New York Daily News / Monday December 8, 2014

The Brooklyn-based musician rented an abandoned part of Nassau County jail for a one-day shoot in August. Murda's recent 'Hands Up' video slams police brutality, featuring the image of him and another rapper holding guns to a white officer's head.

This is a whole new kind of Jailhouse Rock.

Brooklyn-based rapper Uncle Murda and several of his cronies rented out part of a Nassau County jail in August to film two gritty rap videos celebrating gang violence and other bad behavior. "This is not a shooting of 'The Good Wife,' " said John Jaronczyk, president of the Nassau County Sheriff's Correction Officers Benevolent Association. "Whoever is responsible for this needs to be fired." Murda - whose real name is Leonard Grant - has a criminal record dating to 1997, which includes an arrest for attempted murder of a cop and drug charges. In 2008, he was shot in the head as he was sitting in a car on Linden Blvd. in Brooklyn. The lyrics to his new song, "Be About It," include lines like, "Drug money, I been about it. Cocaine, ask about it."

Last week, Uncle Murda and another rapper, Maino, released an alarming video showing the two holding up guns to a white officer's head. The "Hands Up" video decries police brutality. The rappers demand justice for Michael Brown, fatally shot by a cop in Ferguson, Mo., in August, and Eric Garner, who died in a police chokehold on Staten Island in July. "For Mike Brown and Sean Bell, a cop got to get killed," Uncle Murda raps in the video.

The one-day Nassau jail shoot was mostly filmed inside an old, abandoned facility and generated $570 in fees for the cash-strapped county, records show. But several jail officers were unwittingly used in the backdrop of the videos and parts were filmed in an active recreation yard. Two of the other rappers in the videos - Maino and Vado - also have prior run-ins with the law.

Vado, whose real name is Teeyon Winfree, was convicted of an undisclosed felony that barred him from entering Canada for a performance, according to a report. And Maino, who real name is Jermaine Coleman, served 10 years in prison for kidnapping and robbing a drug dealer. Still, county officials defended the shoot.

"Nassau County expresses no views either in support of, or opposition to, any project or production filmed at locations for private commercial purposes," said Debra Markowitz, director of the county's film commission. "Along the same lines, the county has neither the ability nor the authority to control the content, message or opinion expressed in any such project or production."