A Philly rapper awaiting trial in two killings filmed and released a music video from his jail cell, raising contraband concerns

Kyzir Reeves did not have to invest in a location, a set, or costumes for his new music video. Inside his dingy Philadelphia jail cell, where he is awaiting trial in a double homicide, he had everything he needed.

Using what officials believe were a contraband video camera and cell phone, the 20-year-old rapper known as “HopOutBlick” released a new song and music video this week that were recorded inside his cell at Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility.

In the video for “Im Still Alive,” Reeves, dressed in an orange jumpsuit, raps at the camera, his reality clearly visible in the background: the dirty cement walls, the metal toilet, a bucket filled with yellow liquid.

Reeves has been in custody since September 2023, when he was arrested and charged with two counts of murder, attempted murder, robbery, illegal gun possession, and related crimes after prosecutors say he took part in a gun swap gone wrong that left three teens dead in April 2023.

Reeves’ cell was searched Tuesday morning and officials found a cell phone, according to a spokesperson with the city’s Department of Prisons. It was not clear if Reeves had used the phone to record the footage; law enforcement sources said they believe he also had access to a video camera.

Contraband has long been a problem inside Philadelphia’s jails — one that persists as correctional officers conduct fewer cell searches amid a staffing shortage, according to prison records. Experts say the decline in contraband searches can encourage smuggling, breed violence, and embolden inmates like Reeves.

The Philadelphia Department of Prisons said in a statement that retrieving contraband is among its highest priorities. The agency said it recently hired a director of security to address contraband concerns and is expanding its K-9 search team. It has also installed multiple body scanners at the jails to use X-rays to scan incoming inmates, the statement said.

Reeves’ attorney, Ellis Palividas, said he “had no information on how or why the video was produced.”

“In reviewing the video, it is clear he is expressing his innocence, which he has maintained from the beginning,” Palividas said.

Prosecutors say that on April 28, 2023, Reeves and his crew, known as the “PNB Torchers” from Germantown, set up a meeting with a group of young men from North Philadelphia to swap and sell each other guns. Reeves’ group had planned to rob the teens of their weapons and cash, prosecutors said, but after the other side learned of the scheme, a shootout erupted inside a Lawncrest home.

Four teens were shot, and three died: Salaah Fleming, 14; Malik Ballard, 17; and Khalif Frezghi, 17.

It is not clear whether Reeves fired a gun that day, but prosecutors said at a court hearing that he was inside the room when gunfire erupted. It’s something prosecutors say Reeves has even rapped about in his songs — including his latest release this week.

“I seen ‘Switchy’ right there bloody, he was not alive,” he rapped, using what prosecutors say is a nickname for Frezghi. “I knew he was gone ’cus when I called his name, my brother don’t respond.”

Some fans online reacted with shock that he would release the video while awaiting trial.

“I watched this in disbelief,” one person wrote on YouTube. Another said it would be in the drill rap “hall of fame.”

The footage comes as the jails navigate an ongoing contraband problem, driven in part by officers smuggling items inside. Just last month, the district attorney’s office announced the arrest of two correctional officers at CFCF who they said had been sneaking suboxone and cell phones into the facility and, in turn, earning thousands of dollars.

And yet, according to the prisons department’s monthly data reports, contraband searches within the city’s three institutions have fallen off sharply in recent years, in part because of the ongoing staffing shortage.

Over the year that ended in January 2020, officers conducted 42,464 searches across the then-four city jail facilities across the State Road complex in Northeast Philadelphia. According to the most recent report, which captured the year that ended in September 2024, correctional officers logged just 618 searches across the three main facilities.

In September, officers conducted just 70 searches. Ed Miranda, who retired as a deputy warden during the pandemic, said that total was startlingly low.

”I don’t know if it’s vacation, lack of staff, or just lack of inspiration and motivation. It’s a hard task. It’s not easy [to conduct the searches],” he said. “But 70 is unacceptable. I think when I was there, we wanted [at least one] area searched every day or week. Every shift had to do one.”

In a 2022 expert report filed in a federal civil rights lawsuit over jail conditions, Bradford Hansen, a retired prison warden, warned that the decline in searches could embolden incarcerated people to smuggle contraband.

Searches, he wrote, are “one essential security task which if not consistently completed will lead to far more inmate possession of contraband, including deadly weapons. There is a settled maxim in corrections: the more contraband in an institution, the more violence we can expect.”

The Philadelphia Department of Prisons said that it would continue to devote resources to the issue and that those involved will be “punished to the full extent of the law.”