Beanie Sigel Discusses Prison, Jay-Z

In a few weeks, rapper Beanie Sigel will begin a two-year prison sentence for failure to pay his taxes. Talking to XXL, Beanie discussed his state of mind heading back into jail and how he plans on changing his life once he's released in 2014.

"I’m done [with prison]. It’s over!" he said. "In that environment, this outside world…you gotta hang all that up. When I go in there, I won’t be Beanie Sigel. I’ll be 57613-066. That’s who I’ll be. I won’t be Beanie Sigel. I’m not gonna sit in my cell and write rhymes everyday. That’s a real thing inside. There’s people inside who ain’t ever coming out of those buildings. I would talk to them and do my best to be a window for some of ’em who are never gonna make it outta there. We all have the same commissary, we all have the same amount of money on our books, we all gonna eat the same food and nobody cell gonna look different. I’m gonna be a number like everybody else."

He also downplayed any chance of a reconciliation with Jay-Z; but revealed that he holds no animosity towards his former mentor.

"There’s no need for that conversation anymore [with Jay-Z]...it’s been too long," he said. "That’s all I ever wanted. Jay-Z don’t owe me a dime. What me and Jay had or what I thought we had was a brothership that was beyond music and business. A brothership that I trusted and that I’d put my life in harm’s way for ‘this thing of ours, this La Familia.’ I thought it was bigger than music, I thought it was bigger than business, but as I got older and thought about it…that’s all it was, it was business. So, the conversation is for what? I kind of understand…Jay was growing, he’s in a different space, he was rubbing shoulders with different people and when you get around certain people and you get into a certain bracket, sometimes you got to disassociate yourselves with the hoodlums...at one point, I thought this rap sh*t ruined me. I got in more trouble being Beanie Sigel than when I was just Mac."