Ky Rodgers
IF ANY POST NEEDS TO GO VIRAL, THIS DOES.
PLEASE HELP ME GET MY STORY OUT!!!

I know everyone has heard that I made it, I was touring the country, and making crazy amounts of money. See, I was hiding 90% of it. I didn't want anyone to know what was really going on, everyone thought I had it made. Why should I let that image up? Well in this post, I'm going to reveal everything. THIS is what I have been doing for the past year.

At the age of 18, almost a year ago, I was introduced to a guy by the name of Mikel Knight. I was introduced by a couple of guys on his street team. 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.

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.

I remember hopping out of the van for the first time and a guy telling me to go sell our music to a certain vehicle full of people. And I remember looking at him like he was dumb, and replying "Are you kidding me? I'm Mikel Knight's new lead guitarist. YOU sell OUR music." And he looked back at me with the same dumb look and said "you have no idea, do you? WE ALL do this, INCLUDING the band members."

So I confronted B-Mull, our drummer and he told me what we do. "We get up at 6:30 and split up in teams of 3-4 guys per van, all go to different towns and we have a certain number of CD's each guy has to sell per day. You do make money off of what you sell, but not right away. You see, we do our own self promotion. We cut the middle man out. We're on our way to making history. Now go try and sell them CD's!" 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. More like a "God gave me this plan a year ago and we've grown from 4 guys to 5 vans and 15 guys and making $10,000 a day as a company," while smoking on a blunt of weed. Then he would cuss / yell at the guys that didn't do good the night before, telling them to get their numbers up or he'd slap the hell out of them, or something along those lines.

I don't know if you guys know this, but it's not easy selling "Country Rap" cd's to people by running up on them at a gas station while they are pumping their gas. But amazingly. we did it. Everyday, and without showers. We would normally go 3-4 days without a shower and sell every single day til midnight. But I remember going 10 days without a shower once, because our numbers weren't good enough. I would call mom at night, crying and begging her to come get me.. but I would be states away. I would cry, in starvation because we lived off $10 a day.. some days $15 depending on our numbers. Mom told me "just hang in their til the end of the trip, at least then you'll have a little money.."

Well I started getting the hang of things, actually I started doing really well. Selling up to 70 cd's a day. I started getting used to the no shower thing, just going into a gas station bathroom and using the hand soap to wash my hair. I started becoming one of their top sellers by the end of the trip. Finally, we made it back to Nashville, where we would wait to get paid out to where we could go back home until the next trip which would only be a week later. 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.

I rushed home to Taylor Rose, cause we were together at the time. I showed her all the money and she was impressed too. I sat down with her and said "This is only the beginning Tay! We'll never struggle again.. we can have our own family now, you won't ever have to work.. Mikel Knight told me that staying gone and doing this grind part is only gonna last for a few months.. then its just playing and getting paid." But that's not what happened at all.

See, I wound up bringing more and more money home each trip, I would do a little studio work but that was the only playing I was doing. Shot a couple music videos, but no shows ever happened. But THE MONEY. I was bringing home thousands and thousands. I'm talking up to $10.000. And I would buy Layla some things, and Tay some things and just blow through my money. I wouldn't have anything to show for it.

Tay got tired of me always being gone, said I was never home for her or for Layla which was the most important thing.. and I would get mad, I would yell at her, telling her she didn't understand, I was doing this cause in a year I would have enough money to have us put up. I ended up losing my relationship with Taylor. But, I saw the company grow from those 5 vans to 18 vans, and a tour bus, we had "camera men" filming us. Saying we were going to have a reality TV show coming out on MTV. I even saw the previews of the show with me as one of the star characters back at the studio in Nashville.

But near the end, I started noticing things. People that had been with us from the beginning were getting promoted to driving the vans, but still had to sell CD's. Basically, it gave them more responsibilities with keeping their teams money secured and all the numbers added up for each person on their team correctly and getting paid an extra $200/week. Sometimes, peoples 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.

Well, next thing you know, I get promoted to captain, getting my own van and running my own team because I was an "OG" and Mikel Knight was tired of me running from being a captain. I struggled everyday to make our numbers. Mikel would tell me I could do better, to keep pushing. He'd switch up my team members. Still., no progress. I knew the system, I knew how to run a team, I had been here almost a year. Finally, I started getting the hang of things. Well, all of the teams were struggling. All 18 vans. Mikel would start making us stay out later, sometimes til 2 AM, and even then after we started selling, we'd still have a 2-3 hour drive to where we were staying. I would wake up in the morning, falling asleep while driving on the interstate, my guys would constantly have to be waking me up, turning the music up, hitting me in the arm, grabbing the wheel.

