Territorial’s 8Bizz is finally FREER 🥳
By BL Shirelle
Territorial emcee Jose “8Bizz” Talamentas finally home after serving 13 years in prison!
I got a chance to have a sit down with the Territorial emcee Jose “8Bizz” Talamantes; who was recently released from prison after serving 13 years in the Colorado Dept. of Corrections. Here’s what he’s been up to in light of his newfound freedom, his plans for the future, and the experience of recording TLAXIHUIQUI.
BL: Welcome home Bizz! I feel like I’ve known you forever - Fury has done a great job creating this Marvel-like universe because I really feel like I’m familiar with your character already!
8Bizz: Same! Thank you so much. I’ve been a far away fan of yours as well. I’m really glad to finally have met you and congratulations on all your success thus far!
BL: Thanks! So how have you been? How has your newfound freedom been treating you?
8Bizz: I couldn’t be more blessed and supported, man. Between my wife and children I’ve been completely surrounded by love. Right now, I’m trying to make peace with the time lost and move forward. Last night, matter of fact, my oldest daughter, she's like, “Dad, you need to stop apologizing. I forgive you. I love you. Let's just move on from that.” I just missed out on so much and it's been an emotional wreck for me these last few days. I’m really happy though at the same time.
BL: Yeah, that's normal. Embrace that pain. So that way, it'll always be a deterrent and keep you out. At the same time, HEAL. Sometimes people tiptoe around their trauma like they gotta uphold it or protect it. Naw - go through it and heal, but it is good to feel it, so you’ll always remember it.
8Bizz: And that's exactly how I used to be. I used to just push this shit down.
BL: How did you spend your first week out?
8Bizz: The funny thing is, my second day out my wife thought it was a good idea to go and take me to Costco because they were gonna have a barbecue for me. Oh my god. That was horrible. A horrible decision. I was literally freaking out. (Laughs)
BL: Too much?
8Bizz: It’s moving way too fast and just the rudeness out here.
BL: Yeah, I freaked out at the self checkout my first time using it.
8Bizz: Hey, what's funny about that self checkout thing, I don't know why my daughters want to put me on blast all the time and think it's funny for me to do shit. They’re like “Go ahead and go to that self checkout.” So I go over there and they're laughing their ass off. I'm trying to put the money in places it don't go and people are just looking at me. Yeah, I felt that whole shit. And then all the different choices. I'm like, “I want this. I want this. I want this. I GOTTA get this.” It's bittersweet because when I came out, one of my favorite cousins had passed away so I had to attend a funeral right away too. So yeah, it's been an emotional week. I don't have an ID yet and I need it for work. And I moved way out the hood. So I'm in the suburbs and it's like 45 minutes just to walk to a bus. So I have to get my drivers license ASAP.
BL: I'm really happy for you. Congratulations on the move! I'm sorry to hear about your loss. Are you looking for employment or do you already have a job?
8Bizz: I got one at a recycling plant. So I'll be doing a lot of labor I guess. One of my friends set me up with it. That was another thing about being locked up - I was able to decipher friends from homies. I only got a couple of real friends. I mean, so that was really cool too. This time actually did me pretty good. I came out a better person in the end and for my family to recognize that and see that and tell me just makes me feel so much so much better about myself and about life.
BL: I'm glad you said that because in the activist industry sometimes, the narrative is that prison is just all bad and everything about it is bad, but it all depends on you and which demographic you're coming from - for some people, prison saved their lives. I think if we want to be genuine with these conversations we can acknowledge that; while also understanding the criminal justice system in place is shitty.
8Bizz: I could honestly say it saved my life. I was really going down a dark path. Part of the reason why I moved out here is they were afraid for me to go back to Denver. They're like you don't need to be out here. It's changed out here. It's not the same.
BL: So, tell me about the music! Have you still been writing? Have you still been creating?
8Bizz: Yeah absolutely! I came home and my wife got me a little setup. I don't have everything for the studio but I have a little condenser mic and everything.
BL: She’s absolutely amazing. Shout out to her.
8Bizz: Yeah, she wants to do some sort of marriage podcast type deal with me too. So I got a lot in the works that I want to do. I want to continue with my music. My biggest thing is I want to also start a nonprofit. I want to open up a boxing gym and do some kind of gang prevention. That's my biggest passion. When I went to my cousin's funeral I rode through the old neighborhood and just… WOW. I was just tripped out. It was like a scene from Dawn of the Dead. No lie. I was like, “What the hell?” It's sad to see all these young kids. They're just smoked out on the blues and all that other crap that's going on. I'm like, wow, they need some help. I mean, ABSOLUTELY. So any way I could be any kind of positive influence, any kind of light in their life, I’m willing. Boxing is a great outlet to get your frustration out and I really want to do something with that.
BL: Let's talk a little bit about your brand and music. Who inspires you? When did you first start rapping?
