Brownsville rapper Taquan Jones was alone in his Rikers Island jail cell one day earlier this year when he had a big idea. Instead of laying around waiting for news on his case, he could make a music video.

Jones was arrested in November 2022 on gun possession and other charges. Making a video in the violent city jail was an ambitious goal. Still, he started putting together possible scenes and shots in his mind. Gothamist interviewed Jones in a series of phone calls made to and from Rikers over September and October this year.

“I was just sitting there thinking like, nobody ever did this before. Not even Lil Wayne,” he said, referring to the multi-award winning rapper who wrote an album and a book during his eight-month stint at Rikers in 2010. “He's been on Rikers Island before. A whole lot of other artists have been on Rikers Island before but nobody made a whole music video.”

In the months that followed, Jones pulled it off. His videos, “NYC’s Boldest” Parts 1 and 2 were picked up by a major hip-hop website and today have been seen by more than a half a million people.

Jones’ first video shows him rapping and dancing with other detainees in a gray-painted concrete cell, sometimes wearing his city-issued beige jail uniform, other times wearing designer clothes and jewelry. In some scenes, men are wearing ski masks and holding long, sharpened plastic knives. The video ends with a scene of men selling small bags of marijuana through an interior window in the jail. The song title, “NYC’s Boldest,” is a reference to a complimentary nickname given to city correction officers.

For the full story, go to Gothamist.com