21 Savage has plenty say about his recent arrest and detainment by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Speaking for the first time since being released on Wednesday, ABC News asked the rapper on Thursday if he was afraid of being deported back to his native U.K.
“Yeah, but I feel like I done been through so much in my life, like, I learned to embrace the times when I’m down ’cause they always build me up and take me to a new level in life,” said Savage, whose real name is She’yaa Bin Abraham-Joseph. “So it’s like even if I’m sitting in a cell on 23-hour lockdown, in my mind, I know what’s gonna come after that. So I’m not happy about it. But I’m accepting of it.”
Since his detainment, droves of other hip-hop artists have lent their voices and support to getting the “Bank Account” rapper out of trouble – including Cardi B, T.I. and Jay-Z, who generously assembled Savage’s legal team.
“My mama told me to picture where I wanna be,” Savage said of his time inside a cell for 23-hours a day. “She said, ‘Visualize yourself, whatever you wanna do, just close your eyes and visualize yourself doing that. And as long as you do that, you will never be in jail.'”
Savage was arrested on Feb. 3 in Atlanta and as he describes, authorities told him very little about what was going on.
“I was just driving. And I just seen guns and blue lights. And, then, I was in the back of a car. And I was gone,” he said.
Savage added that no officer ever said he was under arrest or for why. “It was definitely targeted. There was helicopters,” he detailed.
Savage illegally overstayed his visa after entering the U.S. in 2005.