Rapper X-Raided talks inspiration, incarceration, mentors, the Menendez brothers, & more

Top Shelf has had the pleasure of a sit down with American rapper X-Raided, who talked of music, prison, and his strong connection with the Menendez brothers, who (as most of us are aware) are currently incarcerated for killing their parents with hopes for future release. 

In 1992, Anerae Veshaughn Brown (aka, X-Raided) was sentenced to 31 years to life in prison on murder charges.

Brown has continually denied said charges, maintaining his innocence to this very day. The lyrics of his debut album, Psycho Active, was even submitted as evidence by the prosecutors! X-Raided was released on parole 26 years into his sentence, signing with  Strange Music working alongside his mentor, owner/founder Tech N9ne. X is not only extremely driven and talented in his musical career; his life is dedicated to prison reform activism. 

How has this year been treating you so far? Seems like your life is just getting bigger and bigger! I bet you are ready for 2025!

• X: I am! There is progress every day!

You are a prison reform activist, a rap artist, a writer… the list goes on and on! What can’t you do?

• I feel like an artist must be capable of doing all of it, for a lot of different reasons, but you just don’t know what’s going to change your life. From a job perspective, you have to be able to do all of this stuff — from a place of authenticity. Music is a breathing living thing. You gotta stay ready and be able to do it all.

How’s working with Tech N9ne?

• I love him, man. He’s my brother. He is the REAL DEAL. I’ve learned how to be a better brother to my guys through him. He calls me every day. If he doesn’t call me, he calls me to tell me why he didn’t call me. It’s a special relationship.
• [He makes] me wonder… how many of my guys are sitting there waiting for me to call them? I made a list of people I have to call every day. Tech taught me a lot of things. I’ve always been the big brother and driving force. Now that I got with someone that is a SUPERNOVA in his own right, he’s taught me so much about music, brotherhood, business, showmanship, and has been the ultimate mentor. I just love him. 

What inspired your most recent album, ‘A Sin in Heaven’?

• So when I made my first project on Strange, it was called A Prayer in Hell because it was representative of me not having a chance in hell of getting out of prison, since I had a life sentence. I also said a prayer in hell — praying in a faithless, hopeless place. I believed that my life didn’t make sense if it ended with me just dying in prison one day. It wasn’t logical and it just didn’t make any sense if that was just it. I was in prison and that’s that. 
• Being the type of person I am, I still had an impact on people in that environment. Helping so many people do different things, from going to NA to AA, anger management. [People] were attending groups, because I went. I didn’t know that influence until I went to this one group and I got upset about something the facilitator said, so I didn’t go back. Three days later, the facilitator came to my cell door and asked me why I left the group. I said, ‘I believed that the presentation is a turn-off to people that would be able to receive the information if it wasn’t being dictated to them, but rather have more of a Socratic flow to it.’ The facilitator said, ‘When you walked out of the class, 70% of the class left, too. I need you to come back and facilitate the group.’ I was like, ‘My ego doesn’t need that’, but I realized that those people were looking to me for guidance, even if they weren’t directly asking for it. I understood that I had a responsibility, both then and now. 
• I had been getting letters from kids since they were 14 and 15 years old, some who later said they got their degrees and went to self-help groups because I did. Now they are college grads, mentoring others, and say they wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t do it. There is just this sense in my mind of what I was supposed to be doing, and what I am supposed to be doing now. A Prayer in Hell had a lot to do with that. 
• With A Sin in Heaven, I feel like it’s me saying that I came out of that environment into the free world — which I called my “heaven”; I didn’t know what I was doing or how to navigate it. There was an acknowledgment of errors and learning curves coming into society: relationships, perceptions of reality, and being unaware that I had an idealistic view of the world. I told the Menendez brothers, “Hey, you very well may have an idealistic view of what you think the world is like, being fed to you from books and movies, TV, and guys walking around telling tall tales.” I was pretty impacted by that realization. My first year free, A Sin in Heaven was me finding balance, getting off parole, and claiming a life of my own that was predicated of my own reality.

So, you feel like everything you’ve been through has led you to where you are now? 

• Yes. And that’s what I mean when I say ‘it didn’t make sense’ that prison was just it for me. Now that I am out, after everything that happened and what I survived, I have to DO something. It’s not just about doing rap music and doing jazz hands onstage; that can’t be what it’s about for me. It’s BIGGER, as a living, breathing TESTAMENT that if I can do it, after all of that, then other people can do it, too. They can get their lives together, too. Whatever their thing is, and it doesn’t have to be music, they can do it.
• I don’t get days off — this has to be me every day. I am afraid of what would happen if I failed to fulfill that obligation. I am concerned about that. I don’t want to find out. 

You never have a day off?!

