14 DAY TRIAL // Louisiana rapper Lil Boosie (real name Torrence Hatch) is officially a free man, having been released from Louisiana’s Angola State Penitentiary after serving 4 years behind bars on drug charges. He is now with his family and hasn’t spoken to the press just yet.
That will happen on Monday, March 10, 2014, a spokesperson for his record label, Atlantic Records, has confirmed for MTV News. This will officially be Lil Boosie’s first post-jail interview, and he will probably follow it up with a TV appearance as well.
At the time of his release, Boosie had been in prison since June 2010. His track record is as colored as it’s been highly mediated, having first been brought up on first-degree murder charges related to the 2009 fatal shooting of Terry Boyd, also a rapper.
“Boosie was accused of paying then 19-year old Michael ‘Marlo Mike’ Louding to kill the 35-year old man, but was found not guilty in May of 2011 after a week of testimony and jury deliberation. In November of 2011, months after being found not guilty in the murder trial, Boosie pleaded guilty to three counts of conspiring to smuggle drugs, which resulted in his eight-year sentence,” MTV News reports.
He has been released for good behavior 4 years into his sentence, but he will remain on parole for another 4 years, which means he must behave and not break any law or he will be sent back to prison once more.
Last year, contacted by the press to speak about how he was handling the incarceration, Lil Boosie wrote in a letter that it was the love of his fans that kept him from losing his mind. Well, that and knowing that he was yet to become the star he was born to become.
“I've coped by knowing in my heart that I'm someone special who many people love. If you lose hope in yourself, you'll make your time hard. I always felt that my mission wasn't complete. I feel I haven't reached the star power that was destined for me,” he said, as cited by MTV.
“That makes me keep writing and thinking of ways to better myself as a man and artist. When it feels like the world is on my shoulders, I look at my pictures from when I was free and it gives hope and determination to pushing,” the rapper continued.
On the bright side, fans should probably expect a new album inspired by his experience behind bars.