Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • NPR

    With A Long-Awaited Shot At Freedom, Mac Phipps Has His Eyes On The Future

    Last month, the rapper was recommended for clemency after serving 21 years in prison for a crime he says he did not commit. Now he tells NPR about his time behind bars and his hope for life outside.
    by Rodney Carmichael Mar 12, 2021 9 minutes
    Mac Phipps, the rapper formerly signed to No Limit Records, has been granted clemency after 21 years in prison.

    Rodney Carmichael and Sidney Madden are the hosts of Louder Than A Riot, a new podcast from NPR Music that investigates the interconnected rise of hip-hop and mass incarceration in America.

    On Feb. 22, former No Limit Records artist McKinley "Mac" Phipps appeared before the Louisiana Board of Pardons and Committee on Parole. It was a chance he'd been waiting on for two decades.

    In 2001, Mac was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 30 years hard labor in connection to a shooting at Club Mercedes in Slidell, La. — a crime he and many others say he didn't commit.

    The path to this clemency hearing started in 2018 when Mac filed an application requesting a commutation of his sentence — it was his second time filing after a 2016 clemency hearing request was denied. This January, he got an update: The hearing had been scheduled.

    "I kind of just went at it like everything I do in life is like, okay, here goes nothing. Let's roll. May the chips fall where they may," Mac tells Louder Than A Riot in a new interview.

    In front of five board members, 21 years and a day after his sentence began, Mac got to make his case again. The hearing had nothing to do with guilt or innocence. Justice wasn't even a factor. It was about whether, after spending half of his life in prison, Mac had earned a chance to go home.

    You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

    More from NPR

    NPR3 min readInternational Relations
    Newly Elected Prime Minister In Solomon Islands Is Likely To Keep Close China Ties
    Solomon Islands lawmakers elected former Foreign Minister Jeremiah Manele as prime minister Thursday in a development that suggests the South Pacific island nation will maintain close ties with China.
    NPR4 min read
    A Poet Searches For Answers About The Short Life Of A Writer In 'Traces Of Enayat'
    Poet Iman Mersal's book is a memoir of her search for knowledge about the writer Enayat al-Zayyat; it's a slow, idiosyncratic journey through a layered, changing Cairo — and through her own mind.
    NPR1 min readDiscrimination & Race Relations
    Why Is A 6-week Abortion Ban Nearly A Total Ban? It's About How We Date A Pregnancy
    The time a person has to decide whether to have an abortion in Florida and other states with six-week abortion bans is at most two weeks. Why? It's has to do with how we date early pregnancy.

    Related Books & Audiobooks