‘Psycho Active’: the X-Raided album that led to a murder prison sentence

Hip-hop is studded with crazy lore that consistently tests the limits of law and order. Suge Knight allegedly hung Vanilla Ice over a balcony to get him to sign over publishing rights for “Ice Ice Baby”; Ol’ Dirty Bastard conducted press interviews for his recently released album N*gga Please when on the run; and over twenty years later, we still don’t know who actually killed Tupac Shakur.

And yet without a doubt the most insane story of the genre – of which there is good competition – is that of American rapper X-Raided and his 1992 debut album, Psycho Active.

A young rapper from Sacramento, California, X-Raided joined the Garden Blocc Crips as a teenager, a predominantly African-American alliance of street gangs based around Southern California.

Considered one of the largest and most violent gang collectives across the country, the Garden Blocc Crips is notable for its long-standing rivalry with the Bloods. But at the time of X-Raided’s involvement, the alliance was warring with Meadowview Bloods. And yet the rapper was busy: he was also, at this point in 1992, working his debut album, Psycho Alive.

The album discussed graphic and gritty realities of gang life and violence. Written almost entirely by X-Raided, the album was predominantly produced by Brotha Lynch Hung, also from Sacramento, who also wrote album tracks “Tha Murder (Intro)” and “That’s How My Trigga Went”.

And yet just mere days before the release of Psycho Alive, X-Raided was arrested for the murder of Patricia Harris, the mother of two Meadowview Bloods members in a home invasion. Police allege that the rapper – alongside four other Crips members – killed the two sons in retaliation for their killing of two Crips.

The actual murder weapon was never found. But during the trial, prosecutors played Pyscho Active for the jury, and used the violent lyrics of the album as evidence of his crime, citing that the album reflected the rapper’s gang loyalty, his overall mindset, and that the murder was actually pre-meditated.

From 1993 to 1996, X-Raided was convicted of first degree murder and gang related homicide: in 1996, he was sentenced to 31 years in prison. His time in prison is similarly noteworthy. The rapper recorded his second album, Xorcist, over the phone while awaiting trial; his third album, Unforgiven, was recorded on a recorder that was smuggled in by a security guard. He was also stabbed seven times in 2010 for refusing to produce a rap album for other prisoners, in a separate gang.

Maintaining his innocence the entire time, X-Raided was eventually released in 2018 after serving 26 years. And how did he get parole? Through friends made in prison, the just as notorious – if perhaps, not even more so – brothers Lyle and Erik Menendez, famous for killing their parents in 1989, a story that continues to escalate in the international public imagination due to its major media attention. They testified that the rapper “has developed into a kind and patient person, rooted in integrity, and passionate about his ideas.”

X-Raided signed in 2022 with independent record label Strange Music, and has continued to make and release music since his release; albums California Dreamin, There Will Be a Storm, A Prayer in Hell, A Sin in Heaven, and this year’s A Prophecy in Purgatory. He has also, since release, collaborated on album Family Matters with Luni Coleone. An impressive work ethic and musical output, with an assumedly warier eye on the content of his lyrics.