Behind Bars, Rapper Readies Next Tracks

Two years into a stay in New Haven Correctional Center on Whalley Avenue awaiting a murder trial, rapper Yung Gap is filling notebooks with new music — informed by the wait.

The 23-year-old Gap (a.k.a. Zaekwon McDaniel) appeared on the local hip hop scene in 2017, in between time behind bars. He first released ​“Ball Drop,” ​“Bid Conversations” parts 1 and 2, and ​“Left MYI (Meek Mill cover).” The videos that followed — ​“Trip To The Bank,” ​“960 Story,” ​“Hard Times” and ​“Feds Watching,” featuring Albee Al, released in 2017 and 2018, have each gotten hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube apiece.

Gap has had an interest in music since he was a child, watching his father. ​“My dad was into music heavy. I used to see him rapping. I was always into music as a young’un. I had freestyles out when I was six, seven years old.” Gap said.

His music tells the story of his life, which has been riddled with hardships and run-ins with the law. When he was 15, he spent several months at Manson Youth Institute (MYI), a high-security juvenile detention center in Cheshire, then returned at 16 on a first-degree robbery charge for three years, during which time he earned his GED.

When he got out of Manson, he recorded his videos, some of which described gang life — accurately enough that Waterbury police in early 2018 cited the videos as describing not a fictional story, but real-life crimes committed by Yung Gap and fellow members of the 960 Gang. The police arrested and charged 960 members with several drug- and gun-related crimes. Yung Gap was charged with taking part in a daytime shootout outside a courthouse, but was released after surveillance video showed he wasn’t there.

Then he was arrested in 2018 for allegedly participating in a double homicide on Nov. 22, 2017. That’s the charge that has him in New Haven Correctional Center.

He’s scheduled to appear next in court on April 8. He faces two felony murder charges and two felony conspiracy to commit murder charges in connection with the 2017 murder; he has pleaded not guilty. He also faces, and has pleaded guilty to, numerous other felony and misdemeanor charges of robbery, larcey, conspiracy, police interference, and risk of injury to a minor.

Fodder For Music

As a young man in and out of the criminal justice system, Gap grew up fast. ​“I had to figure it out, but I didn’t get the proper guidance I needed,” he said. ​“I had a kid and stuff, so I was trying to learn how to be a man from Manson Youth.”

The experience inspired Gap to write ​“Left MYI,” which uses Meek Mill’s beat from ​“Left Hollywood.” In ​“Left MYI,” Gap tells his story of being locked up, and the emotional and physical hardships that came with it. He also talks about the effects that prison has had on his daughter. ​“I done did so many bids my daughter thinks that’s where I live,” he raps. ​“I’m gonna change her life, show her rags to riches … sat me down for 3 years, but I ain’t never giving up.”

“My inspiration for my music is my life,” Gap said. ​“All the pain, from 23, I done been through a lot. I had a lot of lonely nights in the cell. I had to stand up and man up. I hear beats, and they be crying to me, and my heart be crying, and I just put it on the pad when I started delivering it.”

A listener can follow Gap’s life through his songs, chronologically, starting with ​“Left MYI.” He recounts feeling betrayed by the criminal justice system after being assigned him a public defender. His song ​“Bid Conversations 2” opens with the recorded message from the prison telephone system Securus that inmate family members hear when they receive a phone call from prison. Back behind bars, Gap is still writing his story.

“I’ll fill a whole composition book and throw it out, because I know I’ll write some more. I’m a machine with it. I’m working on projects from here. I still got shit going on. I ain’t gonna let it stop me. I’m to the moon with it,” Gap said.

Prison View

In his experience, Gap said, he has observed that prisons fail to rehabilitate inmates.

“It’s fucked up, man,” Gap said. ​“Like right now what I’m going through, they don’t do any rehabilitation. We ain’t got no programs. We don’t go to church. We’re just sitting around. They ain’t putting anything in place for us to be better. If someone goes home, what are they gonna do? They ain’t learn shit in jail. You can’t touch your girlfriend. You can’t see your family. This ain’t life.”

Gap argued that allowing inmates more time to spend with their loved ones might make time in jail more restorative. ​“I know from my experience if I was able to earn a day with my kids, some in-person or with my shorty — a little something that humanizes the situation — that would be good for people. We gonna do our time, but ain’t really nothing you earning. You ain’t got no goals. You got nothing in here to look forward to, some different programs, basketball, intramural.”

Gap is in the same correctional facility where Robby Talbot, a 30-year-old man suffering from mental and physical health issues, was killed after officers tackled him to the floor for not complying while in the shower. He said he’s being treated better in New Haven, however, compared to other prisons like Northern Correctional Institution in Somers.

“Here they’re a little better,” he said. ​“They’re just Robocops. Most of the time the lieutenants are straight with us.”

Gap had a message for inmates going through the same struggles he is now: ​“Stay solid. Jails are gonna make some people, they gonna break some people. You gotta stand firm. Don’t let anybody sway. Keep your head up. Stay strong, man. Shit ain’t gonna go the way you want it to go. Stay humble. Stay down. Wait on them results. That the only way you gonna make it through.”

Jake Dressler is a New Haven native and law student focusing on criminal law in Connecticut. He edits Striped Mag, where a version of this interview first appeared.