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After serving four years of an eight-year prison sentence for a drug conviction and probation violation, Lil Boosie is finally going home. The rapper born Torrence Hatch was released from the Louisiana’s Angola State Penitentiary Wednesday night (March 5) at 7:10 p.m., Warden Burl Cain told WAFB. The Baton Rouge native was then transferred to a sheriff’s department facility in St. Francisville, where he was welcomed home by family members. Boosie has been incarcerated since June 2010, when he was brought up on first-degree murder charges stemming from the October 2009 shooting death of rap artist Terry Boyd. Boosie was accused of paying then 19-year old Michael “Marlo Mike” Louding to kill the 35-year old man, but was found not guilty in May of 2011 after a week of testimony and jury deliberation. In November of 2011, months after being found not guilty in the murder trial, Boosie pleaded guilty to three counts of conspiring to smuggle drugs, which resulted in his eight-year sentence. The Bad Azz spitter’s release comes before the Louisiana Department of Corrections officially scheduled date of May 20, 2014. Boosie’s record label, Atlantic Records, has organized a press conference for the

“Independent” MC Monday, March 10 at 1 p.m. at the W Hotel in New Orleans. “He will absolutely be there,” an Atlantic Records representative said. “He’ll be speaking to the press for the first time, after his release.” The invitation, which was sent to multiple news outlets, reads:

“Trill Entertainment and Atlantic Records invites you to hear #BoosieSpeak.” “I’ve coped by knowing in my heart that I’m someone special who many people love. If you lose hope in yourself, you’ll make your time hard. I always felt that my mission wasn’t complete. I feel I haven’t reached the star power that was destined for me,” Boosie wrote in a letter to Spin last year.

“That makes me keep writing and thinking of ways to better myself as a man and artist. When it feels like the world is on my shoulders, I look at my pictures from when I was free and it gives hope and determination to pushing.”

Lil Boosie, who earned his GED while in prison, will remain on parole until 2018.