When it comes to who winds up an acquaintance, an ally or even a friend is saturated in circumstance, and when incarceration is added into the mix, the seemingly serendipitous bonds forged behind bars can become even stranger than fiction.

When Erik and Lyle Menendez reunited for the first time in over a decade, there was only one other person in that room, an unofficial third brother if you will, but let’s start at the beginning.

More than three decades before Young Thug was fighting against legislation that allowed the use of song lyrics as evidence, Sacramento MC, X-Raided was at the center of the very same issue, as his lyrics were used to convict him, along with four other members of The Garden Blocc Crips, with murder in 1992.

In 1996, Erik and Lyle Menendez were convicted and sentenced to life for murdering their parents in 1989, in a case that was highly controversial (as the brothers contended their lives were in danger) and a trial that gained more notoriety than anything America had seen since the trial of OJ Simpson.

In 2001, X-Raided and Lyle Menendez became fast friends and bonded in part over a game that is often used to analogize life itself.

“[Lyle is] very intelligent, arguably in that environment, the most intelligent person I met while I was in there,” X-Raided told Rock The Bells in an exclusive conversation on the eve of the release of his new album A Sin In Heaven. “Lyle had some advantages in terms of his ability to reach me to communicate with me, and one of them was his notoriety, but also the way he carried himself. He’s a man’s man if you get to know him. We played chess. He’s very good at that and it’s a way that he bonds,” he added.

It was over a game of chess in fact that Lyle called the MC - who was still recording albums from prison - out for hiding his own intelligence.

“I had MTV or something, come and interview me on the yard and they got all the cameras and stuff and Lyle watches that happen and I’m outside super Cripping and [later we’re playing some chess and] Lyle told me he thought I was full of shit,” the Strange Music MC remembered.

“He’s like ‘I think you’re full of shit.’ I’m like ‘what do you mean by that?’ He was like ‘man, you hang out and you do all this stuff but the lights are on [upstairs]. You can’t fool me man, you’re smart as hell. You know exactly what you’re doing,’ and I kinda laughed and, he became a mentor of sorts, over the course of years.”

Then in 2008, Lyle would write the first of two letters that would become significant in X-Raided’s life, as the “2400” rapper was transferred to Richard J. Donovan Correctional facility where Lyle’s brother Erik was serving his sentence.

“By the time I transferred to the facility where Erik was, Lyle knew that I was going there, so when I got there,‘Erik walked up to me and introduced himself with a letter from Lyle, and the letter said, ‘X-Raided is our little brother. I love him and you do too.’ It was a declarative statement, and Erik basically showed it to me and said ‘well, that’s that,’ and literally that’s been that ever since,” X-Raided recalled.

After a dozen years apart, Lyle would be transferred and that was when the proclamation of “well, that’s that,” was shown and proved.

“I was the only person allowed in the room when they finally reunited. It was the two of them and me,” noted X-Raided. “It was an interesting experience, kinda keeping people from coming in the room and things like that, but literally got to be the only person in the room when they finally reunited. They allowed them to be at the same institution together at RJ Donovan.”

When it came time for X-Raided to face the parole board, “Project Menendez” was in full effect and the results would start a ripple that is still helping with rehabilitation to this day.

“Erik went out of his way to make sure that my file was prepared, that my circumstance going to boards gonna be successful. I became what they would lovingly call ‘Project Menendez’ and they started fighting to make sure that stuff I wanted to do within the institution was gonna happen, being able to build out the recording studio in there,” the “Sunken Place” MC proudly proclaimed.

In 2018, after 26 years inside, X-Raided was free, and in 2022 he signed with Tech N9ne’s Strange Music and he just released his second album on the Kansas City imprint, but the mission to help those still locked up at RJ Donovan remains the same.

“Suge Knight is incarcerated at Donovan, the place where I paroled from and he is assisting in me continuing to build on some of the stuff that I left going there. [He] just donated I think $100,000 worth of equipment to that facility,” said X-Raided.

“It’s a beautiful place if you just gotta be doing time. It’s an environment conducive to education if that’s what you want to do, you can educate yourself, rehabilitate yourself, be able to demonstrate that you’ve done so. They have a facility like that at Ironwood, where they do the TED Talks, they have another one at San Quentin, they have a beautiful program going and then they definitely got the one at RJ Donovan, and we’re working on walking back in there.

I’m working with the Menendez Brothers for me to go back in there and do a concert with Tech N9ne and give them a speech about never giving up, donate some money to the facility and continue to be somebody giving back.”