Prison Telecom Business Indicted By Rap Album Recorded In Jail
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. 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.
Drakeo, 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. 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. 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 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. Drakeo's songs don't belabor the point, but they're barbed. He sounds reasonably frustrated.
Drakeo's given name is Darrell Caldwell and in July 2019, he was found innocent of murder and attempted murder. The jury hung on two other charges based on California penal code statutes that , and allow active gang members to be charged for crimes committed by other gang members. that Drakeo's musical collaborators, the Stinc Team, constitute a gang. 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 . He's being held without bail while waiting for the retrial.
