From Behind Bars, a Rap Artist Challenges a Culture of Injustice
Richie Reseda wrote and produced an entire album while serving his sentence.
An excerpt -
At a dark, red-hued club in downtown Los Angeles, a couple dozen people are gathered to celebrate local rapper Richie Reseda, who is marking his 24th birthday by dropping his debut album. Dark velvet curtains are drawn over the windows of the club, and guests settle into black leather seating, drinks in hand. Onstage, the DJ, wearing a t-shirt that reads “Assata Is Welcome Here,” plays Kendrick Lamar and Janelle Monae, warming up the crowd for the main event. This is Reseda’s opportunity to share his album, Forgotten But Not Gone, with an intimate assembly of friends, family and colleagues. Only the young rapper isn’t here. He’s in prison.
Reseda produced much of his album with the help of Damon Turner, founder of the label GREEDY CITY, from the penitentiary where he is serving the fifth year of a 10-year sentence. He recorded verses over the prison phones with Turner, who executive produced and released the album under his label. After GOOD wrote about the release of Reseda’s first single this past summer, he says prison authorities searched his cell, looking for recording devices or mobile phones.
When Reseda does finally appear at his own party, it is as a disembodied voice. His words, from a prison phone call recorded prior to the event, emerge from the speakers. “Everyone who is supporting this by coming to the function …” he says, his voice trailing off. “This is honestly a dream come true for me.”
The complete album, released last week, is a clarion call for the Black Lives Matter movement, a 14-track record that name-checks Michael Brown and Renisha McBride, and condemns police brutality. Forgotten But Not Gone is a significant addition to the catalog of protest music and art that has emerged in the wake of the uprisings in Ferguson and Baltimore, a soundtrack to the struggle against state violence and mass incarceration. But as an autobiographical work, it provides insight into the ways in which institutionalized inequality manifests in the day-to-day lives of people in the U.S.
http://magazine.good.is/features/richie-reseda-forgotten-but-not-gone?utm_source=thedailygood&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dailygood
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