Tay-K made his first album in nearly a decade down a prison phone line, and it is out now

Tay-K has put out a full album from a Texas prison cell. #MonstersUnderMyBed, 16 tracks long, arrived on streaming services on Friday, US time, his first album since the #SantanaWorld mixtape and its reissue in 2017.

The rapper, born Taymor McIntyre and now 26, cannot walk into a studio. Instead the record was pieced together over the phone with producers John Cunningham and Warpstr, who sent him beats he rapped over on the spot. “Warpstr would send me beats, and I would just hop directly on them,” he said in a phone interview published this week.

What is on it?

The album runs 16 tracks, from “Princess” and “Games of War” through “Letter2Kayla”, “Faster Than A Missile” and “Heaven”, and closes with the bonus track “Everywhere I Go”. Atlanta rapper 1900Rugrat appears on “Gangstalicious” and singer renforshort on “Galapagos”.

It was trailed for months. “Punch U Down”, “Everywhere I Go” and “Erupt” came out as singles across 2026, and the lead track “F**K U”, which he co-produced, landed with the album announcement on 5 November. In a statement released with the announcement, Tay-K framed the album as a way to take back his artistic voice from a justice system he believes twisted it. Days before that, he appeared on the outro of Dominic Fike’s album How to Quit Smoking.

Early reviews have been split, with some praising the range and others finding too many songs rough and unfinished.

Why is he in prison?

Tay-K is serving two sentences for two deaths.

In 2019 a Tarrant County jury sentenced him to 55 years over a 2016 home invasion in Mansfield, Texas, in which Ethan Walker was shot dead. While awaiting trial in that case in 2017, he cut his ankle monitor and ran. During those weeks on the run, photographer Mark Anthony Saldivar was shot dead in a San Antonio restaurant car park after being robbed of his camera gear.

In April 2025 a Bexar County jury found Tay-K guilty of Saldivar’s murder and sentenced him to 80 years. Prosecutors had pursued capital murder, which would have meant a mandatory life sentence; the jury chose murder.

Why does it matter?

“The Race”, released in 2017 while he was a fugitive and built around being on the run, became a viral hit and one of the most argued-over songs of its era: a hit by a teenager wanted by police.

The new album brings that argument straight back. Tay-K says prison has given him “so much time to think”. Two young men are dead, and their families have lived with those losses for close to a decade; every stream of a record like this lands against that fact.

For Australian listeners it is available now on all major streaming platforms. There are no live dates and no prospect of any.

Can he get out?

Not soon. His 80-year sentence is the longer of the two, and under Texas rules for murder he faces decades behind bars before parole can even be considered.