Are you an aspiring racist rap group with no hope of breaking into the mainstream? If so, what will you do to sell records? Here’s an idea: promote them using prisons.

Apparently, RBC records thinks this is a great idea. They are having one of their groups, Woodpile (a group will affiliations with the Woods, a white power prison gang), disseminate their promotional materials to incarcerated friends and family members. The hope is that their prison buzz will turn to street sales.

This idea is not new. This has been done before for established acts like DJ Quik and 8 Ball. With a prison population of over 2 million, and a nearly a fourth being black, a prison hit can mean a few hundred thousand sales in the outside world.

However, there’s a side to this that we as hip hop fans should, at least, think about. What is it about prison that would legitimize certain artists? Maybe Nelson George, whose quoted in the article, can sum this up the best:

Nelson George, author of “Hip Hop America,” says prison is an indivisible part of the black experience. “In this country, black people have been getting incarcerated justly and unjustly since we got here,” he said. “The prison system has impacted black culture. And its influence on hip-hop is a subset of that.”

Maybe I’m just getting old but, there’s something about this that will never sit right with me.

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