‘Tell the world your truth’ Written By Brittany Hailer
Will Thompson
Will Thompson was driving late after having a few drinks. A car came out of nowhere and slammed into his. Thompson’s license was suspended. He knew he was going to jail.
“Incarceration helped me evolve with art a lot. All I had was four walls and time to think,” he said. Will grew up making music and art in Braddock. He remembers watching family dancing and singing in the kitchen while doing chores.
What he didn’t expect was three years in prison. “A lady hit me and my license was suspended. My alcohol content wasn’t high, but I wasn’t supposed to be on the road,” he said.
“I wanted to become a singer and serenade the ladies,” he said. There was just one problem.
Thompson hired a lawyer after he was offered a plea deal. He’d have to spend a year in prison if he took the plea. After two years of legal fees and court proceedings, Will was sentenced to three years in prison.
“I was terrible,” he said. Will was always a writer, though. He started writing music when he was around 11 years old. For his fourteenth birthday, his mom threw a “freestyle contest” where different folks in the neighborhood would rap improvisationally. He won the contest much to his own mother’s surprise.
“That’s why I got the maximum penalty, because I fought it and I lost,” he said. Does Will think his conviction was racially motivated? “To a point, yes,” he continued, “She was a white woman, but there were other factors at play. I needed that time. I lost a lot of people at that time. I could have died. It could have been worse. The universe told me that I needed to sit it down.” Before his DUI, Will had a clean record. Two years before the car accident, Will involved himself with people who “ran the street.” Looking back now, Will says he was on a path to ruin, to greater trouble. Both of Will’s parents struggled with addiction and he also wonders what would have happened if he hadn’t gone to prison.
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In prison, Will started to brainstorm and dream. His lyrics and music changed. He started to write honestly about pain and his life.
‘Tell the world your truth…’
“I wrote music, which is a form of poetry. But to me, I wrote it in musical form and I’m truthful about my life. And that’s therapeutic in itself. As an artist, if you’re not being truthful about your life, then the stuff you write doesn’t mean anything. Someone, somewhere, should relate to the situations I’ve been through because I am not the first or the last person to have gone through this.”
In prison, Will started taking himself seriously as an artist.
Eventually, Will branched out to poetry, which is also autobiographical. Poetry allowed him to
His DUI was definitely unjust, he said, but he has to look at the positive. He has to tell himself things are meant to be, even if they are unfair.
