Lil Wayne's Prison Job Revealed: Watching Over Suicidal Inmates

Lil Wayne makes his living as the bestselling rapper on the planet, but while serving his year-long jail sentence at New York's Rikers Island, Weezy has entirely new job: keeping watch over suicidal inmates. Antonia "Toya" Johnson, the mother of one of Wayne's children, tells Us Weekly, "Wayne has a job. They got him on suicide watch for other prisoners. He watches the crazy prisoners and makes sure they don't kill themselves." Finding himself in a 9-to-5, albeit in prison, Weezy shares a similar complaint with much of the working population. "He likes the job even though they don't pay him much," Toya says of the Young Money multimillionaire.

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Toya adds that Lil Wayne is adjusting well to prison life, and getting along with his fellow inmates. He's even managed to avoid getting a haircut. As Rolling Stone previously reported, in addition to suicide prevention tasks, the rapper is also a fledgling jailhouse blogger, writing responses to fan mail on his Weezy Thanx You blog from Rikers, where Lil Wayne is serving a year behind bars — or less with good behavior — after pleading guilty to weapons charges stemming from a 2007 arrest in New York City.

As for Toya's reality-TV costar Tameka "Tiny" Cottle's fiancee T.I., who just wrapped his own gun-related sentence at a halfway house outside Atlanta, the King rapper's role during his prison term was serving as a motivational speaker to his fellow inmates — a job he performed before heading off to jail, too.

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Related Stories:

• Lil Wayne Launches Prison Website "Weezy Thanx You"
• Lil Wayne Sentenced to a Year in Jail; Could Be Out in Eight Months

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Song Stories

“Dawned on Me”

Wilco | 2011

Jeff Tweety wrote "Dawned on Me" as a painfully honest portrayal of his own marriage. "I think the only real hope for any relationship, in terms of longevity, is to maintain the ability to fall in love with each other and not get too distracted when it's not too perfect," the Wilco lead singer acknowledged. "Me and my wife have been together for 20 years and I think it's pretty unrealistic to always be in love." The song was included on Wilco’s The Whole Love album, which was their first release on their own record label, dBpm.

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