Maino has had a lot of surprises in his life, but the Brooklyn rapper was visibly shocked during a recent interview when he got a surprise phone call from a former inmate he was incarcerated with.
The call went down on Angela Yee’sLip Service during her “Tell Us A Secret Segment,” where fans can anonymously phone in to the show to spill whatever secrets they want.
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During this week’s show, Maino got a call from someone who revealed himself to be “Sham”, an ex-prison inmate who he said was responsible for supplying Maino with a weapon while he was incarcerated back in the 1990s.
“The secret I’m gonna tell you is that I gave Maino the shank when he went to fight Bar over breakfast early in the morning,” the caller said before laughing hysterically.
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“Oh my God! Aye Sham, I know it’s your voice,” a stunned Maino replied as Angela Yee scolded him for revealing her caller’s identity. “Nah, it’s not anonymous ’cause he already said his name. This guy’s crazy. What’s up bro? How you feeling?”
“I can’t call it, baby. You know I love you, I had to let ’em know,” Sham replied enthusiastically.
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“Listen, we off that. We ain’t — this is my guy, though,” Maino added, cautious about his dirty laundry being aired on in public. “This is my guy, Big Sham Shadin. He talking old jail war stories.”
Yee attempted to get more details out of Sham by asking him why he handed Maino a shank in prison, but the call had already been disconnected.
“This is not the hotline for old Maino war stories,” the Brooklyn bruiser joked. “I didn’t know that that was gonna happen. That was crazy!”
Maino’s situation with Sham is far from the only time he experienced violence while incarcerated. The Bed-Stuy lyricist has been very open over the years about his time inside New York City’s Rikers Island, where he served out a 10-year sentence after allegedly attempting to kidnap a drug dealer.
In past interviews, he’s often talked about how disturbing his time in prison was, and in a 2017 sit-down with VladTV, called Rikers a “hell hole.”
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“I’ve been beat. I’ve been hurt, more than once,” he said when recalling his experience with the prison’s correctional officers. “We used to have this saying, we can deal with the inmates — but it’s the police that’s worse. ‘Cause they’ll hurt you.”
He continued: “It was really, really, rough back then. Phones were free, there was no gangs for dudes to hide in. You could have all your clothes from outside, jewelry…chains, rings, boots, coats, jackets, gold teeth.”
Vlad speculated there must have been plenty of fights over all of those possessions.
“Fights?” Maino interjected. “We’re talking multiple slashings a day. All the time, anybody will tell you. It was really rough so If they’re closing it down, its long overdue. It’s a hell hole. That’s an experience that’s never gonna leave me.”
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In a previous interview with Vlad from 2010, he spoke about the slashings he personally experienced, including the signature one to his face that left a permanent scar.
“I cut him first,” Maino said, who had gotten his face cut while he was sitting in a barber chair. “You know when you overestimate yourself and underestimate your opponent, you’re doomed for failure. When you just feel like, ‘I’m this hard, I’m this big, and this n-gga ain’t gonna do nothing, or he ain’t ready.’
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“When you feel that comfortable is usually when the tables are turned on you. This is one of the only times I let myself feel that way and I learned from that.”
