Max B and the Plight of the Post-Prison Rapper
The New York icon is free. Let’s let him figure out what’s next on his own time.
When Max B was first sentenced to 75 years in prison on June 4, 2009, I was still in high school. Last week, after having that sentence trimmed down to 16 years thanks to most of the original charges around his alleged role in an armed robbery that left a man dead being dropped, he walked out of Northern State Prison in Newark, New Jersey a free man. Biggaveli was truly larger than life at the peak of his fame, a street-rap icon with dozens of mixtapes whose melodies and fuck-it-all charm laid the blueprint for a generation of rap stars. Across the 2000s, he went from Dipset affiliate to Jim Jones antagonist to French Montana tag-team partner. To say he was missed would be an understatement—fans and fellow artists have been chanting “Free Max B” ever since he was first locked up. Kanye West even featured a prison voicemail from Max on his last great album, 2016’s The Life of Pablo. They didn’t call him The Wave for nothing.
Post-prison notoriety for rappers has evolved from dropping the obligatory First Day Out freestyle to making the rounds on every podcast couch, YouTube channel, and TikTok fashion or music page that draws ears and eyes. So there was Max, doing a fit check with an influencer at a Jets game before he could even stop at the jeweler. To his credit, though, his comeback also involves another, more old-fashioned strategy: appearing at clubs throughout the Northeast, culminating in two sold-out Brooklyn homecoming shows set to happen next January. But after seeing a clip of him in the club looking bewildered as someone yelled in his ear, I couldn’t help but wonder how it felt to be that perceived, that outside, after being locked away from the world at large for so long. Sixteen years is a while for anyone to be gone, but it might as well be three lifetimes in rap.
Max is playing it cool, but pressure is coming in from all sides. We couldn’t go a day without seeing the “Max B should work with…” tweets and speculation about what kind of music he’d drop and when. I’d bet money on GQ, The New York Times, or some other big publication gearing up a triumphant profile, with the (probably white) journalist shadowing Max as we speak. Younger audiences who weren’t around for his prolific era will wonder what the big deal is; older audiences will be waiting for whatever new music they can hear. I’ve been running back Wave Pack and Coke Wave as much as the next guy, but I wanna take the time to remind everyone to chill and let the man’s return unfold on his terms.
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