In an interview with Jordan Rose for Complex, Tay-K revealed that he still loves his breakthrough 2017 song, “The Race.”
The 26-year-old rapper, who is currently incarcerated after being found guilty for his involvement in two murders, sat down for his first interview in nearly a decade and discussed his relationship with the notorious track, which was released while he was a fugitive following his escape from house arrest while on trial for capital murder charges.
“‘The Race’ is a song that’s double platinum, but also a song that was so ahead of its time in the sense of the sound that you had done… I could only imagine the complicated relationship you have with that record,” said Rose, to which Tay-K suggested that it’s not all that complicated for him.
“I love that song, bro,” Tay-K said. “I ain’t going to lie. Like, I know what you mean because I see what you’re saying. That [song] been used against me in a lot of ways and stuff like that, but at the end of the day, bro, that shit’s music. That’s just a song, for real. I won’t let the fact that people tried to wield it like a weapon at me in these courtrooms make me not like my art, bro. That’s art and that should be viewed as art and nothing more, nothing less, you know? I understand that the art might be perceived as closely related with reality, but that’s not enough to hold it up in no damn court. I love that music. I love all my songs.”
Tay-K is concurrently serving 55 years in prison for his involvement in the 2016 home invasion and murder of Ethan Walker, and 80 years in prison for the 2017 fatal shooting of Mark Anthony Saldivar. He released “The Race,” his breakthrough single, while on the run from authorities. Tay-K was later apprehended the same month he released “The Race.”
He has indicated he has plans to release new music while serving his prison sentence, and has already released six one-off singles in the past two years. Most recently, he announced his prison-recorded album #MonstersUnderMyBed, which marks his first major release in nearly a decade.
Elsewhere in the interview, he also told Jordan Rose that he’s been introduced to a wide variety of music while in prison.
“You have the officers when I was in the county, they’ll come in and they’ll have a speaker and they’ll play their own music and shit like that,” he said. “That kinda opened up my ear to different types of music that I hadn’t heard before. Like, Linkin Park, Nirvana. That kinda opened my eyes.”