8Bizz: Oh my goodness. I would say it was a talent show me and my brother did. That was the first time we hit a little stage. We didn't even go to the school, it was crazy. It was my little sister's school and she had asked if we would go perform with her. There was a song by Da Brat and Kris Kross that she loved. She was supposed to be doing Da Brat’s verse and we were gonna do Kriss Kross and at the last minute she got scared and pulled out. So me and my brother still continued on and did it and the response we got from all the kids was so thunderous, we were like, “WHOA, hey, let's do this!” We went back and got a karaoke machine. We started recording and it was so garbage! We needed to start learning how to write so we studied the game. I would say my biggest inspirations are DMX, Tech 9ine… I like a lot of Christian rap as well so eventually I want to venture that way. I just got so much that I gotta get off my chest and off my mind that a lot of people journal. I don't journal, I write music and I try to tell my wife that because she's a big Christian. I'm a Christian as well. I really don't like to say Christian because, you know, I don't like the religion aspect of it. I'm a man of faith. But she's like, “Well, I thought you were gonna do Christian hip hop??” And I'm like, “Baby listen, In my heart that's really what I want to do, but there's so much going on in the world that I just gotta get it out and a lot of stuff I do, a lot of Christians will frown upon it, but this is my mind on paper.
I grew up all mixed up because I lived with my auntie and uncle for a little bit and we would go to the Catholic church. I was baptized Catholic. So I'd go to Catholic service and then I ended up moving with my grandparents and they’re Jehovah Witnesses. So one day I remember vividly going to the Kingdom Hall and sitting there and I'm looking around. I was like, “Hey, where's all the pretty windows and statues?” Oh, my grandpa got so mad at me! Years later I ended up almost getting married to some girl out here in Pueblo, Colorado, and she was a Christian and she took me to church. It was this guy who kept doing these walks kind of circling me and eventually he told me, “I think you’re in the wrong place,” I was like, “What? Wow.” I turned back and looked at the girl I was with and she's crying. So I start flipping out! Once I got outside, I started crying like… damn. I'm not accepted anywhere. That's how I felt. Like I never was accepted, so I vowed to never go to church, but thankfully I got saved and baptized in prison. It was a trip because after I got saved I didn't know what to do with my music. The gangsta rap that I used to do, I can no longer do. I'm like, “This is crazy. What am I supposed to do?” This is what I love. This is my passion. This is how I cope with life. Then one day they had this channel called The Juice channel. And it was a bunch of Christian rappers and that's when I first saw Lecrae. It hit me like the most obvious sign from God I could’ve gotten. It blew my mind to tell you the truth. I felt like God was saying, “Look, I blessed you with this talent. Don't give up. You don't have to go back to doing that type of music, but still don't give up. And so yeah, I still write genuinely. I really don't cuss too much in my raps anymore and I stay away from all the gang shit, but I’m able to still communicate from my personal experiences.
(L-R) Tenneson, Kevin Woodley, Frankie Domenico & 8Bizz
BL: So being an ex-gang member, also a man of faith; how did you reconcile those parts of your identity while recording with Territorial? Because if I could tell a person one thing about Territorial it would be - it's literally all different kinds of people. You had White people, you had Native Americans, you had Spanish, you had gay folks, murderers, sex offenders, etc… and everyone was able to unite for a collective purpose which you usually don’t see in a male prison. How were you able to have the open mindedness to even participate in the project?
8Bizz: Oh, that's easy, one word sums it up. LOVE. You gotta have love for everybody. Like, I don't judge nobody. It's all love, but I tell you what, me and Tenneson… man Tenneson used to get on my damn nerves. (Laughs)
I almost didn't even get on the joint. Because during practice and everything, I needed a metronome. He wanted me to rap to guitar riffs. And I'm like, I've never done this before. This is a blues song. There's no beat so every time it goes I can't catch it. So Tenneson tells me: “Well, maybe this ain’t for you.” Right after he made that comment, all the people who asked me to be on their songs started getting other people to collaborate with instead of me. So I was like, “Okay, that's fine. All right, cool.” Closed my folder and took off. Then comes the day that Fury comes down. I went to work. I was working in the infirmary at that time. So I'm at work and when I get off work, Tenneson’s pissed off. He's like, “At least you could go down there and meet Fury and say what's up.” Like he wasn’t the same one who kicked me out of the group, but I was like, “You know what, we've been corresponding, I can actually go down there and do that.” So I go down there and we started talking about what happened and Fury’s like, “Oh you just need a metronome? That’s all? That’s no problem, let’s do it.” Me & Mike man, we didn't see eye to eye a few times, but he's like that with everybody. I still love him.
8Bizz and Fury, 2018 at Territorial Correctional Facility. Photo: Fury Young
BL: Did you get a chance to listen to the album while you was down?
8Bizz: I did. Um, I actually had it at a facility that I was at after Territorial. It was a pretty powerful experience that I was very, very honored to be part of. When I wrote my verse to “Mama’s Cryin’,” I actually kept in mind that I have two cousins that were killed by cops. So it was very emotional for me to write that and put myself in their shoes. I was writing it from their point of view. And I love that intro with Lefty and Archi. I would turn that shit up in the mornings. Everybody in the dorm be like, “What the fuck are you listening to?”
Yeah, it was cool, man. I really, really enjoyed it. Like you said it was a lot of different people that I wouldn't normally talk to and for all of us to come together for that project, it actually created a bond. You know Frankie Domenico - the little gay dude?
BL: Yeah, I actually did an interview with him for the Territorial recording’s five year anniversary.
8Bizz: Well, he’s really flamboyant. We ended up on another yard together. I'm walking through education one day and he's walking by. He didn't see me and I was like, “Yooooo Domenico what’s up?” Everybody's looking at me like “Dude, what are you doing?” I go right over there and give him a hug like, “What's up, man? You good?” Everybody's like, “What the fuck?” That project broke a lot of barriers for sure…
Listen To “Mama’s Cryin’” by Territorial ft. Kevin Woodley, 8Bizz & Simply Naomi