Lil Wayne’s 2010 jail stint helped him better understand the impact he had on his fans. The prolific rapper reflected on his time behind bars during an appearance on Joel Madden’s Artist Friendly podcast. Weezy mentioned the enormous amount of fan letters he received in jail and how the outpouring of support truly showed him what his music meant to people.
“I was able to see that through letters when I was locked up,” he told Madden. “I got locked up at the height of my career. Those letters that came in and it was so—just by the amount, plain and simple. Me and the prison, we had to form a process to where you only could get—we’ll give you the mail on a Tuesday and we gotta give it back to your people or something because it would be a fire hazard in my cell. It was over 10,000 [letters] a day.”
Lil Wayne noted how his confinement created a focus on his fans that did not exist when he was a free man. He said the letters provided him with a more personal connection to his fans as opposed to a passing interaction in public.
“I’m sitting the cell, I ain’t got nowhere to go,” he said. “You’re not catching me walking to a stage or walking off a stage or walking in the mall … I can’t do nothing but sit here and read this letter and pay attention. And one thing about writing a letter, that’s one of the purest forms of showing whatever it is, your expression.”
Lil Wayne spent eight months in the Rikers Island jail after pleading guilty to a felony gun charge. He was released in November 2010. Weezy pleaded guilty to another gun charge in 2020, but former President Donald Trump pardoned the New Orleans native in 2021.