Opinion | The Promise of Prison Music

But violent crime had been on the rise, reaching a peak in 1991, and political rhetoric turned away from rehabilitation to punishment. For wardens running bigger and fuller prisons, letting in people and technology was one more avoidable security risk. The racial prejudice that underpinned the War on Drugs infected how a lot of prison music was perceived. Merle Haggard, a former prisoner, had climbed to country music stardom in the 1960s with applause lines like “I turned 21 in prison doing life without parole,” while some rappers found their lyrics used against them in court. Throughout the 1990s, a rising victims’ rights movement framed any creativity behind bars as a moral affront to crime survivors.

Much of society lost interest in hearing the voices of people inside prisons, but they didn’t stop creating and often they used music as a form of resistance. As incarceration and harsh policing became more common experiences for Black Americans throughout the 1990s, these themes became mainstays of hip-hop. Darrell Wayne Caldwell, who performed as Drakeo the Ruler, made a critically acclaimed album in 2020 while inside the Los Angeles County Men’s Central Jail, recording all his verses over the phone. He was hardly the first to do such a thing.

There are hopeful signs that our prison system could return to seeing music as a way to maintain hope inside — and prepare society to accept the people they’re going to release. In 2020, men at San Quentin State Prison were given clearance to release a stellar mixtape, while others were featured on “Ear Hustle,” the popular podcast made in the facility. One of the podcast’s hosts, Earlonne Woods, told me that a good prison artist, like the formerly incarcerated rapper Antwan “Banks” Williams, gives voice to the emotions that lots of people are experiencing inside.

Meanwhile, producers with Die Jim Crow Records are collecting instruments to send into prisons and building soundproof studios in prison gyms and janitorial closets out of PVC pipe and blankets. “Technology is so advanced now, you don’t actually need much to make it sound really good,” said BL Shirelle, the rapper who works as the label’s co-executive director.

These promising experiments suggest that there are far more opportunities waiting for music producers — along with book publishers, art galleries, DJs and other cultural gatekeepers — to discover, cultivate and promote the ocean of talent and creativity behind prison walls.

You could argue that they need us. But the truth is we need them.