DISGRACELAND - Tay-K: A Nationwide Manhunt and Art Imitating Life

Episode Date: May 15, 2018

The Arlington, Texas rapper born Taymor Travon McIntyre was involved in two killings by the time he was 17. Arrested on murder charges and placed under house arrest until hearings were to take place, Tay-K sawed off his ankle bracelet and announced to the world via Twitter that he was going on the run. He made it from Texas all the way to New Jersey, where he recorded his most infamous song, “The Race,” detailing his time on the lam. The song’s lyrics and video blurred real life and art and quickly went viral, garnering more than 100 million downloads. It also worked as a set of clues for authorities to use to piece together the young fugitive’s whereabouts. The viral nature of the song and video, the ensuing Twitter phenomenon, and infamy surrounding the young fugitive also caused tipsters to come out in droves and eventually led to Tay-K’s arrest. To see the full list of contributors, see the show notes at www.disgracelandpod.com. Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - GET THE NEWSLETTER   Follow Jake and DISGRACELAND: Instagram YouTube X (formerly Twitter)  Facebook Fan Group TikTokSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is exactly right. Double Elvis. Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. This episode is dedicated to my old friend Liz Tempesta. You are a true badass. Sending you all the PMA in the world, Liz. All right, let's get into the show. The story surrounding 17-year-old hip-hop viral sensation,

TK47, is insane. He allegedly shot a man and then, while awaiting trial on house arrest, cut off his ankle bracelet, and announced his escape to the world via Twitter. Then, while on the run, made and released a video depicting his escape, where he has seen bragging about murder and assault, two charges that at the time he was facing. Art imitating life. The video's release led to his arrest in a matter of hours. The nationwide manhunt may have come to an end. But TK47's hip-hop career was just getting started.

His notoriety had caused his SoundCloud plays to go through the roof. And Twitter erupted in support of the young fugitive, come star. Celebrity remixes were released. Record labels came calling. The song charted on Billboard, and the video was viewed over 100 million times. Why? Because it's great music, as real as it gets. That music you heard at the top of the show,

that wasn't great music. It's far from real. It's a preset loop from my Melotron called Harmonium Low, MK2. I played you that loop because I can't afford the license for a shape of you by Ed Sheeran. And why would I play you

that specific slice of ginger cheese could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on March 27, 2017. And that was the day that T.K. 47, escaped his house arrest, or as he put it, did the race, becoming one of America's most wanted fugitives and one of the Internet's biggest viral sensations in the process.

On this episode, low harmoniums, ginger cheese, busted ankle bracelets, and take hay 47. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is disgraceland. We're now about to witness the strength of street knowledge is the line at the beginning of NWA's Straight Out of Compton. We all know the iconic song and album by now. It's music so powerful that it has permanently singed itself upon America's cultural identity. You can't describe the history of hip-hop without giving Straight Out of Compton its due,

and you can't give an honest depiction of the history of Los Angeles without mentioning the album either. Straight Out of Compton accurately forecast one of America's blackest eyes. The Rodney King beating by the systematically racist LAPD and subsequent L.A. riots in 1992. And the album wasn't some obscure, preachy, pedantic musical statement about socioeconomic conditions in the plight of Black America and Los Angeles at the time. It was a visceral depiction of life on Compton's streets, and it was a stone-cold hit. It sold over 3 million albums. A total banger of a record, start to finish, not a bare.

bad song on it, and it sounded different from any other hip-hop at the time. It was hard, and the vocalists, there were four frontmen, each voice, nearly as powerful as the next. Sure, MC Wren was more of a player coach and yellow-filled the Ringo slot, but EZE, Ice Cube, and Dr. Dre on Straight Outta Compton were hip-hop's answer to John, Paul, and George. Except this this wasn't Can't By Me Love. This was Life ain't Nothing but bitches and money. Ice Cube's lyrics brought the reality of growing up in South Central Los Angeles to suburban white American youth with authority. I know because I was a suburban white American youth in 1989. The year that NWA is straight out of Compton made it to my little corner of middle

