East Bay rap icon, hyphy pioneer Keak da Sneak comes home from prison

Keak da Sneak, the Oakland rap icon who made “hyphy” a household name in the Bay Area, was released from prison this week after serving five months for a gun-possession charge in Amador County, according to an Instagram post and subsequent interview with the artist.

Keak, 41, whose real name is Charles Kente Williams, posted Tuesday: “FRESH OUT! They opened up the gates for a KING.”

“I’m back out at home with my wife, being around my kids and my family with a different mindset,” Williams told the website HipHopDX. “I had a lot of time to think! I’m ready to expand this bag and I’m ready to get the therapy I need so I can be back walking again. I’m just so thankful that God watching over me.”

Williams’ incarceration, which began in April, stirred controversy in part because his attorneys fought to have him serve his sentence on house arrest because he was reliant on a wheelchair after being shot multiple times in August 2017 outside a Richmond gas station.

The shooting occurred after a March 2017 arrest in Amador County when police stopped his car and conducted a probation search based on a prior gun charge, according to KQED. Prosecutors stated that a gun found in the car was stolen in Vallejo. Williams said he did not know the weapon was stolen.

Williams has said that he bought the gun, despite being barred from doing so because of his criminal history, to protect himself after being shot multiple times in January 2017 in an attack after a show in Tracy. He eventually pleaded no contest to one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm, and was initially issued a 16-month prison sentence.

Williams gained fame in the mid-1990s as a member of the Oakland rap group 3X Krazy. As a solo artist, Williams was responsible for several major hits out of the Bay Area, including the 2006 hit single “Tell Me When to Go,” alongside Vallejo rapper E-40, and the song “Super Hyphy,” in which Williams takes credit for coining the term “hyphy.”

Staff writers Nate Gartrell and Angela Ruggiero contributed to this report.

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