Well one night, I just couldn't handle it, I needed to get some rest, I just couldn't drive, I knew I would wind up wrecking. So I let one of the guys on my team drive for me. I layed the passenger seat back, and went to sleep, having no idea what was about to happen. We were following one of our other vans, going to meet up with the rest of the vans, somewhere in Utah, on our way to Colorado. I wake up to the driver screaming his head off and us being in mid air and suddenly smashing into something sending me flying to the back of the van. We had flew off the road, off a 3-4 story drop off, the van laying on it's side. I couldn't stand or walk. I remember looking around and seeing blood everywhere and I looked into the window above my head from the door and seeing blood pouring out my nose. The other two guys got out, with the help of one of the guys from the other van. They had turned around to look for us and he climbed down the drop off, slipping and falling down to help. I was the last one to get out cause I had to have help. They sat me on top of the van, where we had to climb out and waited for the ambulances and police to get there. I was air-lifted to a hospital 3 hours away. I was told it would be months before I would be able to walk again, I broke my L2, L3, L4 vertebrae, I broke my pelvis, my sacrum, and all the muscles attached had been torn. Mikel Knight, our manager, or anyone on our street team never called to check on me, the whole time I was in the hospital. I mean nobody. Mom flew out to be with me and the only people I ever heard from was a few friends & family, including Luke Chadwick, my girlfriend Kayla Alexander, Taylor, my sister Brandy, and a former member on the street team, which was Corbitt JuneBug Davis and his mom Dawne Davis. I was in the trauma center for a week. I flew home to be with my daughter on Fathers Day, and I've been here ever since. The following week I found out there was another wreck, leaving the manager injured, and killing 2 other boys, Robert Joseph Underfinger III age 18 of Andalusia, Alabama, and Taylor Robert Nixon age 19 of Sundance Wyoming.

I called everyday, asking about my clothes, those were my only clothes I had. My phone, I needed my phone. My pay, I needed what I had made that trip so far.. Mikel would never respond. It's been 3 weeks now.. they won't send me my clothes, they won't send me my pay, won't even call to check on me to see how I'm doing. They wouldn't even give us insurance information, they were going to stick us with everything. I even wanted to take him to court, but you see, this man is so crooked, he knew that hiring kids straight out of high school would be dumb enough to fall in love with the money, not knowing that if their was ever ANY legal problems, 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. We never knew that Tennessee employers with 6 or more employees are required by law to carry workers compensation. He basically influences young men to be a part of his crew, promising a big life, and living the dream. But he never legally hires anyone, pays cash under the table.. all the while, everyone is basically "volunteering" their time to sell his merchandise. Anyone involved in any type of incident that reflects on Mikel Knight, whether it be words said about his work ethics, or an auto accident in one of his vans, he automatically cuts all ties with those involved, keeps their pay, throws away their belongings, and avoids all contact. I got home from the hospital and the bill from the helicopter service/air ambulance was on our kitchen table... $39,000.00. Mikel Knight has screwed me, not only leaving me with all of these bills at the age of 19 and no pay or none of my clothes or anything, but leaving me in my position without a job or knowing where I'm going to go with the rest of my life.. Legal counsel advised me that unless Mikel Knight has workers comp insurance, I cannot do anything but file a claim with his auto insurance. They also advised me that "Mikel Knight has broken every law in the book regarding TN employment laws, more than likely he doesn't have workers comp. Guys like MIkel Knight care only about their self and no one else."

My eyes have been opened, I wasted almost a year of my life out on the road with these guys, even though I made a few friends here and there and got to meet thousands of people everyday, even got to see beautiful parts of the country. I got handed a stack of cash at the end of every tiring trip. But, I missed out on the first year of my daughter's life. I missed almost every one of her "Firsts". I lost so many friendships back home, even relationships with family members. And I drifted from God.

Everyone needs to know about how this man truly is, this "Mikel Knight". His real name is Jason Cross. He's a Texas gangster that hides his real name because of Legal reasons back in Texas. And he has perfected a hustle with dumb and innocent young teenagers. I never realized why people that had been there longest were getting fired, and it's because they started catching onto everything he was doing and he was scared they could ruin things for him so he would get rid of them before they exposed of him. I can't tell you how many people's lives I've heard him threaten, including his manager, his employees, people high up in his "company". He has cut me off, and I'm sure he will try to send someone to try to hurt or even kill me. But I Have GOD on my side, I don't just "talk about it and think God's on my side. He donates a very small portion of his proceeds back to a Family Shelter and he thinks that's how God will repay him. He is evil and the way he has done me, along with many others is WRONG.

I NEED YOUR HELP. If I can't get justice legally, I need your help exposing "The Maverick" Mikel Knight. All of his fans need to know who he really is! Share this onto your timeline and to others pages that know who the REAL Mikel Knight, or JASON CROSS is!