America and when it did, I was hooked. I wore that cassette out, memorized every lyric, every skit, every beat. I was fascinated. The stories were gripping. The big thing with my friends and I was, was this shit real, or were these guys making it all up? Were cops really beating on dudes just for being black? Were rappers really living a gang life,

slinging dope and committing drive-by shootings in between playing shows and making records? I was in camp real. How could anyone make this up? It was too wild. The truth is, of course, was somewhere in the middle. EZE had OG Streetcred with the Crips,

but I'm pretty sure Ice Cube went to bed at night wearing matching pajamas. It didn't matter. Their music was inspired and gangster is fuck. It was my first experience with art imitating life. Art that I appreciated anyways. And so when Rodney King and the L.A. riots happened, it was just life-imitating art.

Like most of America, I was shocked as I watched the riots from the safety of me. my suburban couch. But unlike most of America, I can't say I was surprised. We knew this was going to happen because NWA warned us. And when OJ got off, same, shocked, but not surprised. Unless you live in South Central or Long Beach or a cop or a social worker or first responder or someone else working in the area, this is likely where the story of L.A. gang culture ends for you, culturally speaking anyways. But of course, that's a It's not true. Gang life in South Central in Long Beach continues to be pretty much just as dangerous as it was when NWA burst on the scene.

Statistics are hard to come by, what with LAPD under reporting violent crimes, but according to a report conducted by the L.A. County Board of Public Health, the year straight out of Compton was released, 1989. There were 554 gang homicides in L.A. County. In the year 2000, there were 400, there were 400. A vast majority of these deaths can be attributed to the perpetually feuding gangs, the bloods, and the Crips. The Crips, the L.A. Gang, NWA's EZE and M.C. Renn associated with, boasts a worldwide membership of 35,000 gang members comprised of a network of countless individual gangs. The Nuddy Block Crips. Lentana Block Crips. Long Beach, insane Crips. Southside Crips. Westside crips, cabbage patch crips, and on and on and on. In the year 2000, a nutty block Compton crypt and a long beach insane crib gave birth to Tamor McIntyre. Born into one of America's most dangerous street gangs, no one knew it at the time, but 17 years later, just like those other products of Compton Street's NWA, this boy's art would so authentically imitate his life that it would

land him on the billboard charts and make him one of America's most wanted fugitives in the process. By 2016, Tameur McIntyre had dropped the name his gang-banging parents gave him for the preferred TAKEA, short for TK47. Of course he did. That old NWA lyric was baked into the cake. TK.47's life had already started imitating art. He may have only been a baby-faced 16-year-old, but he had hard eyes, eyes that because of his upbringing had seen things other 16-year-olds will never see. Violence was in his blood. Robbery was a viable career path. Murder, an occupational hazard. Even in shit-fuck Texas, where he was now living, after his dad had gone away to prison, Tay-K moved from L.A. to Las Vegas to live with his sister. And when his dad got out, he moved the family to

Arlington, Texas for a fresh start. And it sucked. there was nothing, nothing to do. For TayK, there were two roads out, robbing and rapping. He hedged his bets and pursued both. Rapping was a long shot. TayK. fucked with the Daytona Boys, but Santana Sage was serving 44 years on a murder charge and the group was a dead end.

He decided to break out on his own, and in 2015 uploaded his first song to SoundCloud. He'd seen other rappers, like Lil Yadi, you break out big time through SoundCloud, so why not him? Lil Yadi had over a half million followers, ended up with a record deal. It was now modeling for Kanye West. Jesus, if that dude could do it.

TK.'s first upload, Biff Zanin, grabbed some local attention but failed to light the internet on fire. People were into it, but not enough to send Mr. Kim Kardashian knocking. For the then-15-year-old, it was a real come-to-Yezus moment. So, for the time anyways, it was robbing. The alleged plan was to stick up that boy, Ethan Walker, the one who always had the good weed and the stacks of cash. He was crazy for pussy, like every other 21-year-old dude on the planet.

