Perspective is everything. Just ask anyone who has crossed paths in prison with Lyle and Erik Menendez.

The brothers’ “sense of entitlement” regularly riled Hector Bravo Ferrel, a former corrections officer.

Former inmate Eugene Weems, who spent time with Lyle at California’s Mule Creek State Prison, told The Post he considers him a “coward.”

But to Anerae “X-Raided” Brown – a rapper who served 26 years for murder – both Lyle and Erik are mentors who helped guide the former Crips gang member to freedom.

And to other prisoners the the brothers are the inspiration behind an art project, and in Erik’s case, the best man who aided a fellow-inmate in a jailhouse wedding.

The sharp divisions in opinion among those who know them come amid the latest attempt by the brothers to be freed, 33 years after killing their parents in a bloodbath at their Beverly Hills mansion.

The brothers claim there is new evidence to back their defense that they killed their parents Jose and Mary Louise “Kitty” Menendez in August 1989 after a “lifetime of physical and sexual abuse.”

Attorneys for Lyle, 55 and Eric, 52, say testimony from Roy Rosselló, a one-time member of Latin boy band Menudo, that he was raped by Jose Menendez, a senior RCA Records executive, several years before the killings shows that the brothers acted in “imperfect self-defense” and were guilty only of manslaughter.

The lawyers filed papers in early May seeking to vacate the brothers’ 1996 convictions and sentences of life without parole.

But to Ferrel, who worked inside the special prison unit where Erik and Lyle are held, the legal moves are only another example of the pair’s narcissism.

Both men are inmates at Facility E – known as Echo Yard – in Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego, a special unit where 700-plus prisoners have a relaxed regime after earning the right to be held there, many by giving up gang affiliations.

Echo Yard’s special status means prisoners can largely move freely between 7 a.m. and 9 p.m. It also regularly attracts local television and documentary crews.

That’s when Ferrel, 38, who retired as a lieutenant in December after 16 years as a California state corrections officer, witnessed what he calls the brothers’ sense of entitlement.

“These two guys would always, always, always try to come out on the camera,” he said. “Always tried to be in the picture.

“To me, that’s a sense of entitlement,” said Ferrel, whose duties included supervising the innovative unit’s yard.

The Menendez brothers undeniably have an “aura” about them and stand out among other prisoners thanks to “celebrity status,” Ferrel acknowledged. 

“Individuals like that, who come from the streets with fame, yeah, there’s no doubt they know who they are,” he said.

Some convicts deferred to the pair in “hopes of getting something from them,” but as a guard, Ferrel did his best to avoid them. But the brothers had no shortage of attention inside prison, including regular letters from fervent female fans, Ferrel said. Both Erik and Lyle have married while behind bars.

The retired corrections lieutenant said he’s not shocked the Menendez brothers are trying a new avenue to be released.

“I’m not surprised,” Ferrel, the author of “Operation: Yard Recall,” said. “It all makes sense now.”

Brown, in contrast, characterized Lyle and Erik as mentors who encouraged him to change his life by taking more than a dozen prison classes and programs, including anger management and Narcotics Anonymous courses.

Brown first met Lyle in late 2000 at Mule Creek, where they quickly bonded over their shared notoriety despite vastly different backgrounds.

Brown was a Crip from Sacramento. Known in the yard as X-Raided, the rapper released his first album at 15 and still had a “foot in gang-banging,” a lifestyle far from the affluence of Beverly Hills in which Menendez had lived, he said.

“He’s a very charismatic, magnetic person,” Brown told The Post. “We just became people who could rely on each other.”

The connection was first forged on a prison football field, where other inmates doled out cheap shots to Lyle, including elbowing him in a “petty” way, prompting Brown to stand up for him.

The pair also connected over media scrutiny. Brown continued to release music from prison, attracting interest from reporters and even MTV.

Lyle soon urged Brown to renounce his violent past. That helped spark a seismic shift, with the rapper embarking on a decades-long quest to transform his life.

“I became Project Menendez.”

rapper Anerae “X-Raided” Brown on Lyle and Erik’s help toward his 2018 parole

“Lyle was the guy who started teaching me the value of utilizing my popularity to my advantage in a way where I can be influential for positive things,” said Brown, whose latest album is available Friday. “He was the first person to say, ‘Hey man, I think you should sign up for these classes, there’s another way to do your time.'”

In 2008, Brown was transferred to Pleasant Valley State Prison where Erik Menendez was waiting to greet him, after a letter from Lyle.

“It said, essentially, ‘I love X-Raided, he’s my little brother and take care of him how you would take care of me,'” Brown recalled.

Brown praised Erik as a “calm, put-together” soul who picked up right where Lyle left off. “He was a positive influence on me, and somebody that I looked up to,” said Brown, who left the Crips.

“I became Project Menendez and they really did everything they could do to make sure I didn’t spend the rest of my life in that environment,” Brown said.

In 2018, he was paroled after years of tutelage and guidance from both brothers. Erik even wrote a letter of support for the rapper, he said.

Brown isn’t the only inmate positively impacted by the Menendez brothers. In early 2020, they were credited with inspiring a mural inside Echo Yard, with Lyle showcasing its first stage on local TV station KGTV.

