Incarcerating Blackness
[Verse 1]
Fat Boys out here talking bout plight of jail
But I gotta ask, from where do they hail?
Brooklyn also known as King County
Gilmore’s Gulag talking prison bounty
So now it makes sense that the poor make the rich
In the land of the free...for the Capitalist
Brooklyn had to suffer from War on Drugs
It destroyed their economy, and a family’s love
So now let’s refocus and look at the real foe
Alexander likes to call it the New Jim Crow
Money pumped into policing the hood
You know these white folks were up to no good
Republicans won by being tough on crime
And Reagan said, let’s give ‘em minimum time
Fat Boys out here, from the hood
I just wish for them, justice was good

[Hook 1]
In jail, in jail, in jail, in jail cause you have no bail
In jail, in jail, in jail, in jail the system failed
In jail, in jail, in jail, in jail cause you have no bail
In jail, in jail, in jail, in jail the system failed
[Verse 2]
Thirteenth amendment said slavery’s done
Except for those living in prison
We like to pretend that we’re far from the past
But racism persists with the new racial caste
The light never shines on the prison complex
They’re making money off social death
Castin a shadow on our forgotten sons
Whose lives that have barely begun
Heard of Jersey 4? Or Ms. B?
If you did maybe they’d be free
Unnecessary obsessions with weed possession
We want rehab and not a death wish
Prison means punishment, not reform
Cause once you’re out, you're back in the hole
Recidivism sits at 50 percent
Without a job how do you pay rent?

[Interlude]
“What you hear in popular discourse on talk radio stations or in the newspaper is ‘lock them up’, ‘lock them up yesterday’ or ‘kill them.'  You see, and it becomes a political –again– an engine, feeding an industry.”
-Mumia Abu-Jamal

[Hook]
In jail, in jail, in jail, in jail the system failed
In jail
In jail, in jail, in jail, in jail cause you have no bail
In jail, in jail, in jail, in jail the system failed
[Verse 3]
A new epidemic--mass incarceration
We sold it to the globe, so now there’s nowhere to run
Unless you go to Norway, where you’ll have a good time
Or in Rwanda, where they forgive your crimes
Crime and punishment, they go hand in hand
Like prison and money, supply and demand
Shoutout Angela, she a real one
Only way to progress--prison abolition