X-Raided

X-RAIDED BIO

A Prophecy In Purgatory

The story really deserves a book of its own or a big-screen adaptation…

X-Raided’s journey could be likened to the hip-hop equivalent of The Shawshank Redemption. To focus heavily on his 26 years, 5 months, and 26 days locked away in jail would be a disservice to him. However, A LOT happened during this time—he consistently landed on the Billboard charts with independent releases; appears to have inspired Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg’s camp and Eminem; befriended the Menendez Brothers; learned a few tricks from Mac Dre to record songs over the phone; nearly died; and somehow still managed to make a tangible impact on a variety of major legislations. When he came home and signed to Tech N9ne’s Strange Music, he rapped as if his life depended on it, stacking up millions of streams and snatching the attention of TMZ, the New York Post, and more. At the same time, he advocated for lasting change. Now, he’s musically meeting his moment on 2025’s A Prophecy In Purgatory [Strange Music].

Hailing from Sacramento, X-Raided carved out a spot at the forefront of rap’s fertile underground in the early nineties. A member of the city’s influential scene with Brotha Lynch Hung, he made waves throughout the game with his Black Market Records debut LP, Psycho Active, effectively paving the way for additional releases from the label by everyone from Daz Dillinger to Mozzy. “I was the LL Cool J of Black Market Records,” said X-Raided. “The first artist they ever released. You know what’s a trip? Dr. Dre tried to buy the name, but Cedric refused to sell it. That’s how Dre ended up choosing the name Aftermath. If he had his way, Eminem would be signed to a label called Black Market Records.”

Arrested for and charged with first-degree murder with a gang enhancement at the age of seventeen, X-Raided would be tried as an adult and had to defeat the possibility of facing the Death Penalty before trial where lyrics from Psycho Active would be used against him in court. While his co-defendant was acquitted of all charges, X-Raided was convicted and sentenced to 31 years to life (though he maintains his innocence to this day).

Incarceration never diminished his creative fire. Whether it was thanks to Mac Dre showing him how to transform two receivers and a hardline rotary phone into a mic to record, or if it was sneaking a handheld DAT recorder or minidisc recording device into the prison, X-Raided always found a way to make more music. He cracked the Billboard charts multiple times and moved millions of units. Although the State of California filed a Son of Sam lawsuit against him in an attempt to confiscate the royalties from his The Unforgiven Vol. 1 LP - which prohibits criminals from profiting from the publicity of their crimes - the California Supreme Court struck the law down, allowing X’s rap career to legally continue.

“A lot of people were mad about that,” X said. “It wasn’t against the rules or the law for me to record music. No one had ever done it before, so I was always years ahead of the rules. They had to make new rules to punish inmates for having recording equipment and cell phones and even then, that was a slap on the wrist to me. They had no idea how to stop me at that point, so they started playing dirty politics.”

Nearly murdered when several inmates stabbed him multiple times over a refusal to help them make an album, X-Raided showed incredible fortitude and served out the last eight years of his sentence. Surprisingly, he learned how to move correctly as a celebrity behind bars from none other than Lyle and Erik Menendez, also known as the Menendez Brothers.

“Lyle was the first one to say, I think you have an incorrect approach to how you’re doing time as someone with notoriety,” X-Raided said. “He showed me how to be a politician. If I was being interviewed by the news, he reminded me not to embarrass the facility. He told me why it was important to acknowledge Wardens. These are things I never cared about because I was looking at life from the perspective of a criminal. “I moved to another institution where Erik Menendez was, and Lyle sent him a letter saying, I love X-Raided. He is our brother. Love him too. That’s verbatim. While Lyle taught me politics and how to think deliberately, Erik took my education to another level as a spiritual guru. I started going to self-help groups, and the impact of my attendance gave me strength within the administration. Many people who wouldn’t have otherwise started attending classes began doing so because I did. I went from getting in trouble for smuggling recording equipment into the prison to getting permission to build studios in the facility.”

As sweet as that first day out felt, the day his parole ended—March 1, 2022—eclipsed it. “Tech N9ne and I were having a meal at a video shoot when I got the email from my Parole Officer,” he recalls. “Tech looked at me like, What’s wrong?! I said, I’m off parole, bro… I’m off parole. He just put his hand on my shoulder, and I stood there for like five minutes, overwhelmed. I was free. Free for real.”

