Tiger King’s Joe Exotic Drops New Country Single

It looks like Joe Exotic – remember Tiger King? – is embarking on a country music career from prison, sharing the single My Best Friends with Taste Of Country and announcing his new album, Jungle Rhapsody: A Tiger King Experience.

My Best Friends, the first single from Jungle Rhapsody, finds Exotic singing to his nearest and dearest, “Even if I'm sick / No need to look around / 'Cause you're beside my bed / And every time I need someone to lean on, you're right there / 'Cause you're my only real true friends and I know you'll always care...”

Jungle Rhapsody will be produced by William Moseley, JT Barnett and Jonathan Hay, with partial recording sessions from the Fort Worth, Texas, prison where Exotic is currently incarcerated. You can listen to My Best Friends below.

In January 2022, Joe Exotic was sentenced to 22 years in prison, with a release date of December 2035.

Joe Exotic was convicted of “two counts of murder-for-hire, eight counts of violating the Lacey Act for falsifying wildlife records, and nine counts of violating the Endangered Species Act,” per the Western District of Oklahoma website. He was charged with allegedly organising murder-for-hire for his tiger-caring rival, Carole Baskin. She also starred in the 2020 Netflix documentary Tiger King.

According to Exotic, he claims that he is a “political prisoner for the Big Cat Public Safety Act — a bill signed by Joe Biden” that he says will end the ownership of tigers as pets.

“I was the person to stop the Big Cat Public Safety Act from ever passing, and they had to get me out of the way,” Exotic told Taste Of Country. “They nicknamed the bill ‘The Tiger King Bill.’ This could happen to any of you — to any of my best friends.”

Exotic is running as a Democrat candidate for the 2024 US presidency.

Earlier this year, The Music reported that Tiger King Netflix documentary series director Chris Smith has turned his attention to Devo, with the aptly-titled Devo film on the way.

Smith revealed in a press release, “Devo was a huge influence on me. Their approach to music, film, video, and art was something I had never seen before and was one of the truly formative artistic influences that showed me there were entirely new ways to look at things.”

Devo are touring Australia this December as part of their joint farewell and 50th-anniversary tour, headlining Good Things Festival alongside Fall Out Boy and Limp Bizkit.