How Suge Knight Started a Podcast From Prison

Today, Breakbeat Media released the first episode of Collect Call With Suge Knight, a weekly podcast that Breakbeat Founder Dave Mays says will feature Knight holding phone conversations with him and other guests in the world of hip-hop and beyond. Death Row co-founder Suge Knight has long been one of rap’s most colorful, outspoken figures. And even while incarcerated at San Diego’s RJ Donovan Correctional Facility state prison, that apparently hasn’t changed. 

On the first episode, Knight called out artists Warren G and Akon commended women artists such as SZA and Cardi B, and suggested that Death Row Records was taken from him fraudulently. He also calls out lesser-known LA figures who have criticized him on various YouTube channels and podcasts. Mays says that future episodes will follow the first episode’s free-wheeling format, letting Suge speak his mind on whatever he wants via Breakbeat (a media platform where I’m working on an unrelated project).

“It’s the most raw, authentic thing you could hear. It’s uncut,” Mays tells Rolling Stone. “There’s not all this editing involved. There’s certain people that are going to listen to it, and they’re immediately going to know what he’s talking about. The [mindset for the] core audience is, ‘If you know you know. If you don’t know, you’ll figure it out.’”

Knight is currently serving a 28-year prison sentence for voluntary manslaughter after crashing his pickup truck into music industry vet Terry Carter and actor/filmmaker Cle “Bone” Sloan in 2015, killing Carter. Knight claimed he was acting in self-defense after being attacked by Sloan near the set of the Straight Outta Compton film. Knight is eligible for parole in 2034. 

Mays, founder of The Source magazine, has maintained a relationship with Knight for over 30 years. It was at Mays’ 1995 Source Awards that Knight issued his infamous “Come to Death Row” edict. Mays says that Collect Call will offer people a chance to see who Knight is beyond the public reputation of a crimson-clad, cigar-puffing menace.

“He’s definitely someone whose media portrayal has been narrow and centered around [being] this bullying, nefarious figure,” Mays says. “He hasn’t spoken about a lot of these things over the years. Obviously, he’s been in prison now for [eight years], but [before] that, he didn’t defend himself to a lot of the different allegations. It’s like everybody has a Suge Knight story. You see it everywhere, all over social media for years. But people haven’t heard from him. I think that a lot of people don’t really know what he’s like. He’s extremely intelligent, a very successful entrepreneur and business person.”

Mays says he reconnected with Knight last year when the former music mogul gave him a call and they “dabbled in” the idea of collaboration. But the idea for Collect Call was derived from Breakbeat CCO Brett Jeffries, who is also Mays’ fiance. “She was talking about him and was like, ‘I know you guys know each other and he really likes you, what do you think about doing a podcast?’ I was like, ‘You know what? That’s a great idea.’ So I reached out to him and we started talking about it.”

Mays says that Knight is able to have calls on a relatively frequent basis. “We talk regularly. Not necessarily every day, but several times a week,” Mays says. “He’s got great access to make calls. He has access to a tablet where he can receive messages, videos, and images. It’s been pretty easy to communicate with him.” Despite being incarcerated, Mays says that Knight is tapped into the cultural zeitgeist, noting that he “gets information pretty fast.” In the first episode, Knight commends newer artists such as Never Broke Again Young Boy, Cardi B, and Doja Cat, who didn’t reach national consciousness until after Knight was first incarcerated in 2015. 

Mays says Young Boy is someone they’d like to have on the show, along with people who Knight has a history with. “It’s not only going to be rappers and executives,” Mays contends. “We talked a little bit already about how hip hop is always used in the political process over the years to help elect this person or that person. We’re going to be paying attention to the political side of things a bit. We’re definitely going to talk about the music business, [so] he can share what he learned when he was in the music business at his height and how those things do or don’t apply to what’s going on today.”

Knight wants listeners to email him questions that he will address during the episodes. Mays says Collect Call is not only a space for Knight to answer questions and fire back at accusations, but for him to “contribute in a positive way to the culture and to the younger generation.” Mays says, “You definitely will hear him describing situations that he went through and how he handled them, and his learning experiences, which involve mistakes. Any successful entrepreneur [makes] mistakes to reach that level of success, but it’s [about] your ability to learn and move on from [them]. I think there’s a lot of that within the lessons of his experiences that comes through.”