Tay-K’s Prison Album Raises Big Questions About Money & Monsters

Tay-K has announced a new jailhouse album.

The project was assembled through prison phone collaborations in Texas in a last ditch effort to reclaim control of his artistic expression.

The rapper’s #MonstersUnderMyBed is scheduled for release Nov. 13 following three years of development with producers John Cunningham and Warpstr. Its announcement accompanied the single “F**K U,” which explores his childhood and subsequent incarceration.

The recording process begs the question: How much control does an incarcerated artist have over music completed by collaborators outside prison?

Tory Lanez has a potential blueprint for Tay-K’s recording process through his Prison Tapes series, which launched in July 2024. Lanez said he and his engineer developed a way to record vocals over a jail telephone while preserving what he described as professional sound quality after repeated attempts. He transformed telephone recordings into commercially released songs.

Tay-K’s announcement describes sustained telephone collaboration but does not explain how vocals were captured or how the recordings were edited

Ultimately Tay-K hopes the project will “reclaim [his] right to artistic expression that was manipulated by the justice system.”

That statement places artistic agency at the center of the rollout. Establishing how that agency worked would require details about who selected takes, approved production changes and authorized the final versions. The announcement describes the collaboration without documenting those decisions.

The new single follows “PUNCH YOU DOWN,” “Everywhere I Go” and “Erupt.” Tay-K managed to produce “F**K U” with Cunningham and Warpstr.

His recent activity also includes an appearance on “SPOTLIGHT / INNER CHILD,” the closing track on Dominic Fike’s How to Quit Smoking. According to the supplied report, that contribution similarly addresses childhood experiences.

Tay-K received an 80-year sentence in April 2025 following his murder conviction in the death of Mark Anthony Saldivar.

A judge ordered that punishment to run concurrently with his earlier 55-year sentence.