Cage

Christian Palko (born May 4, 1973), better known by his stage name Cage, is an American rapper from Middletown, New York. With a majority of his career being spent with record labels Definitive Jux and Eastern Conference. He has released six solo albums, in addition to two compilation albums and two EPs. Aside from his solo career, Cage is one of the founders of the underground hip hop supergroup The Weathermen, which was formed in 1999. He also established a group called Smut Peddlers, with hip hop duo The High & Mighty, publishing an album titled Porn Again, in 2001. He is also known for his collaborations with New Jersey rapper Tame One; the two were collectively known as Leak Bros. Cage and Camu Tao made up the duo Nighthawks, who released an eponymous 2002 album. Early life Chris Palko was born in Würzburg, West Germany, to American parents. His father was stationed on a West German military base as a member of the military police. Palko lived there until the age of four when his father was dishonorably discharged for selling and using heroin, and the family was sent back to the United States, where they lived in Middletown, New York. His father would often force Palko to pull homemade tourniquets around his arm as he injected heroin. At the age of eight, Palko's father was arrested during a standoff with state troopers after threatening his family with a shotgun. By the time Palko was expelled from high school, his mother had remarried twice, and he was beaten by his stepfather Frank. Palko began using PCP, cocaine, LSD, cannabis and alcohol. Palko was arrested several times for drug possession and fighting in the streets. Facing jail time for violating probation, his mother convinced the judge he was mentally unstable, and was sent to the Stony Lodge psychiatric hospital for a two-week evaluation. He stayed in the hospital for sixteen months, where he was a part of a small group used to test fluoxetine, commonly known as Prozac. After being misdiagnosed and placed on the drug, he became suicidal and made several attempts to kill himself, including hanging himself with his shoelaces and saving his lithium dose for a month before ingesting all of them at once.