• It doesn’t stop ever. I integrated it all. There are no days off for me and there is no mask. I don’t want one; I don’t require one. Concealment is not a necessary thing for me anymore. I have already faced my ugly monsters and I’m not afraid of them, and I’m not afraid of what someone thinks about my ugly monsters. Let’s talk about it, let’s address it — then marvel at the fact that we could address it. The minute I walk into the house, Anerae Brown and X-Raided are the same person. Whether I’m chilling with my children or turned up with the boys, I’m me, all the time. 

With what you went through, what the Menendez brothers endured in childhood… you’re now an advocate for people’s hells and traumas, yes?

• I just wrote this song called “Sins of the Father” about what Lyle and Erik [Menendez] went through. I wrote it in the first person, as if I were Lyle, to help people understand the underlying causes. When I think of people who went through things like that, a lot of them couldn’t have put it into words, so I did this on their behalf, hoping that it could positively impact people. 
• The common theme with a lot of the people who reach out to me is that they are addressing traumas that many others can relate to. Hurt people hurting people and healed people healing people. I thank them when I read their messages. The fact that they have the faith and courage to ask me such questions is amazing. That’s why I think it would be a mistake if I failed to respond to that kind of energy.

With this new District Attorney for the Menendez brothers, do you think that this could be a good thing moving forward? 

• I do. This could be an opportunity for someone new to review the case and, as Governor Newsom said, he is going to hold off until that occurs and allow that process to unfold. It seems to me that he feels that the incoming District Attorney will do it the correct way procedurally, which would end up on Newsom’s desk since he will have to sign off on a parole grant anyway. Governor Brown and Gavin Newsom were in charge when I was granted parole and released. My case went across their desks and I am here now. I know the Menendez brothers are very much capable of handling that experience and exhibiting the kind of transparent communication necessary for them to survive that process. They are quite impressive human beings and they are going to be stellar, and are stellar, in who they are all the time, every day.
• I feel like the way it’s going, we are heading to a positive outcome. In my opinion, it’s important that people put checks and balances in place to allow them to have plausible deniability in the event that something went awry. So, by going there, the DA could resentence… potentially they end up in front of the parole board, unless he resentences them to a crime that doesn’t carry a life sentence, which I doubt they would do. Either way it goes, they will go in front of the board, do a psych evaluation, and the Governor will either ignore it and the time frame will expire and they’ll go home, or he will sign it and they will go home that way. I believe we are looking at an inevitable positive outcome. 

I love how positive you are. You mentioned the Menendez brothers became like your own brothers on the inside. Do you ever reach out to them to help them remain positive?

• Oh no, you think I’m positive?! [The Menendez brothers] are two of the most supremely positive people you will ever meet. Ironically, at one time in my life when I was not as hopeful of a person, both of them believed that I would not be there for the rest of my life. They did not care what I said, they were adamant, ‘There is no way someone like you is staying here for the rest of your life.’ Then after I was granted parole, I would say, ‘Hey, you know, you aren’t supposed to be here forever too, right?’ The brothers said, ‘We don’t want to talk about that, we are focused on quality of life.’ 
• I understood it. I respected their cautious optimism. They had to be in that space. With so many setbacks and disappointments, you are no longer surprised or as impacted by anything anymore. Emotional apathy is a dangerous thing, but they were always so outwardly positive for everyone else. They believed in me more than anyone — before almost anyone. But if you turn that around, they didn’t want anything to do with it when it came to being optimistic for themselves. So I say, they don’t need any help with positivity; they just need more positive outcomes.

So what’s next for 2025? 

• I’m wrapping up my autobiography. Excited about that. I’m in discussions for a documentary. I completed my next album and am about to start another. I will be on tour. 2025 will be a big year for me. I want my book out, for my children and my larger family as a whole, to document my life and all of their roles in it. 2025 is a legacy year for me.

What would you say to others out there, that have a dream or a drive?

• I would tell them that the best way to live their dream is to get out of bed and make it happen. That alarm gotta go off and you gotta get up. A dream is going to be a dream. Do the work, figure it out, set a plan, be an early riser and task-oriented person. No one is going to give us anything. If there is anyone to give it to us, it’s because they can see the inevitability of the outcome, which means that you were probably going to pull it off anyway. God bless them; we need those people to give us a leg up, but no one is going to help a person who isn’t already demonstrating that they’re going to run with it.
• I am a supremely supported person, but what I do know is that the reason why is because I am prepared to be supported. I tell everyone, ‘Marry the work.’ Don’t get caught up in how people perceive it, just focus on the work. If love and positivity is in the work, God is going to be found there. If you stop doing the work, you’re going to look around and, when you go back to the work, you will be so far behind it can actually kill your dream. So… focus on the work. It’s hard to do something, but it’s even more difficult to do nothing. It’s hard to do NOTHING, so just get up and go get it! Nothing in life is easy, so choose your difficulty. You get up and get cracking.

Stream ‘A Sin In Heaven’ album:

Cover photography by Darryl Woods

Links: Facebook | X | Instagram

Share this article

or