She made a monumental comeback to the Rap game after her release from a Florida prison just two years ago, and JT is reflecting on that time of her life on the Abolition X podcast with hosts Richie Resheda, Indigo Mateo, and Vic Mensa. Yung Miami held down the City Girls while JT was incarcerated, but as soon as she was freed, the best friends immediately got to work. It has been a meteoric climb up the charts ever since, but now, JT is sharing the lessons she has learned since re-gaining her freedom.
“I feel like I got better. Going to prison and coming out, gave me more edge, in my music when I rap and in my voice,” said JT. “It did put a lot of fear in me too. It put a lot of anxiety in me. It changed me completely.”
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“My whole life, I have always been painted as a rebellious person, and to the point where I started to believe it,” she said elsewhere during the chat. “If you always tell me that I’m the problem, I’m going to believe that I’m the problem, so now that I’m the problem, I’m going to be the problem.” While inside, JT added that she felt completely disconnected from everything happening in the outside world, but she did receive encouragement from a fellow inmate.
The rapper has also endured her fair share of criticism and spoke at length about feeling as if Black people aren’t allowed to be confident in their successes.
“People are more in-tuned with people who are down and out, than people who are up. They don’t know how to celebrate Black people when they are up, they are only relatable to Black people when they are down, in f*cked up situations. As soon as you get your first sense of confidence, they like, ‘Who the f*ck you think you are?’”
Listen to the full episode below.