Dogpatch is a podcast with two funny hosts Dante Carfagna and Jon Kirby talking about music, and playing music on a theme in each episode. The last episode was about music recorded in prison, by prisoners, the big chunk of it from the 1970s. Maximum Security Prism episode features music by Location Service, Walls, Reality Index, Public-Use Guitar, Pando, Cashbox Directory, All-State Band, Bids, Culture Gaps, Concrete Reflection, Cupcake, Winston Moore, Studio Guns, Isolated Not Isolation, Rodeos, Stateville Merch Booth, and Heartsongs.

Fast-rising West Coast rapper Drakeo the Ruler accepted a “sudden” plea deal offered for time served from the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office on Monday, and was released from prison after two and a half years behind bars, NPR reports. The 26-year-old was found not guilty of murder and attempted murder in July 2019, but was kept in jail based on two gang-related charges that rested on the bizarre assumption that his rap group, the Stinc Team, constituted a gang.

NPR’s new podcast Louder Than A Riot is the story of the “interconnected rise of hip-hop and mass incarceration” in America where "rhyme and punishment go hand in hand". From Bobby Shmurda to Nipsey Hussle, each episode explores an artist's story to examine a different aspect of the criminal justice system that disproportionately impacts Black America. It goes from the point of power - the power the music industry wields over artists, the power of institutional forces that marginalize communities of color, the power of the prison industrial complex and the power dynamics deep-rooted in the rap game.

Jay-Z and Meek Mills initiative REFORM Alliance made their first major legislative victory as California Governor Gavin Newsom signed AB 1950 into law, which will limit adult probation sentence maximums to one year for misdemeanors and two years for felonies. The new law was pushed forward in a campaign led by REFORM, Hip Hop DX reports. Newsom also signed a bill banning police officers’ use of chokeholds during arrests and another that made it so the state’s attorney general can independently investigate police shootings.

Singer Jill Brown has started a record label Criminal Records in an effort to give a voice to jailhouse Scots, BBC reports. "It's to plant a seed of hope to let them see that their lives can be better" - Brown says. An inmate named Ryan (in his early 30s) says that music during his incarceration "means everything really. It gives me something positive to do every day. When I'm in my cell it gives me something to look forward to - hopefully using it to keep me out of the jail when I'm outside".

The Atlantic has a great article about America and its system in general, seen through the eyes of incarcerated rappers. Drakeo the Ruler has managed to record an album while in prison, although he has been kept in solitary confinement for months - “It’s like they keep tryna silence me ... That’s what all these protests are about, too”. L.A. rapper 03 Greedo, currently serving a 20-year sentence on drug-trafficking and weapons-possession charges, has recorded an album just before he had to go to prison - “Honestly, I could be a whole ’nother artist if I was from somewhere nicer”. BL Shirelle grew up surrounded by drug usage and crime, and she ended up in prison at age 18 - “they knew I was coming; my bed was prepared way before the act was even done”.

On June 19 - or Juneteenth, the commemoration of the end of slavery in the United States - Die Jim Crow, the first nonprofit record label for formerly or currently incarcerated musicians in America, released its first full-length album, Shirelle’s 'Assata Troi'. Shirelle, 32, was incarcerated twice, but now she holds the position of deputy director of Die Jim Crow, trying to look back on her life so far - “this album really is about coming of age, but not of age 21, more like of age 28, where you’re just starting to realize certain things”, as she's told the LA Times. Die Jim Crow was founded in 2013 by Fury Young, an artist and activist, who took to Kickstarter to raise funds for a one-off record featuring incarcerated artists, generating nearly $20,000.

California gangsta rapper Drakeo the Ruler this week released his new album 'Thank You for Using GTL', a project recorded through a prison phone over the span of two weeks. The rapper was acquitted of murder in July of 2019, but the district attorney's office used his rap lyrics as proof to connect him to illegal activities. The 26-year-old transformed GTL, the inmate telecommunications system contracted by Los Angeles County, into his studio and created a project with his producer JOOGSZN. Passion of the Weiss calls it "miraculous, hard to listen to, perhaps indefinitely challenging as fighting the Los Angeles Police State becomes trendy enough for Santa Monica".

Rapper Maserati E arrived in San Quentin state prison in 2017, and after seeing fellow prisoner David Jassy rapping, the two started making an album with other inmates. They wanted “a real opportunity to change the narrative” around incarceration, Rolling Stone reports. There were two rules - no swearing and no glorifying the criminal lifestyle. Their first mixtape is out now. Jassy is out of prison (sentenced reduced partly thanks to that mixtape), but he continues to make music with prisoners still in San Quentin.

Billy McFarland is serving a six-year prison sentence for wire fraud in relation to his ill-fated April 2017 Bahamas-based music Fyre Festival, and he is starting a new endeavor from inside prison: crowd-funding money for other inmates to be able to call their loved ones during these trying times. As he's told the New York Post, he hopes his initiative called Project-315 ($3.15 is the standard cost for a 15-minute prison phone call) will bring together and connect in-need inmates and their families who are affected by coronavirus by paying for calls "for as many incarcerated people across the country as possible". He swears it's no scam - “All the money that’s coming in is going directly to the initiative. I’m not on any of the bank accounts or documents and I don’t have access to any of the funds”.

Moroccan rapper Gnawi was handed a one-year prison sentence Monday by a judge for insulting the police and the king in an unusually outspoken video exposing their country's problems with migration and drugs, Reuters reports. Moroccan authorities have said Gnawi's arrest was prompted by an earlier video in which he insulted the police, a crime […]

"It's completely changed me as a person. I'm not this angry little kid anymore" - a former prisoner Aaron, who was in prison last year, tells BBC, and this last weekend he was one of a group of ex-inmates to perform at Latitude Festival. The noble project was started by InHouse Records, UK's first record […]

Two members of Iranian metal band Confess have been sentenced to 14 1/2 years in prison and 74 lashes for the crime of playing metal, by the Revolutionary Tribunal of Tehran. While waiting for the Tribunal's decision frontman Nikan Khosravi and Arash Ilkhani fled to Turkey, and were eventually granted asylum in Norway, where the […]