Prison seemed like an inevitable, an inexorable course.

We transformed it into a rite of passage.

And I said to myself back then when I was a kid, I said, "I'm never going to prison.

I'm never going that route."

You learn, never say never.

I was 19 years old at the time.

And I had the opportunity to actually work for a startup record company.

And that led to me doing some production as well as some rapping.

And that got me nominated for a Grammy, and kind of changed everything, especially my ego.

You know, being so young, and being given so much so soon, it really did my head in.

And then to come out with my solo album that only sold 100,000 copies, it was a huge disappointment to the record company.

They dropped me from my contract.

And I thought to myself, "Okay, this is a blessing.

"I'm going to go out and I'm going to produce my next album independently."

The only problem was that I had no money.

I found myself in a situation where I met a person, and he knew that I knew a lot of people.

So he gave me an opportunity to basically involve myself in a criminal enterprise, specifically to be the middleman in his drug ring.

The fact is, I took a risk and made a very, ver poor decision.

And I got caught for it.

And at the end of the day, in 2001, I was sentenced to 14 years in federal prison.

I'd already been gone for five years.

I'd resigned myself to the fact that, okay, I probably won't come home for, you know, another eight or nine years.

And I applied to Harvard while I was in prison.

This was at the encouragement of Professor Charles Ogletree, who was in fact at Harvard.

And the entire prison knew that I was going out to the visiting room to be interviewed.

It was like a cavalcade of inmates just, like, waiting in the halls, patting me on the back.

They were like, "Come on, John," because I was doing it not just for me, but I was doing it for all of us.

At least that's what we felt.

And then in April, I was at mail call.

And they called my name, and it was just an envelope.

So I opened up the little envelope, and it said, you know, "Thank you for your application.

Thanks, but no thanks."

So I got rejected from Harvard.

I called up Professor Ogletree, and I said, "I told you "they would never accept, you know, a convicted felon "who's actually doing time.

This is Harvard."

And he said, "You know what you did?"

He said, "You know, you fought the status quo."

"Because one day an institution like Harvard "or Yale or Princeton, one day they will say yes if enough people keep knocking."

Later I found out that the London School of Economics said yes.

So that's when I began pursuing my degree in politics and international relations at LSE.

November the 24th, 2008, little D Black, he walks up to the bunk, and he's like, "Yo, John, man, come and watch some television."

And I said, "You know I don't watch TV.

You know that's one thing that I don't do."

He said, "Well, I thought you might just want to watch, "because the President is on there giving out pardons and commutations."

And he walked away from the bunk.

I went to the phone line, and I called up one of my attorneys.

And she said, "John, your name is on that list."

And I fell silent.

And then she said, "You'll be home within 30 days."

And I just said, "Thank you."

I think back to what I missed when I was away.

It was never grandiose.

I never missed a house.

I never missed a car.

I missed being able to walk to the deli at 2:00 in the morning to get a Japanese pear because I could.

I missed being able to see my mom.

So what did it feel like to walk out of federal prison after seven and a half years, expecting to do 14 years, no less?

It felt like I could breathe.

And I think I've been breathing ever since.