The young man who almost lost his life working for Mikel Knight is lucky to be alive and tell his first hand experience working for this dirt-bag.

This story is definitely a cautionary tale and something for you to keep your eyes open to.

The tour buses leading young musicians on a wild goose chase still are in operation.

Please read further!

If you pay any attention to the country rap realm, you may have heard of a performer by the name of Mikel Knight who originally hails from San Antonio, TX, and is now based out of Nashville. Mikel goes under a couple of handles, such as “The Maverick,” “The Maverick of Music Row,” the “Urban Cowboy” and “The Country Rap King.” And from a number of measurables, Mikel Knight has a fairly successful career. His Facebook page boasts over 106,000 likes, he’s sold hundreds of thousands of records, he has numerous videos on YouTube with over half a million views, and regularly receives press coverage from major country music outlets, including The Boot which debuted a new video from the country rapper just in February as part of WGN America’s docuseries Outlaw Country.

But Mikel Knight is not your average entertainer, even for the unusual world of country rap. He doesn’t have a label (which is where his “Maverick of Music Row” moniker comes from), he doesn’t seem to play any shows. Instead Mikel Knight makes his money by deploying fleets of tour vans and buses all mocked up with Mikel Knight insignia and full of street team members to solicit people on the street, in parking lots, and at gas stations all across the United States to purchase Mikel Knight country rap albums.

Known as the “Maverick Dirt Road Street Teams,” dozens of pseudo-employed Mikel Knight devotees fan out across smaller communities to aggressively peddle his country rap albums to local populations, usually working a dozen or more hours a day, driving through the night to their next locations, not even being given chances to shower or sleep, and leaving town before local authorities catch up with the street teams and make sure they’re obeying local sales ordinances.

But the allegations and stories about the practices of Mikel Knight and the Maverick Dirt Road Street Team go beyond being overworked and circumventing local ordinances. Stories of physical abuse, mental anguish, individuals being abandoned in small towns, and even the death of street team members in auto accidents after being overworked have been circulating for the last year.

The Revealing Account of a Former Mikel Knight Street Team Member Ky Rodgers
In July of 2014, a former Maverick Dirt Road Street Team member named Ky Rodgers posted an extensive account of his year with Mikel Knight, the deceptions street team members were led to believe, the conditions they were forced to work under, how some members were beaten and abandoned for not making sales quotas, and how working conditions eventually resulted in Rogers being involved in a major motor vehicle accident that had him hospitalized with multiple broken vertebrae and other injuries.

“I was introduced by a couple of guys on his street team,” Ky Rodgers explained. “They told me about how he needed a new lead guitarist and that they had been showing him some of my YouTube videos and his current singer/rhythm player had fell in love with my playing. I remember riding up to Nashville, clothes packed and not even knowing what to expect. I get there, and he has like 5-6 fancy tour vans that had his face and name plastered all over them, all of them were sitting on some kind of rims nicer than most cars. The back of each van read “The Country Rap King, Music from MTV’s BuckWild”, and my heart began racing

I knew this was the real deal. I went around back to meet most of our street team, B-Mull our drummer, and Conrad the singer/guitarist at the time. We had maybe a total of 15 guys back there. We loaded up the next morning and headed out on tour, but little did I know what I was in for.”

Rodgers went on to explain that he never played any shows, and his duty as lead guitar player were to sell CD’s with everyone else in the band and the street team.

“We would pull up to random gas stations, businesses, it didn’t matter. The driver of each van would tell us to get out, ‘grab CD’s! Go hit that person..’ We weren’t touring doing shows or playing for anybody, it wasn’t what I thought it was gonna be at all … EVERY SINGLE DAY for a month to 2 months straight, we would get up at 6:30 AM and would not stop selling until midnight. We would meet up at Wal-Mart in a different town every night. Drivers would take their money that their team made that day and take it to Mikel Knight, where he would take all the money and put it in a safe. And after sweating all day, and being completely dead by the time we’d all meet up, I remember asking a couple guys on the street team ‘when we going to get a room, I’m tired man.’ and they just laughed and walked off. We slept in the vans, without getting a shower and would be woken up by Mikel Knight at 6:30 the next morning by him beating on your window and yelling at you to get out. We’d get out and he would have sort of an ‘inspiration’ speech.

Eventually Ky Rodgers became acclimated to the environment, became one of the street team’s best sellers, and would get compensated in intervals for his work for Mikel Knight.

“I started doing really well. Selling up to 70 cd’s a day … I remember walking into Mikel Knight’s basement and him handing me a couple thousand dollars and telling me he couldn’t wait to get me in the studio, that if I stayed around, he’d make me a rockstar. This was just the grind out part that had to be done first. After being handed a few thousand dollars my thoughts about the long nights and no showers went away. I thought, i’m 18 bringing home this kinda money in a month?? BY SELLING CD’S? I thought I had it made. But I didn’t even realize the brainwashing. His work ethics were so evil, the way he treated us was like we were slaves. But being this young, and getting handed that cash blinded me.”

Rodgers was eventually promoted to captain of one of the street teams, but began seeing things that disturbed him about Mikel Knight’s organization.

“People that had been with us from the beginning were getting promoted to driving the vans, but still had to sell CD’s. Sometimes, people’s money would come up short. Mikel Knight would beat them or have someone else jump them when we’d meet up at night. It could have been a miscalculation, or they could have stolen money, but Mikel Knight wasn’t taking chances. If someone’s team wasn’t making enough numbers, Mikel Knight would sometimes leave them in a town, sometimes without even their clothes, never paying them out. I never thought anything like this would happen to me.”

Ky Rodgers says that one night when riding in a street team van, the vehicle was in an accident in Utah, and fell off a three-story cliff. Ky was severely injured, and had to be care flighted to a hospital. He broke his L2, L3, and L4 vertebrae, his pelvis and sacrum, and was in the hospital for a week before he was discharged. He claims that Mikel Knight completely abandoned him and the rest of his street team crew, did not pay them, and would not return their personal possessions. Ky was stuck with $38,000 in medical bills, and couldn’t get Mikel Knight to even work with the auto insurance company to take out a claim, if the van was ever insured in the first place.

“There was nothing we could do because we never signed anything saying ‘hey, you’re hired!’ He leaves no paper trail, no proof that anyone works for him, and he never withheld taxes from anyone’s pay.”

This is absolutely devastating to read about but its a good lesson to hear. At first I thought I might have heard the name of Mikel Knight but that is just because I am a big fan of Country Music.

I guess this phrase goes without saying that, “if it is too good to be true; then it probably is.”

Have you ever had a job where they paid you a lot of cash up front but you knew what you where doing was a little unethical or illegal?

Tell Us About It!

This is a good lesson for young people to know about; unfortunately, everyone wants a piece of the Music Industry but most of them end up getting into real trouble. This young man is lucky he got out a live.

This Story Was Adapted From: Country Music

Photo Source: Country Music