‘Helping people survive’: how creating a hip-hop album saved incarcerated artists

Formerly or currently imprisoned artists in Florida came together to create an inspiring album, much of which was recorded under difficult circumstancesIn Locked Down, a song by the San Diego-based poet and rapper, Chance, she sings with both foreboding and care: “Every day that you wake up you’re blessed / love every breath, ’cause you don’t know what’s next.” Chance wrote the song – originally a poem, its title a callback to Akon’s Locked Up – while imprisoned in Phoenix, Arizona, during the beginning of the Covid pandemic and subsequent lockdown (“six feet apart in a five-by-five,” she raps in the same song, alluding to the virtual impossibility of social distancing in the American prison system). It’s part of Chance’s self-published collection of short stories and poems, entitled Pandemic Soup for the Soul, a reflection on “what we experienced during the pandemic crisis”, she shared with me in a recent phone call. “It’s crazy how they maintained control and instilled fear within us. When you’re locked up, you ask yourself … are you going to be angry, or are you going to find what your calling and purpose is?”Locked Down is also one of 16 tracks on Bending the Bars, a hip-hop album featuring original songs by artists formerly or currently incarcerated in Florida’s Broward county jails (with the exception of Chance, a Florida native). Bending the Bars was organized by the south Florida abolitionist organization Chip – the Community Hotline for Incarcerated People – which was initially founded to support inmates during the early days of Covid. Nicole Morse, a Chip co-founder and associate professor at the University of Maryland, says the organization began fielding calls in April 2020, primarily from Broward, the county just north of Miami-Dade; the calls were primarily about medical neglect, abuse and an atmosphere of abject fear, perpetuated by guards who demanded silence. Continue reading...

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