Tay-K has just released his first album since 2017, with #MonstersUnderMyBed.
The sixteen track project (including a bonus cut, the previously released single “Everywhere I Go”), was written and recorded as the rapper is serving a prison sentence currently scheduled to last until 2099.
The album follows a series of releases in 2026, including the singles "PUNCH YOU DOWN," "Everywhere I Go," and "Erupt." Tay-K also appeared on "SPOTLIGHT / INNER CHILD," the outro from Dominic Fike's album How to Quit Smoking.
Tay-K, whose real name is Taymor McIntyre, is currently serving a 55-year prison sentence for his involvement in a fatal 2016 robbery that resulted in the death of 21-year-old Ethan Walker. In 2025, he received an additional 80-year sentence for the April 2017 fatal shooting of 23-year-old photographer Mark Anthony Saldivar. Judge Stephanie Boyd ordered the sentences to run concurrently. The Saldivar case is being appealed.
The rapper talked to Complex’s Jordan Rose in advance of the project’s release. During the interview, he discussed some of the music he’s been listening to recently.
“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.”
“I fuck with Rio [da Yung OG],” he continued, after sharing his love for the duo Loaded Honey. “I listen to FattMack. I like the ‘Smaxk or Die’ song by Fatt Smaxk. I fuck with Olivia Rodrigo.”
When it comes to his own music, Tay-K says he still has love for his breakout song “The Race,” a track about being on the run from the law that he recorded and shot a video for after cutting off his ankle monitor while on house arrest and absconding, in a move that made him a national sensation.
“I love that song,” Tay-K told Rose. “That [song] been used against me in a lot of ways, 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. 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.”
Check out #MonstersUnderMyBed below.
