Greedo has been released on parole from the Texas prison where he had been held since 2018, when he received a 20-year sentence for drug and gun possession. After a successful parole hearing in late June, Greedo spent the past several weeks completing a program to earn his freedom. He put out a mixtape celebrating his release, Free 03, on Tuesday, January 10.
Police charged Greedo with drug and gun possession in 2018, after searching a car, on a dubious pretext, in which he had been traveling, as The Washington Post reported in 2020. Greedo was convicted of possessing more than 400 grams of methamphetamine, and of unlawful possession of a firearm by a felon. “Never thought I’d have to retire the year I blew up,” Greedo tweeted of his sentencing in 2018, shortly after the release of The Wolf of Grape Street. Since then, he has remained pivotal to Los Angeles rap through a string of records with artists including Kenny Beats and Travis Barker.
After testing positive for COVID-19 in prison in 2020, Greedo told The Washington Post, “For the first time, people are really seeing that racism is for real. The mistreatment over racism and what the police have always done is finally being exposed. But people don’t see what the police do to people’s lives in prisons. Or the court system that has completely stopped. They’ve used [the pandemic] as yet another way to discipline us.”
Mere days before his release, Greedo shared his new Free 03 project, produced by Mike Free. At the time, word was fresh that Greedo would be released on parole this week, with writer Jeff Weiss noting on Twitter that Greedo’s “five-year- nightmare” was soon “finally coming to an end.”
The 14-track Free 03 project included features from KenTheMan, OHGEESY, BlueBucksClan, and the late Drakeo the Ruler.
Despite beginning his sentence in 2018, Greedo’s presence has remained consistent by way of a string of projects being shared to streaming services, including the 2019 Kenny Beats collab album Netflix and Deal and an EP with blink-182’s Travis Barker that same year.
Speaking with Jessica McKinney for Complex in 2019, Greedo detailed how his situation had inspired him to “be more creative” while prepping a vault of material.
“When I come out, I’m gonna be talking about more glamorous things,” he said at the time when looking ahead to how his creative process might change in the future. “When I get out, I’m gonna write more and take more time. The release process won’t be the same; I won’t flood the industry. It’ll be more precise.”
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