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If you peruse the Wikipedia entries of different rappers in the hip-hop world, a common theme begins to emerge from beneath the section labelled ‘Personal Life’, where invariably is another category titled ‘Legal Issues’.

It’s not guaranteed, but it is a phrase that appears with remarkable frequency. It is not especially difficult to work out why: rappers, as predominantly inner-city Black Americans who were raised working class, are targeted by the US legal system to a grossly disproportionate extent. Some of them may find immense power and wealth thanks to their careers, but, fundamentally, the dynamics of a racist state may still affect them, where plenty must endure stints in jail.

None of this is to suggest that every Black rapper in jail is there unfairly, but the fact remains that Black Americans are broadly overly policed and punished, often because of the uneven way in which drug laws are applied throughout the US. In her book on the issue of mass incarceration in America, The New Jim Crow, scholar Michelle Alexander made a similar point more eloquently: “All of us violate the law at some point in our lives. In fact, if the worst thing you have ever done is speed ten miles over the speed limit on the freeway, you have put yourself and others at more risk of harm than someone smoking marijuana in the privacy of his or her living room. Yet there are people in the United States serving life sentences for first-time drug offences, something virtually unheard of anywhere else in the world.”

Those people, of course, are likely to be Black, but some incarcerated artists continued to work even while behind bars, and these ten albums are a result of those efforts; however, keep in mind, given the frequency rates of such arrests, this list is far from exhaustive.

10 albums from behind the slammer

10. Lil’ Boosie – Incarcerated (2010)

In 2009, the controversial Southern hip-hop pioneer, Boosie Badazz, or Lil’ Boosie as he was known at the time, was sentenced to four years for gun and drug offences. The following year, he was accused of murder as well as being sentenced to a further ten years on more drug charges. He was found not guilty of the murder charge in 2012, but, all the same, he spent many years in jail, ultimately released in 2014, five years after he was first locked up.

In 2010, during the early stages of his imprisonment at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, Asylum Records released Boosie’s fourth album, Incarcerated, which went on to chart and sell fairly well in the US. The album had been largely completed before he was sent to jail, as he explained to The Guardian following his release. “It’s hard to keep your career going,” he said of his time in prison, “I was just blessed to have music put away before I went in”.

9. TI – No Mercy (2010)

TI, following previous stints in jail and a halfway house, was on probation in 2010, but in September, he and his wife were arrested for drug possession, and he was consequently sentenced to 11 months for violating his probation. He’d been rearing to release a new album at the time, King Uncaged, but, considering this fresh stint behind bars, he needed a new name, and so No Mercy was born, which came out in December 2010, a month after he was sent back to jail.

The album did well, reaching number four in the album charts, while individual tracks also racked up some awards and nominations, including two Grammy shout-outs. He was released in 2011, but he would fall into trouble with the law a few more times, even landing a European jail stint following his arrest in Amsterdam for crashing his bike into a police car.

8. Slick Rick – Behind Bars (1994)

In 1990, Slick Rick’s bodyguard and cousin had started targeting him for extortion, which eventually led Rick to fire him, but that also meant the cousin became violent, attempting to rob Rick a few times and even threatening to kill him. The rapper, in response, armed himself, and, eventually, the situation boiled over when he saw his cousin and shot at him in his local area, also hitting a passerby. Neither of them was badly injured, but Rick, while proclaiming that he was acting in self-defence, ultimately pleaded guilty to attempted murder and other charges to spend a total of five years in jail.

While he was out on bail before the verdict, Rick recorded his second album, The Ruler’s Back, in a matter of weeks, and it was released in 1991. But his 1994 follow-up, Behind Bars, was actually put together during the period of his imprisonment, where he recorded his vocal parts while he was out on furlough, with the music later being built around what he had laid down.

7. Prodigy – HNIC Pt 2 (2008)

HNIC Pt 2 was Mobb Deep rapper Prodigy’s follow-up to his debut solo album, which came out in 2000, but the circumstances in which he’d finally gotten around to putting this sequel together were far from ideal. Prodigy was facing the prospect of several years in jail after he was arrested for possession of a firearm. HNIC Pt 2 was, ultimately, released in 2008, not long after his stretch inside began. He was released three years later, and, in subsequent interviews, he claimed that the prison experience had actually been good for him.

“I was a fucked up individual going into jail,” he told Good*Fella Media, “I was trying to change my ways and do certain things the right way, but I had like one foot in heaven and the other foot in hell. It don’t work like that, you gotta choose a side… I had to learn that. I was fucked up, doing just foul shit.”

