Eight years. Eight years is a long time for anything. A player who can survive eight years in the NBA is probably a solid role player, potentially even a player who had one or two all-star years before falling off. Eight collegiate years of studying & taking tests (many times) means someone has their doctorate, if they’re lucky of course. But TooFat Troub’s eight years were spent a little differently.
Jkairi Dallas served eight years and seven months locked up for a bad decision he made before he was even 20 years old. Teenage Jkairi was facing an amount of years that he couldn’t really process; an amount of years he didn’t want to process. And let’s be honest, growing up in Lawton at the time he did, consequences weren’t really something people thought about. The name Shady 580 didn't stick for no reason.
"Standing on business" put Jkairi Dallas in prison for almost a decade, causing him to miss a chunch of his and his kids' lives— one which hadn't even been born yet— but he’ll tell you himself that he needed it. When you come from a place like Lawton, Oklahoma, sometimes sitting down is the only thing that’ll get you on the right track, as backwards as it sounds.
"It took me to go sit down and have to view the world from a different point of view to be like, bro, that sh*t is not f*cking normal, bro. The sh*t I did then I wouldn't do now... It took me to sit down and grow up and realize that sh*t gonna get you time, that sh*t gonna get you this, n*ggas not gonna ride for you, b*tches not gonna ride for you, bro, being in prison is a whole different thing."
It was that change in mindset that put a battery in his back that still carries on with him to this day. It was that change in mindset that allowed TooFat Troub to come home from prison with one single focus— take music serious.
"I hope i don't ever be the n*gga that gotta go through the struggle, that know what it feels like to (think), 'f*ck i gotta grit and f*cking do my best or i'ma be-' I hope i dont ever be that n*gga, bro. And i hope that rap can do that for me."
Before going home to surprise his mom, the first thing Troub did on his release day was shoot a music video for a song he recorded while locked up. There was no doubt about it— he was going to bring everything to fruition no matter what.
