After prison, Sean Sullivan - once Alaska's most successful rapper - is working double time to start over

The music production studio in a nondescript South Anchorage office building was small. Even smaller was the sound booth, but despite the tight space Sean Sullivan appeared comfortable behind the microphone.

"I don't know if I should start rapping before the beat comes in or after," Sullivan said, thinking out loud.

With its worn couches and clutter, it's a long way from the prison cells Sullivan spent the last eight years confined to for selling crack cocaine.

His return to rapping is just one of many ideas Sullivan formulated behind bars.

Before his 2008 conviction, Sullivan was the most successful rap artist to have come out of Alaska. He released albums under the name "Joker The Bailbondsman" and starred in music videos featured on "BET: Uncut," a late-night cable program known for playing back-to-back rap videos from underground artists.

His biggest single, "Money in a Ziplock Bag," featured Bone Thugs-N-Harmony's Bizzy Bone. He attended award shows and mingled with famous artists like Snoop Dogg and DJ Khaled. At one point, he owned his own record label and ran a recording studio.

But on this day, Sullivan was paying for studio time to work on his new album, one of many projects he started in prison. He earned the money to pay for the time with two jobs, one of which is work at Brother Francis Shelter.

For Sullivan, prison was a period of intense productivity. He wrote screenplays and books, one of which has been self-published. Since being released, he hasn't wasted any time, launching social media campaigns, a cartoon, short films and trying to get a vodka deal finalized.

"Prison was a conduit for me. It gave me a chance to take all my ideas and concepts and put them on a timetable," Sullivan said

"I had a release date. There were people in there whose release dates said 'Deceased.' I was going to get out eventually, and when I did, I wanted to hit the ground running and have people asking, 'What do you eat?' "

Lost time and a second chance

In April 2008, a federal judge in Anchorage handed down a 120-month prison sentence against Sullivan.

The charges against Sullivan say he sold an FBI "cooperator" small amounts of crack cocaine on two occasions in October 2006. That person previously told authorities they'd bought drugs off him more than 50 times.

When officers raided his home a year later, Sullivan allegedly dumped drugs in a toilet before his door was breached. Officers reported finding an assault rifle, firearm ammunition, eight cellphones, pagers, more than $4,000 in cash and "possible marijuana 'blunts.' "

Sullivan had been in trouble with the law before — including a federal drug case in 2005 that was eventually dropped — but he'd never been to jail. It was, he said, like "getting thrown into a drunk tank that's 30 below."

"I knew my demise was inevitable. I was just so pompous, and I thought I'd cross that path when I got there," he said. "The level of success I attained before my incarceration, I could have ridden off the success I created for myself and stopped hustling."

Initially, prison was rough. But about two years in, Sullivan developed a new perspective. Rather than lost time, the prison term could be a second chance at life, he said.

Sullivan started studying screenwriting. The studying lasted for about three years, "then I just smashed," he said — producing about two to three pages of material a day.

He completed five books without access to a computer — literally putting pen to paper. After typing up the handwritten manuscript, he self-published the first of the books, "Icy Rivers," in June.

Motivation sprang up in Sullivan because of his sobriety, he said.

"I was writing like two movies a month, allocating time to just go sit in a desolate place and get lost into a world I created. I ended up with a lot of material because I gave myself structure," he said.

Music theory was also a part of Sullivan's self-education for five years. He always loved music but didn't understand the principles underlying the art form. Now, he does.

Sullivan received time off for completing a drug program and was released in February 2015. He'll be on probation for another three years.

The origin of Joker

"I would say I grew up in an upper-middle-class home," Sullivan said as he punched messages into his cellphone.

His grandfather owned the Camani Lounge in Fairview in the 1980s, which included a club upstairs and a barbershop below where his aunt worked.

That's the neighborhood where he spent his formative years, attending Fairview Elementary. He also spent a lot of time in Mountain View.

Music entered his life at a young age. His cousin taught him how to play drums, which he did in church. And his mother would rap with him in the car, teaching him how to deliver punchlines in his verses.

But he credits Jay King, a member of the R&B group Timex Social Club, who lived in Anchorage in the '80s, with introducing him to hip-hop. King taught local kids break dancing, Sullivan said. That introduction landed Sullivan a spot as a dancer with the local group PBL, Prohibited By Law.

It was the beginning of "Joker." He needed a stage name for the group, and at 12 he was obsessed with Batman comic books.

"In my mind, Joker is an intricate character. Everyone else has some sort of power: muscles, fantasy stuff. Joker just has his wits. That's all he has is his mind and the ability to hatch his plans," Sullivan said. (Sullivan said he'd actually like to drop the moniker but it's too deeply entrenched at this point — when people run into him they often call him Joker).

Around the same time, Sullivan got involved in street life. Not even a teen himself, Sullivan said he was hanging around older guys who knew people who were selling drugs and pimping.

"It was the other side my mother tried to shelter me from," Sullivan said.

