officials arrested grammy winner rapper savage in atlanta. he is actually a resident of the united kingdom and has been in the u.s. illegally since 2006. cnn s nick valencia is joining us now. what more have you learned? reporter: this is shocking to a lot of us. i m a huge hip-hop fan and getting messages, is this true? they think it s an april fool s joke. it is very real. rapper 21 savage taken into custody. oois is in the process of removing him from this country. 21 savage, even if you don t follow hip-hop or know who he is he has had an incredible influence on music here in atlanta which many argue is the capital of hip-hop. but he is not who he claims to be, a rapper from zone 6 from east atlanta, given countless interviews of gang life, growing
that s a damn lie. it was my responsibility on the yard to ensure that, one, our people were not harmed by another race. i took care of the drug debts if one of our people became delinquent in a drug debt to another race, it was my responsibility to either cover their drug debt or have them stabbed, in which case we would send one of ours to stab them. duncan s loyalty to his gang was also inked into his skin. my stomach, i have a war bird. these lightning bolts mean something, and if they were solid that meant that there was a kill, that you actually killed the victim. being shaded in like that, that means i did put in a racial stabbing, but it wasn t a kill, and it wasn t from lack of trying to my part. duncan s tattoos weren t only about gang life. some were about his love life. couple of wives names up here. charlene, that was a prison employee. my first wife that passed away.
gone, gang life has left its mark. you have three dots on your hand. what does that represent? when you join, most ms, they do it. you want to go to the hospital? or jail or to the death? pastor bonia was part of the first wave of ms13 on the east coast with body tattoos. it means you re big-time gangsters. it s like a mark. don t mess with him. when you get into ms, it s blood in, blood out, the only way to get out is when you die. that s false. that s history. what was your way out? jesus christ. you know? you get tired sometimes of things. you get tired of police behind you. all the time you re going like because you don t know. you gotten ms. and you say, i
but never to watch out for your homeys. i went and straightened up for a few years. even now up to this day it s hard to believe that my little brother s gone. i write letters to him. on his birthday i write letters to him. christmas i write letters to him. what do you say? i apologize to him. i just talk to him. and as i talk to him, seems like i don t know, maybe i m helping myself in a way to ease the pain because it s a deep pain. sometimes it s real deep. if i can turn it back right now and get my life right now, for my brother to come back, i d do it in a heartbeat. i live my life. there s nothing here for me. that s the way i feel. there s nothing here. but it s not possible. so i can t do it, just like i say. every time i write him i m always apologizing. i guess i ll apologize until the day i die. i know it s my fault. like a dagger that s in me, all
i spent a lot of time feeling sorry for myself. but then i started to think, it s the wrong way to think because why should i feel sorry for myself when actually a lot of people were hurt? and the people whose lives can t be returned and the victims and their relatives as well? and it just made me feel very sorry. these are things that can t be undone. but ever since then, i believe that the soul is immortal. and that helped me to come to terms with the idea that perhaps even the dead will be born again into a new life. but kuna was still making the most of his life. even behind the ancient walls of mirov prison. he had recently remarried. this time to a woman he met through an inmate pen pal program. translator: with this hell i ve gone through, my life values were completely reversed. i realized that some kind of property and money and all that means nothing, compared to a healthy love. a person s health and love of life.