6. C-Murder – The Truest Shit I Ever Said (2005)

C-Murder, the brother of No Limit Records founder Master P, recorded his fifth studio album, The Truest Shit I Ever Said, entirely from jail. During visiting hours, his lawyer would give him a recorder for him to spit into, and with that, he laid down his vocal tracks. The album’s introduction features audio of his loved ones reflecting on his imprisonment, while another incarcerated rapper, Mac, features on the track ‘Camouflage & Murder’, infusing the whole record with his prison experience.

C-Murder had come up as an artist in the mid-’90s, but things fell apart in 2002, after he was arrested in connection with the murder of a teenager. He was sentenced to life in 2009, but, in 2018, it was reported that witnesses who’d initially testified against him had changed their stories, claiming they’d faced pressure by the police to pin the blame on him. C-Murder still maintains that he’s innocent, but no new trial has ever been called.

5. Gucci Mane – The State vs Radric Davis (2009)

Gucci Mane has a lifelong habit of getting into trouble with the law. Among his many, many stints in jail, he was sent down in November 2009 for breaking the terms of his parole. He spent six months in the slammer, during which time his first-ever major-label album, The State vs Radric Davis, was released by Warner Bros Records to decidedly mixed reviews.

After he was freed in 2009, Mane was reported, saying, “These past six months have been a difficult time, but fortunately, I have learned a great deal from my experience. [My] mistakes have brought me to where I am today, and they will not be repeated.” Unfortunately, he was wrong, and he’d be in and out of jail several more times in the coming years.

4. Capone-N-Noreaga – The War Report (1997)

The War Report by duo Capone-N-Noreaga is a classic example of the sounds of an East Coast hip-hop album, but the project, while finding both commercial and critical success, had to be completed in tough circumstances. That is, half of the duo had been arrested before the album was finished, with Capone sent to jail for breaking his parole terms, so his musical partner Noreaga had to complete the record by himself, and he did a fine job.

Part of what made The War Report such a classic is how it engaged the East Coast–West Coast feud, with one of its biggest tracks, ‘LA LA’, a direct response to Tha Dogg Pound’s single ‘New York, New York’, which accompanied a music video in which Tha Dogg Pound members knocked down New York buildings.

3. Shyne – Godfather Buried Alive (2004)

Shyne, the Belizean-American creator of Godfather Buried Alive, has lived quite the life. As a young rapper in the late ’90s, he was picked up by Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’ Bad Boy Records, through which he would release his debut album in 2000, but right before that, something dramatic happened. He attended a nightclub alongside Combs and Combs’ then-partner, Jennifer Lopez, shortly after Christmas in 1999, when a shooting took place. Shyne was armed that day, and he responded by firing back, which led to some legal troubles in the coming years that saw him sentenced to ten years in 2001.

While he was in jail, Shyne continued to work on new music, and his second album, Godfather Buried Alive, was released in 2004 via Def Jam. That’s a notable enough quirk in and of itself, but Shyne’s life would take more turns yet. He was deported from America after his release in 2009, and, after a stint in Jerusalem, where he developed his newfound Judaism, he moved back to Belize, where he began a political career. A political conservative, he served as the leader of the country’s opposition from 2022 until March this year.

2. Lil Wayne – I Am Not a Human Being (2010)

About a month after Lil Wayne’s seventh album, Rebirth, was released in 2010, he was sent to jail for being in possession of a weapon and marijuana in 2007. He’d already recorded his eighth album, I Am Not a Human Being, before being sent down, and he released it digitally in late September 2010, with a physical release following in early October. He’d actually been in solitary confinement when the album dropped, as punishment for getting caught with a charger and headphones in his cell.

The album was a huge success, debuting at number two in the US, before dropping down until the physical release in October sent it back up to number one. This wasn’t his only success while he was in jail, as he also featured on several other artists’ songs around that time. Apart from appearing on tunes by Drake and Eminem, he also recorded a verse over the phone from prison for a remix of Drake and Jay-Z’s collaboration ‘Light Up’.

1. 2Pac – Me Against the World (1995)

2Pac’s third album, Me Against the World, was released while he was in prison in 1995; while he’d written and recorded it before he had been convicted, he knew what was coming, and there is, consequently, a darkness that underpins the record. It was a more personal work than 2Pac had ever released before, and by his own telling, he made it as a means of demonstrating his respect for hip-hop as an art form, seeing huge commercial success upon its release.

Quoted in the book Tupac: Resurrection, 2Pac explained that if he makes mistakes in translating this art form in his own way, it’s merely because he’s human and those are not markers of him disrespecting it: “So Me Against the World was deep, reflective. It was like a blues record. It was down-home. It was all my fears, all the things I just couldn’t sleep about. Everybody thought that I was living so well and doing so good that I wanted to explain it. And it took a whole album to get it all out.”