He'd be no match for the two girls. One of them wasn't much to look at, but she knew how to work it. And if she wasn't enough of a distraction, instinctively, Tay K knew that the other girl, the one with those eyes, she'd do the trick. They told Ethan they were on their way by his place to smoke him up. The girl's car hit the 1500 block of Aspen Court in Mansfield, Texas at around 10 p.m. on July 25, 2016.

They rang the bell and were buzzed in. Ethan locked the door behind them. He'd already been robbed before and didn't need that shit again. It was straight to the bedroom. Weed and then, hopefully, sex. The weed was thick, sticky. you really had to get after it and break it up. While Ethan rolled a blunt, he tried making small talk with the girls,

and they were acting weird, distracted, running in and out of the room, out to the kitchen, fucking with their phones, not making eye contact. Maybe they're already high. Supposedly, the way the plan was to go off was that TayK would text, Hit a lick to the girls. Hit a lick was code for home invasion.

And on that cue, if the girls gave the okay, KK and his two boys who were outside would then bust in and Rob Eth take his weed and his money. The problem was that the girls were fucking things up. They were taking way too long to text back. Is it a go? Tate K texted? Nothing.

Fuck. Inside, girl number one was flirting with Ethan. But Ethan wasn't interested. He wanted girl number two, the one with the eyes. But she was smoking weed on the other side of the room trying to play it cool. Then she wandered up to the kitchen again. She pulled out herself, texted the O.K.A. back to TayK.,

and then unlocked the front door of the apartment. Tamor McIntyre, aka TayK. 47, and two others allegedly burst through the door at that moment, guns out, shouting that this was a robbery and everyone needed to chill the fuck out. Ethan knew what was up immediately. Shit. He extracted himself from Girl Number One's bullshit advances and got to his feet of quick. It all happened so fast Before he could even get his head around the queasy feeling in his stomach

There was a bulletin He didn't even know where it came for or from who And then Ethan Walker was dead Just like that 21 years old and gone Witnesses from over at Aspen Court Gave police everything they needed

To quickly piece together Who might have been to blame for the robbery slash murder And cops quickly rounded up all involved including TK, who at 16 years old, had just caught his first murder charge. We'll be right back after this word, word, word. House arrest sucked, as if shit-fucked Texas wasn't bad enough. Now you had to spend your time, all your time, cooped up in this lifeless apartment. But being charged with capital murder did have its upside.

Since the arrest and the press surrounding it, Taked's SoundCloud plays had gone through the roof. Relatively speaking anyways, lesson learned, the more real your shit is, the more people are going to pay attention to you. Wait a minute, that's it. Fuck house arrest. What good was it doing? What? You're supposed to sit around for months waiting to be ushered to and from court, where you face either life in prison with no shot at parole or a death sentence? No. How are you supposed to become a hip-hop star like that? Hell, how are you supposed to rob anyone like that? The decision was easy. Stay and you're going to jail or worse. Run and you could get caught, but fuck it.

Maybe you release some music along the way, get your sound cloud really going. Maybe you get some of that record label money or go back to Robin. How bad could life as a fugitive be? Probably beats the shit out of sitting around at home. So, on March 27, 2017, T. Take K-47 cut his ankle bracelet off and sent out the following tweet. Fuck this house arrest shit. Fuck 12.

They're going to have to catch me on hood. I'm not going to lie. Had I seen that tweet in real time, I probably wouldn't have understood what the hell it meant. But the rest of the Twitter sphere got it. TayK was gone. He split. And as his escape picked up steam,

so did his tweet. Now that TayK was on the run from the law, he started to really blow up on SoundCloud. And hip-hop fans weren't the only ones interested. Obviously. The United States Marshalls listed him as a violent fugitive, released a wanted photo, and solicited the public for help and locating him. The public had other ideas. Fans took to Twitter almost immediately to tweet

posts of support for TayK, whose Twitter profile featured several videos and pictures of him posing with guns, cash, and dope. No matter, the tweets started pouring in from all over. Run, TayK. I hope they never find TayK. TayK. Takee can murder this pussy any. anytime. And the ubiquitous, protect TayK at all costs. That one was retweeted over and over again and used in the context of whatever was trending on Twitter that day, as in, there's a hurricane coming to Houston. Protect TayK at all costs. Allegedly, TayK. headed from Arlington, Texas, to San Antonio. Maybe the plan was to escape to Mexico. Maybe there was no plan at all. But in the absence of a plan, there was predictability,

