Foxy Brown To Be Released From Prison Friday, Manager Says; Reality Show, New LP In The Works

Foxy Brown To Be Released From Prison Friday, Manager Says; Reality Show, New LP In The Works


When Foxy Brown's fans have talked about "Gotta get you home" over the past several months, they haven't been paying homage to her decade-plus-old song. They meant they would like to see the Brooklyn MC out of the confines of Riker's Island, where she has been serving out a year sentence for parole violation since August of last year. But according to her manager, Chaz Williams, Brown is due to be released from jail on Friday.

"She did every single minute of her bid in jail and she did it under the most severe conditions," Williams said, according to Billboard.com. "They had her on continuous lockdown just because she is a celebrity. They were trying to break her spirit." (Stephen Morello, deputy commissioner of public information for the city's correction department, told the site that Foxy was placed in protective custody per her request, noting that some inmates request that status "because their prominence or other circumstances might make them targets").

The self-proclaimed "Bad Girl" has been relatively quiet since a prison fracas that got her sent to solitary confinement in October; she was moved out of solitary the following month. This past January, Foxy filed for early release to seek better treatment for her sensorineural hearing loss, which she suffered in 2006 right in the middle of making a comeback on Jay-Z's Roc-A-Fella Records.

"I ask you to please take into consideration that my health is in jeopardy," Brown reportedly wrote in a handwritten letter that was submitted as part of an appeal to New York State Supreme Court. "Yes, I've made some bad choices and stupid mistakes," she continued in the four-page letter. "But please understand that sitting in a prison with murderers and criminals is not rehabilitating or what I need to deal with my inner issues. ... Up until now, you've only heard about Foxy Brown the artist. I'd like to show you Inga Marchand the beautiful person that my mom raised me to be. Jail has shaken me to my core, and my time away has impacted me greatly."

Williams explained to MTV News that Brown wanted to see a hearing specialist in California.

"Her hearing implants need to be programmed a certain way," he said in January. "They can't be removed and sent in for repair without a serious surgery. So she would have to go to a doctor in California. And while people incarcerated don't necessarily get the doctor of their choice, they don't perform that type of implant within the prison system."

Also in January, a track named "Star Cry," leaked to the Internet where Foxy addressed her controversy the past few years and how she is portrayed in the media.

"How can y'all judge my life, like I ain't have a struggle?" she vented. "Sometimes I feel like I live inside a f---ing bubble/ I work hard for mine, baby, I'm a thoroughbred/ And I don't care what channel 5 and the haters said."

Her next album, Brooklyn's Don Diva, is slated to drop May 13, and she is reportedly in talks with television networks about a reality show as well. There has been no definitive word on the fate of Black Roses, the LP that she worked on while at her first recording home, Def Jam. The project was to feature such notables as her dear friend Luther Vandross and one time inseparable confidant/ rhyme accomplice Jay-Z.

"Jay wants to jump on every record," Foxy told MTV News in 2005. "I'll come in the studio and I'll hear a verse [already recorded], like, 'Where did that come from?' But I love that. Jay is in a class by himself and doesn't easily get on people's records. For him to want to be such a part of my music means I'm doing a great job. There's definitely a 'Bonnie and Clyde' [part] four, five and six on my album.

"It's coming along just as I've imagined it," Jay divulged at the time. "We're going through it, we're having our clashes, it's all perfect. The music is coming out amazing, though."

Several tracks from the set have leaked over the years, however, surfacing on mixtapes. In August of last year, right before she went to prison, it was announced that Brown had officially left Def Jam and brokered an independent deal on Koch Records.