The two are currently preparing a handful of new releases for next year. The plan right now is to put out three, including the full-length debut of South Carolina rapper B. Alexis. “We’re gearing up for some serious releases next year,” Shirelle says from her home in Philadelphia. “B. Alexis is our first lady on the label. We’re trying to get her project out next year. It’s epic. It’s real hip-hop. It’s really fucking good.”
FREER shared “Black Barbie,” the first B. Alexis single, in 2022, but has been running into some unexpected censorship issues with the upcoming album. “It’s going to take an extra layer of creativity to make it interesting for the people,” Shirelle explains. “I’m excited about it. I look forward to the challenge.”
It’s not that the record is filled with gratuitous lyrics or imagery. See, B. Alexis has been in a South Carolina prison since she was seventeen and is still serving a thirty-year sentence for murder. And FREER, formerly known as Die Jim Crow Records, works with currently or formerly incarcerated artists — the first nonprofit record label of its kind. So there are even more hoops to jump through when it comes to its output.
Young, who lives in New York City, started what would eventually become FREER Records in 2013 after reading the book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, by Michelle Alexander. Initially, he sought to work with imprisoned musicians, and put out one EP called Die Jim Crow in an effort to raise awareness about racial injustice in the American justice system. He knew that it would be difficult, but the project still took more legwork than he had expected, as gaining access into correctional facilities is riddled with red tape. But his passion for the message behind Die Jim Crow, as it was called at the time, kept him going.
“That’s something that once you get in, you can’t get out," he says.
In 2018, Young traveled to Colorado's Territorial Correctional Facility in Cañon City to record with seven musicians after a mutual friend connected him with Rick Raemisch, director of the Colorado Department of Corrections from 2013 until his 2019 retirement.
The result, a 2021 record called Tlaxihuiqui, is unlike anything you’ve ever heard. It’s been called a prog-Americana album, which isn’t technically wrong, but that fails to encompass the diversity, originality and overall impact of the thirteen tracks. There are Indigenous Nahuatl chants, blues and hip-hop throughout Tlaxihuiqui, which means "the calling of the spirits" in the Uzo-Aztecan language of Nahuatl. But the real reason the album is so impactful stems from its unlikely group of players, which includes several lifers, Native American and Black artists, a queer Jewish man, and a white musician convicted on five counts of murder. Not only was it recorded in four days, but it’s the only music to ever be released beyond the prison’s walls in 150-plus years.
The historic musical moment at the state’s first prison — which was built in 1871 as the colonies expanded west into unknown Indigenous lands — is captured in the recently released documentary DJCX: How We Got FREER, which covers the label’s humble beginnings and gradual transformation into a groundbreaking endeavor.
Kevin Woodley, left, watches Michael Tenneson play the keyboard during a 2018 recording session at Territorial Correctional Facility in Cañon City.
Courtesy FREER Records
“Even just now, my hairs are standing up a little bit just hearing that,” Young says of the scene. “Or the part where he says, ‘I’m really looking forward to a day where I can reach out and hold your hand — and when I say that, I don’t just mean shaking it, I mean holding you.’”
That’s why FREER, which just rebranded this year, does what it does. Other than advocating and raising awareness about the societal ills and effects of mass incarceration, it’s giving otherwise overlooked, and maybe misunderstood, artists a voice and outlet to share their stories through the universal language of music.
“Unfortunately, I just got the news a few weeks ago that Kevin Woodley passed away,” Young somberly shares.
“He was, you can say, the star of the first album. Certainly had a huge impact on it. He’s on the cover with his hands outstretched,” he adds. “He had only gotten out in July of last year. He was out not even a full year. It’s tragic, but you see that a lot with people who have done twenty years or more and are over sixty. They get out and maybe live another five years.”
Woodley, who was initially sentenced to life and was recently battling cancer, was 64.
FREER is currently working on a second album (release date to be determined) with Territorial incarcerees, and recently shared Woodley’s “swan song,” a previously unreleased track titled “Felonism.”
Woodley's own words about the song were included in the single's announcement: “This is a little story about facing discrimination while looking for employment. Being someone who has spent a lot of time in prison, I have witnessed many people have to give up their dreams in exchange for bad decisions they have made,” he said. “As felons, we are the only group that it is legal and just to discriminate against. So this is a simple reality that comes with our existence that I wanted to share.”
A special tribute for Woodley is planned for FREER’s Instruments Into Prisons concert on October 27 in New York City. “There are a couple recordings that we got with him in 2018 that we haven’t released,” Young says. “Some voice-memo-type stuff, lower-quality things that I got over the phone, so we’ll try to incorporate that in some way and bring his spirit into the next album.”
Overall, FREER has released three LPs, four EPs and eighteen singles, all featuring 65 incarcerated and eighteen formerly incarcerated musicians. Young and his crew have completed a total of seventeen prison visits in ten states so far, and getting into the prisons isn't as much of an issue as it was in the beginning.
“It’s been a while since we tried with a new place; I have a sneaking suspicion that it will be easier when we try again," Young says. "We have a good track record. I think Die Jim Crow as a name maybe threw off some DOCs a little bit.
“Our shit is just really organized now, and we know what we want. It’s not our first rodeo, so we can go to a DOC and just be really clear about our intentions, no hiding around anything,” he continues. “We’re in a better place. We’re not desperate. If some DOC comes to us and says, ‘Yes, we’d love to have you, but you’ll need to censor faces, or you can’t use explicit [lyrics],’ then we’ll say, ‘Thank you, but no.’”
Shirelle, who teamed up with Young initially as a Die Jim Crow artist and founding boardmember in 2015, believes the music FREER has shared since 2020, including the label’s initial release of Shirelle’s Assata Troi, stands on its own merits. “I just want the music to speak for itself, because I think it does,” she says. “If I thought we had to lean on our message, then that would be one thing. But I don’t think we have to.”
Young agrees with his co-executive director, even though as a nonprofit, FREER still depends primarily on donations.
“I’d say, for a while, our goal is to make music where you hear it and you might not know the story behind it,” he says. “But you get drawn in because the music is good. The prison part should come later, ideally.”
As Shirelle sees it, no matter what happens, they're "in this for life."
“That’s why we chose music, because everybody loves music,” she concludes.
DJCX: How We Got FREER is available to stream on YouTube.
