In an exclusive interview with Rolling Stone, rapper Meek Mill spoke out for the very first time since being ordered to serve time behind bars for a probation violation late last year.

Eloquently titled, “#FreeMeekMill,” the exclusive details how the rapper and his incarceration has arguably become a cause, with several prominent figures, fans and citizens alike speaking out on his behalf.

Meek, the fiercest and most prolific rapper to come out of Philadelphia in two decades – millions of albums sold, multiple high-end beefs provoked, and one very public breakup with Nicki Minaj – picks at a bulbous clump of vending-machine pasta in the visitors’ room of the Chester state prison,” Rolling Stone’s Paul Solotaroff writes. “It’s a place of emasculated, tube-lit sadness: men in orange jumpsuits sitting with their loved ones, barred from leaning close enough to touch them. Meek, by his own design, spurns all visits from anyone besides his lawyers and a few friends.”

“I won’t let them come,” Meek says of his family attempting to visit. “If they see me like this – f**ked-up beard, hair all ganked – then it’s like I’m really in here. Which I’m not.”

All in all, the rapper appears to be in good spirits and just as strong as he was before heading to jail on the last day of November.

Read the rest of the exclusive interview at Rolling Stone.