Joker became "Joker the Bailbondsman" when he was in his late teens. He was sitting on a lot of money from "hustling" — selling drugs. One day, he was watching TV and a commercial came on for Fred's Bail Bonding. Sullivan and a friend were high, and Sullivan started raving about how he could be his own bail bondsman. His friend liked it and the name stuck.

Sullivan and the friend, Maurice King, started the music label Inlet City Records in 1997, something they'd talked about since high school. His ambition and notoriety grew from there, and so did his bravado.

People respected Sullivan. People like Dante Devoe. The two went to separate high schools but met through basketball. They kept in touch as their lives changed.

Devoe was convicted to seven years in prison for crimes related to selling crack cocaine. He created the treatment manual "From Hustling to Healing" while he was incarcerated and began teaching classes to other inmates going through recovery. His program highlights addiction to the criminal lifestyle and its transferable qualities to corporate America, like advertising and networking, he said.

Sullivan's books, scripts and songs are often based in fictional accounts of the kind of lawbreaking lifestyle that landed him in prison in the first place.

"I appreciate that he's doing what he feels he has to do as long as it's legal. It's not necessarily something I'd be doing, but it's also not what he used to do. I support him. I know he's sincere," Devoe said.

Not all 'peaches and cream'

"I'm about to do something amazing and it is going to unfold right before everyone's eyes," Sullivan said of his many projects.

Sullivan's novel "Icy Rivers" is about a boy named Marlo who loses his parents and gets taken in by a pimp. He learns the code of the street through his surrogate parent and eventually rises to prominence in the criminal underbelly of Anchorage. The book contains graphic sex and violence and is unforgiving in its depiction of urban life.

"Roach and Reefer" is Sullivan's animated show. He describes it as the black "Beavis and Butt-Head." The episode Sullivan has produced — he does the writing and an illustrator in Ukraine does the animation — features two young black kids sitting in front of a television set smoking weed and hurling insults at one another and the rappers they're watching on screen.

He's in talks with Alaska Distillery to produce his own small batch of personally branded vodka, which he dreamed up after reading a magazine article about the distillery while in prison. Distillery president Dorene Lorenz said it's the first time anyone approached the business with such an idea.

"Get three or four people in your music videos flaunting the bottles and they'll fly off the shelves," Lorenz told Sullivan during a meeting in May. 

Sullivan has been hard at work on an album that was released on iTunes on Sept. 13. It's called "Plan, Plot, Strategize." The lyrics are laden with ideas — selling drugs, sour relationships, gun fights — that shaped him growing up among hard men in Anchorage.

"Under that dim streetlight, tell so many different stories there / Shootouts and fist fights, so many people got their glory there," Sullivan raps on the song "Now I feel Ya."

The song does not glorify violence or drugs, though. "When you hustlin' on them streets, it's temporary satisfaction / Never contemplate the consequences for your actions," he raps.

During studio time in April, Sullivan completed two verses, a hook and backup vocals in less than an hour. He pays for the studio time, and for his other projects, with several hourly jobs he holds down, including working at Brother Francis Shelter and Fred Meyer.

Ashley Bell, aka Rawbeatzz, made sure the beat matched up with the lyrics. The local music producer, who has worked with artists like Gucci Mane and Yo Gotti, said when he was young he worked toward getting to Sullivan's level of success.

Sullivan said his projects are not "all peaches and cream."

Warning: some profanity / explicit content

"The content isn't all drug and street heavy, but I certainly dabble in it and let you know it's what made me and it's still in me. Joker is a franchise. Roach and Reefer are characters. They're a vehicle to success," he said.

Sullivan said he's an artist and a writer, he doesn't think people should read his books and listen to his music and believe that it depicts his life today. He described his body of work as diverse; it includes a motivational novel and scripts for horror movies.

"When Stephen King writes a book about a serial killer, is that based off of his lifestyle and beliefs? No. It all comes from a place of creativity as an artist, so my content doesn't necessarily reflect my beliefs or morals," he said.

Sullivan might write about selling drugs but he's personally against it, he said — it's a trap for young black men who receive harsher sentences than white counterparts who get charged with the same crimes, he believes.

He said he wants to give a better option to local kids. In mid-March, he spent a week teaching music lessons to kids at the Mountain View Boys and Girls Club. The kids made a song with Sullivan and some of his friends. The small carpeted room the nonprofit let them work out of was filled with about a dozen neighborhood youth in the final hours of its last day.

"When I say B G you say C," a group of young girls sang over a beat pounding out a Macintosh computer.

Any kid wanting to learn about music could join in, but it was targeted at at-risk youths. He hopes to eventually open a space where they can come and stay away from crime.

"I want to catch kids at a fork in the road," Sullivan said. "Rather than get in that car, smoke dope and wave around guns, they can produce videos and music. At 14, I wish someone told me I could come to the studio and record, work on stuff. I probably would've spent less time on hustling and selling dope."