In this headspace, he unleashed music at a prolific pace. He held his own on collaborations with Conway The Machine and Joyner Lucas on “Knock” from Tech’s BLISS LP and again on three tracks from the Collabos release Class of Strange Music (COSM). He also managed to team up on a song featuring legends Prodigy and Method Man for Sign of Se7en, a track produced by none other than the God MC himself, Rakim, for his first project in 15 years, God’s Network. Earning critical acclaim, he graced the cover of V13 and saw TMZ attest that, “X-Raided wants his experiences to steer past, current and future inmates in a better direction.”

During his time away, the chatter around X-Raided’s potential had never ceased. He can’t count how many times he’d heard phrases like, “If you weren’t locked up, you’d be the next Tupac.” It was as if the zeitgeist itself had written a prophecy, and the culture was just waiting for him to come home and fulfill it. As we know now, he got out and hit the ground running with those aforementioned collabs and his first two acclaimed albums for Strange Music: A Prayer In Hell [2023] and A Sin In Heaven [2024]. However, it’s his 20-track 2025 opus, A Prophecy In Purgatory, that sees X-Raided make this oracle a reality.

“Fans had this hope I would come back and make the hip-hop they wanted to hear,” he elaborates. “If I had the chance to do it, this would be the prophecy. With A Prayer In Hell and A Sin Heaven, I got to prove those people right. A Prophecy In Purgatory is my chance to elevate my hometown, neighborhood, and community. I faced the consequences of my youth, and here I am as an adult with an opportunity to make a better impact on the broader world. I refer to the first ten songs as the ‘Old Testament,’ representing the old psychology. I don’t want to rap about negativity, though. The second half of the album is me saying, ‘I’m going to speak against this particular status quo.’ Between the economy and the world, it’s hard to just survive now. I’m going in a different direction now.”

X-Raided found inspiration from the most important source—his children. He wrote and recorded feverishly, fueled by the responsibility and weight of fatherhood. The resulting music had more gravity than ever.

“I realized ‘dad’ and X-Raided need to be the same dude,” he notes. “I just want to be there for my family, and this really created a new perspective for me. Being a father is the highest motivation I have. That was the reason I went in this direction. Honestly, it feels better.”

You can hear this vitality and vibrancy course through the record. He opened up the world of this record with “Queen of Hearts,” “Damnation” [feat. Tech N9ne], “Outside (Three Kings)” [feat. C-Bo & Brotha Lynch Hung], “Soldier” [feat. C-Bo], and “Still Outside” [feat. Mozzy]. The single “Youthanized” practically explodes on impact ignited by a loose beat, swaggering keyboards, and pops of gunshot samples. It revolves around his heightened level of awareness and consciousness, “Learned by observing it, the ghetto was my teacher, religiously evil as if the devil was my preacher.”

Among other highlights, ominous keys puncture the bass-y bounce of “HeLa Cells” [feat. Kurupt]. X-Raided’s confident flow coasts through the soundscape as he laments, “They’ll never say that he’s the blueprint,” going on to warn, “Nefarious X-Raided, I returned to advance the legacy.” Los Angeles lyrical mercenary Kurupt rolls through with vicious verbal flurry of his own. “I love Kurupt, and he always has something positive to say about me,” X-Raided continues. “They made vaccines from Henrietta Lacks’s cells. They continue to use them to this day, but she wasn’t credited or compensated for it until years later. I related to it, because I was incarcerated but my DNA was throughout hip-hop.”

Elsewhere, cinematic strings set the scene on “Ecclesiastes,” giving way to an upbeat groove and propulsive display of precision lyricism. “Thug Psalms” serves as a complement. The production pulsates through stark piano and claps, and he proclaims, “Right now, these are the thug psalms, it was my destiny to carry the curses, it was written so let it be.”

“‘Ecclesiastes’ and ‘Thug Psalms’ are like bookends,” he says. “Ecclesiastes is one of my favorite books in the Bible. I’m a huge King Solomon fan. I wrote it in 1999 when I was incarcerated. It was important for me to tell people everything was going to be okay. I was telling myself even though. During 2003, I wrote ‘Thug Psalms’ in the dungeons. I was in a prison in the prison like Magneto. It was a decision I was going to change my life. I decided on education and self-help, resulting in being free eventually.”

In the end, X-Raided’s Prophecy feels fulfilled.

“I just want to inspire and show everybody ‘up’ is the right way to go,” he leaves off. “Figure it out. Fight your battle. Improve your life. Go up.”