rapping and robbing. Authorities suspect that while in San Antonio, Tay Kay robbed and assaulted a 65-year-old man, and shortly after he made his escape, Tay-K started sending new music to his manager, 16-year-old Ezra Averill. One track was so good, they decided they needed a video for its release

to really take advantage of the social media way of TayK's fugitive status had given him. So in late May, 2017, Takeh-K-47, a most wanted fugitive, somehow hooked himself up with his friends, presumably back in Texas, to shoot the video. The video looked great, and the song slammed. Ezra knew they were on to something, and Tay-K. knew he had to lamb it again or else get caught. So he headed north, and as he continued to run,

His name continued to ring out on Twitter. The original plan was to release the video later that year, but the internet wants what the internet wants when the internet wants it. So smartly, Ezra set up a deal with Miami Rap Collective Buffet Boys to release the video on their YouTube channel. And by the time TayK arrived in Elizabeth, New Jersey, on June 30th, 2017, the video is ready for release. At 8.54 p.m., Tayk47 tweeted out the video with the following caption.

Feds can't hold me back. Here it go. TayK., the race music video. Boom. Twitter blew up. The video was everything Ezra had hoped it would be. The opening shot shows a wanted poster of TayK. The beat drops, and as a viewer, you're immediately on board. Art, imitating life.

Takehay is seen in the video mugging for the camera and dancing around with a 9mm. Every lyric is a depiction of a 17-year-old life at that moment. It's all running, robbing, and killing. It was real, real enough for detectors to easily team with the numerous tips they'd been receiving from all over the country and within hours of the video being released, Takek47 was arrested.

He was extradited from New Jersey, back to Texas. As if the video wasn't enough, news of his capture pushed the video over the top. Hashtag free take hay quickly became a thing on Twitter. Travis Scott tweeted out a line from the race. Do the dash, then go out the way. Giving the unknown rapper hip-hop seal of approval. Remixes by massively popular artists like Taiga, 21 Savage, and yes, even Lil Yadi, started showing up. The song debuted on the Billboard charts at number 70, peaked at number 44. Rumors started circulating that RCA Records was interested in signing the young fugitive

despite news that he was going to be tried as an adult for capital murder. The rumors were partly true. RCA record exec, Jay Grant, signed Taked 47 to his independent label, ADA Classic, but it remains to be seen if TAKEA ever got hold of any of that record label cash. The video for the race, however, has been viewed over 100, million times. 100 million times. Someone's getting paid. YouTube should be paying TakedK47's legal fees. After all, they're advertising against this video. If I were Tameur McIntyre's manager, I'd be starting a new hashtag campaign. Forget free TayK. What about pay

TayK? Legal fees, especially for two capital murder charges, can get expensive. Oh yeah, authorities added another murder charge to TayK after he was caught for the alleged murder of a victim outside of San Antonio fast food restaurant while on the run. More to the point, art, imitating life, can get expensive. Take-K47's rise in popularity

has as much to do with his art as it does with his life. Rappers have been boasting and talking shit ever since the genre came to be. The more authentic those hip-hop artists seemed, the wider their appeal. See straight out of Compton as Exhibit A. But with NWA, there was an unseen line between art and life. You really couldn't see it, but you kind of knew it was there.

That line made the artist a little less scary and a little more acceptable. Take A47, on the other hand, feels a lot more real. Maybe because of the viral, DIY nature of it all. It's all super authentic. Unlike with NWA, there isn't a short, threat of daylight between what could be real and what could be fake. There is no debate. It's all real.

Life. And let's not forget, two innocent people are dead. And a 17-year-old is facing either life in prison or the death sentence. So all of it is also a disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan. And this is Disgraceland. Disgraceland was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. for this episode can be found on the show notes page at disgracelandpod.com.

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