind bars. “It went viral. It went really viral, and he's got a lot of eyeballs.”
Still, Picture Perfect said he worried about the consequences of Jones releasing a music video from behind bars. After Jones published the first video, his story was covered in a New York Post article that called his actions “brazen.”
“I'm not going to just sit here and feel down”
The musician said one reason he made the videos was to stay busy in jail to keep himself and others “sane.”
“When I was bored, I’d just get up and just do another scene,” he said. “I'm not going to just sit here and feel down, feel bad,” he said. “I bring energy to a bad environment, the light gon’ come…Everybody got a good side, so I just bring that out.”
Jones says everything depicted in his videos is real – both the grim conditions of the jail and the aspects of luxury they’ve cultivated inside.
“If you look in the video, I was wearing Christian Dior, Mike and Mary jeans… I was dripped out, I was wearing chains. Everything I wanted in the video, I had. The marijuana in the window, all that is real. Extremely real.”
Department of Correction spokesperson Latima Johnson told Gothamist the agency conducted tactical searches and recovered contraband including phones and drugs after the publication of the first video. However, just weeks later, Jones released a “Part 2.”
The last time Gothamist spoke to Jones, he said he was locked up almost all hours of the day with a camera over his head in the North Infirmary Command facility of Rikers. The rapper said he was moved there as punishment after releasing his videos.
“They say they got me in celebrity status. They basically said that they don't trust me in general population because of the videos,” he said.
Policing the sound of NY hip-hop
Hip-hop experts say they are concerned Jones’s incarceration could affect his music career. Erik Nielson, a hip hop academic and professor at the University of Richmond, said he worries his success could also make him a target for law enforcement, pointing to a high-profile case in Atlanta.
“It sounds like he's going to be under good management, I just hope they are aware of the threat that is presented by his success,” he said.
Many listeners would identify Jones’ music as “drill rap,” although he disagrees. Drill is a subgenre of rap, and its sometimes gritty, violent and nihilistic lyricism has caused controversy for some of the artists practicing the genre.
Drill originated in Chicago in about 2011 out of subcultures associated with gang and street life. It has since morphed, and its themes now include hustling to triumph over challenges more broadly, said Dr. Jabari Evans, a rapper and Professor of Race and Media at the University of South Carolina.
“To do a drill very much means to finesse one's way into victory. And to be aggressive about it.”
Last year, Mayor Eric Adams raised the alarm about drill rap, saying it is “contributing to the violence we are seeing all over this country,” suggesting it should be banned.
Politicians and law enforcement have demonized rap music and the people who make it – usually Black men – for decades, Nielsen said. “And tried to use it in order to explain upticks in various types of crime. And that's exactly what Eric Adams did.” He called Adams’ view on drill “disappointing.”
Still shot from "NYC's Boldest."
Still shot: "NYC's Boldest."
In Atlanta, a debate is raging over whether prosecutors can use lyrics written by the rap star Young Thug as evidence in his trial on gang and racketeering charges. Nielson said that vilifying hip-hop is wrong-headed.“The narrative of hip-hop as promoting violence is exactly wrong. Hip-hop has been responsible for reducing violence and for giving people opportunities who come from communities where those opportunities are rare.”
Still, he fears that Jones’s music could be used against him by law enforcement – that his lyrics could be scrutinized, or that his fame could lead law enforcement to harass or surveil him. At least two other music videos have been produced behind bars in prisons in Atlanta and Michigan since Jones was detained. In Michigan, the detained musicians were facing further charges as a result.
Dr. Evans said viral fame could lead to opportunity for Jones – as it did with fellow New Yorker Ice Spice – but it could also have its risks.
“I also know that visibility while incarcerated also breeds the wrong type of surveillance and the wrong type of attention.”
Jones is eligible for release in August 2024, a spokesperson for the New York state corrections department said. When he gets out, he plans to release his EP, “NYC’s Boldest,” and start performing.
“I don't like downfalls. So I'm going to keep trying. I'm going to make it work,” he said. “With Tay627, it's going to happen. Anything is possible.”
Tagged
new york city
Rikers Island
public safety
Jessy Edwards
Jessy Edwards covers incarceration and public safety. Before working at Gothamist/WNYC, she covered daily and breaking news at NBC New York and Brooklyn news at BK Reader. Got a tip? Email [email protected].
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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