“I spoke to Lyle and Erik who had been thinking about the beautification,” Brahman Kyrie, a volunteer who teaches yoga at the unit, told the station. We’re going to plant flowers and grass and things like that soon.”

Another inmate, Martin Robinson, also thanked Lyle for helping him “in a lot of ways” while locked up.

The murals spawned a non-profit, Redemption Row California, which last year posted on its Instagram that Lyle led the project, “Rehabilitation through Beautification” with Erik and a third prisoner, Joel Baptiste. 

In April, Lyle was best man when Baptiste married Redemption Row California co-founder Jen Abreu in prison. The group backs both brothers in their freedom bid, calling them “victims” of their father.

Lyle and Erik benefit from the Echo Yard regime, allowing them to exercise, attend medical appointments or religious services from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. with the exception of count times, Ferrel said. Inmates can work at RJD’s bakery, laundry facility or shoe factory. They can also enroll in community service crews and literacy programs.

Both are confined in six-person, dormitory-style units, which have one toilet. They appeared to work out regularly, Ferrel said.

“They exercised and they could run laps around the track in the yard, do push-ups, do pull-ups or play basketball,” the retired prison guard said. “I don’t know if they played,” he said, but added they are “very social.”

Ferrel said correctional officers were unhappy in 2018 when Lyle had been transferred to Donovan, reuniting him with Erik for the first time since 1996. It added to the celebrity status of prison, which also holds Death Row Records cofounder Marion “Suge” Knight and Robert F. Kennedy assassin Sirhan Sirhan in other units.

“When they put them together, they put them together,” Ferrel said of prison officials reuniting Erik and Lyle. “That’s what that looked like – like a hookup, or more like a political stunt.”

The prison’s warden at the time, Daniel Paramo, had his own motivations, according to Ferrel, who said he and other correctional officers questioned why the Menendez brothers were accommodated.

“I mean, it’s like, why?” Ferrel said. “Why do them the favor?”

In turn, Lyle and Erik weren’t model inmates, Ferrel said. California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation officers twice seized a cellphone from Erik between 2018 and 2021. His punishment cannot be publicly disclosed, spokeswoman Tessa Outhyse told The Post.

Prior to his transfer to RJD in early 2018, Lyle Menendez was incarcerated at Mule Creek State Prison outside Sacramento, where he befriended Eugene L. Weems, the former inmate told The Post.

“We was [sic] good friends,” said Weems, an MMA fighter who served 17 years for robbery and knew Lyle before being released in late 2018. “He always hung around me for protection.”

Weems, 48, wrote a book about his link to Menendez, “Prison Secrets: The Untold Truths About One of America’s Most Notorious Murderers,” detailing how he warned Lyle not to get out of line.

“You can’t act like you act, you can’t do that, you know,” Weems recalled saying. “You can’t act like you’re better than everyone in here. These dudes will kill you, bro – like, for real. You’re not built like that, you’re a feline, you know what I’m saying?”

Few inmates at Mule Creek respected Lyle due to the disturbing double murder of his parents despite his life of affluence and being “raised with a gold spoon,” Weems said.

“He’s a coward, he’s very disrespectful, he is flamboyant and he thinks he’s better than everyone else,” Weems said Wednesday. “This is how he is, this is truth. I dealt with him, we were friends.”

The brothers’ new push for freedom is currently being reviewed by prosecutors, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office said, and by a judge.

Mark Geragos, Lyle and Erik’s long-time attorney, said state Superior Court judges typically respond to writ of habeas corpus filings within 45 days by either issuing an order requesting a formal reply from prosecutors, seeking an informal response via letter or simply denying the petition.

Geragos is seeking to overturn the convictions won by prosecutors at the brothers’ second trials. Their first trial ended in a hung jury before they were re-tried separately.

The brother’s legal team sees sworn evidence by Roy Rosselló first reported in a Peacock documentary that he was drugged and raped by Jose Menendez as a bombshell breakthrough that validates the self-defense claim Erik and Lyle used unsuccessfully at both trials.

During the first trial, their cousin, Diane Marie Hernandez, testified that 8-year-old Lyle told her in 1976 he was being molested by his father. But the evidence wasn’t allowed in the retrials.

“In fundamental fairness, they should be out,” Geragos told The Post. “I would also say the prism through which you look at this now is so much different than it was then … and somebody smarter than me said, you know, ‘If these were the Menendez sisters, they wouldn’t be in prison.’”

Geragos wants the judge to at least agree to a full hearing on the new evidence.

“I think the testimony via declaration that Jose did this to the young man in Menudo is compelling to the point where an order to show cause should be issued so that we can air this all out. I think it should be successful. I think we’re just a different time period,” he said.

“Present day, both of them are extremely impressive men,” Geragos told The Post of Lyle and Erik. “The public may have them – and rightfully so – in their memories from the B-roll tape of the trials, but both of them have been in custody for decades and have done, I think, impressive work in prison.” 

Geragos also rejected any suggestion that Lyle and Erik have been less than “exemplary” inmates.

“Erik has started and participated in programs that scores of inmates have graduated from and correctional authorities have lauded what they have accomplished,” the attorney said.

One of Kitty Menendez’s brothers, has blasted Lyle and Erik’s latest legal move for freedom.

“They do not deserve to walk on the face of this earth after killing my sister and my brother-in-law,” Milton Andersen, 88, told the New York Times last month.