White Cheddar: How Rapping Saved My Life m in Jail as a Child Support Prisoner
Attacked in my cell for snoring, I fought back the only way I could — by writing raw rap bars called “White Cheddar.” Here’s how turning jail trauma into poetry became my protection, my hustle, and my voice in the system. Yup, rapping saved my life.
6/25/20262 min read
I was finally asleep after the longest day of my life when a palm slammed across my mouth and a fist cracked the side of my head.
“What the fuck!”
Tito (my Latin King celly) jumped up and locked the guy in a bear hug. Spanish flying. The attacker - Juan — was pissed because I snored “like a dying pig.” He wanted sleep. He wanted me quiet. Permanently if necessary.
Tito saved my ass that night. Juan got moved to medical the next day. But the message was clear: in here, you’re either predator or prey. I had to find a way to be neither - or at least make myself too valuable to mess with.
The next morning I was still shaking when I heard some kid looping the same weak kindergarten bars over and over on the pod. Something in me snapped.
“SHUT THE F@$# UP!” I yelled. “Who taught you motherfuckers how to rhyme? Because it’s a crime!”
Dead silence. Then laughs. Then a challenge: “Alright cracker, let’s see what you got.”
I had fifteen minutes. I grabbed a pencil stub and the back of my legal papers and wrote sixteen raw bars about the trauma of getting arrested again - the knock, the cuffs, the shame. I called it “White Cheddar.”
When I stood on that table and spit it, the whole pod went quiet. Then they exploded. Heads nodding. Fists pounding tables. “White boy you got talent!” “You make a movie in my brain!” “Yo, you could make a whole TV series off that!”
That rap became my shiv. My protection. My hustle. Every night after lockdown I wrote new bars. Every morning a crowd formed outside my cell. I went from “fresh meat” and “cracker in a barrel” to a character — the guy who could paint pictures with words when the system tried to erase us.
Rapping didn’t just save my ass that week. It gave me a voice when the system wanted me silent. It turned pain into power. And years later, it’s still how I process, how I fight, how I turn this whole nightmare into something that might actually help somebody else.
That’s the heart of 13 Chains. Not just the horror stories - but the moments we reclaim our humanity anyway. The creativity that survives concrete and cuffs. The refusal to let them break our spirit completely.
If you’re in the middle of your own storm right now - whether it’s jail, arrears, court, or just the daily weight of this broken system — find your version of “White Cheddar.” Write it. Rap it. Paint it. Scream it into a voice note. Turn the trauma into testimony.
Because the system wins when we stay quiet and ashamed. It loses when we turn our stories into weapons of truth and art.
I went from getting attacked for snoring to having the whole pod respect the white boy with the pen. That’s power they can’t take.
Grab the full book if you want every raw chapter - including the ones that never made it to this blog. And if you’ve turned your own pain into something creative or useful, I want to hear about it in the comments.
We’re not just surviving anymore. We’re building. We’re exposing. We’re rewriting the ending.