Tory Lanez is releasing new music better than the quality of previous imprisoned artists, just one problem says the King of Prison Hip Hop, it’s not true.
On August 8, 2023, Canadian Hip Hop artist Daystar Peterson, who goes by the stage name Tory Lanez, was sentenced in the Los Angeles County Superior Court to ten years in prison after being found guilty by a jury of shooting American rapper Megan Pete, who goes by the stage name Megan Thee Stallion.
In July of 2024, Lanez began to release unreleased music in a series he has called Lost Tapes, such as Girls In The Room (Lost Tapes 2020), and L.M.B.B (Lost Tapes 2018). In March of 2024, Forbes notes the 2024 rerelease of Lanez 2015, Traphouse debuted on Billboard’s Hot R&B Songs chart at #23, and had jumped to #15, “Tory Lanez Earns His Biggest Hit In More Than A Year On One Chart.” But Lanez is not content with rereleasing Lost Tapes, nor releasing old music, but wants to give his fans new music, he calls the #FreeTory playlist.
After about 20-something to 30-something fuck-ups and mistakes, me and my engineer have finally figure out how to record music over the jail phone and still keep the quality as professional as I had it on the street,” he said in a recorded call posted to his Instagram on Wednesday (July 24). “It’s over. I done cracked the fucking code, man. This means that not even these prison walls can stop me from dropping new music. It’s crazy!
That being said, I’m about to start dropping hot heaps of coal on y’all head top. I’m dropping the all new ‘Free Tory’ playlist – it’s gon’ be updated every week with new music that I’m recording from prison in real time. This is the first of its kind and although God has already shown me that this moment is only temporary , it speaks testimony to the fact that no matter where they put me they can’t lock down my spirit, my ambition, my soul my passion nor my destiny!”
But the Canadian’s claims he has broken the cheat code on how to release quality music from the American prison system is a slap in the face to all those independent artists who have been doing so for years.
Nearly five-years-ago in, “‘Spoken Floz,’ Prisoners Retake Over of Hip Hop,” we did a deep dive on Rap’s pre Hip Hop prison origins; and nearly 10-years-ago in, “FEATURED ARTIST DONALD ‘C-NOTE’ HOOKER,” we observed, “If the 2.2 million American prison population were a city, it would be the fourth largest behind New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, all known for very vibrant art scenes. There are lots of new and exciting forms of art being developed behind bars to which C-Note is a part of, like “Prison Hip Hop.’” As the largest multimedia source of prison news and art across multiple web platforms, we have been keeping an eye on the rap music production by prisoners, including publishing their music.
Compare our 2021 release of Barrio by God’s Goon, to Tory Lanez’s 2024 release of “Wish I Never Met You” [Prison Tapes], now ask yourself, “Has Tory Lanez substantially reinvented the quality of the musical sound coming from inside prison?”
How Deon Thomas, Known As Young Tali, Crafts Music from Within Prison Walls
1. Finds beats:
He scours JPAY, a platform for incarcerated individuals, for instrumental tracks. He listens to 30-second samples and purchases the ones that resonate with him.
2. Writes lyrics:
Inspired by the beat’s energy and vibe, he writes his lyrics, often completing a song within a week.
3. Records vocals:
He calls his vocal engineer and raps his verses over the phone, which are recorded and overlaid onto the instrumental track.
4. Mixes and masters:
His engineer edits and mixes the vocals with the instrumental, finalizing the track.
5. Distributes music:
He partners with Tunecore to distribute his music on JPAY, earning a percentage of each sale.
This process involves financial investment and resourcefulness. For his album Presidential Felon,Thomas spent around $300, covering engineer fees, beat purchases, and distribution costs. He relied on friends and family for album artwork and promotion.
Freer Records
FREER Records, formerly Die Jim Crow Records, is a non-profit record label dedicated to amplifying the voices of prison-impacted musicians. In December 2023, the label celebrated its 10th anniversary and rebranded as FREER Records. The label’s mission is to promote uncensored creative expression and uphold the humanity of incarcerated individuals. The label evolved from the Die Jim Crow project, which initially aimed to create a concept album about racial injustice in the prison system, to a platform for a diverse range of prison-impacted artists.
Over its ten year existence, FREER Records has released an impressive 3 LPS, 4 EPS, AND 18 SINGLES by 65 incarcerated musicians, 18 formerly incarcerated musicians, 17 prisons visited or recorded in 10 states across America, to international acclaim and a growing audience of 100,000+ streams.
They have also been active in advocacy. During the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic the label raised $25K and sent over 30,000 masks to prisons and jails in 19 states with their PPE Into Prisons initiative. The following year they joined forces with the Union of Musicians & Allied Workers (UMAW) and began an Instruments Into Prisons drive; now an ongoing campaign which has sent over $18K worth of gear to a dozen facilities and counting.
FREER Records operates with a focus on producing high-quality music across various genres while championing social justice causes. Here, Da Movement by The Masses, a collective of over ten rappers and musicians centralized in an undisclosed US prison, brings the energy of a thousand soldiers over menacing strings leaves no doubt about FREER Records commitment to the sound quality of its music.
Lanez, who has always maintained his innocence will be using his #FreeTory playlist to stay connected to his fanbase and his ear to the streets. One thing the Streets will be listening for, will his lyrics include references to Megan Thee Stallion? At sentencing, Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney Kathy Ta read a statement from Megan noting that
Lanez had been spinning false narratives about the shooting and making light of her trauma. “He tried to position himself as a victim and set out to destroy my character and my soul,” Megan wrote. “He tried to position himself as a victim, paid bloggers to disseminate false information about the case on social media, and released music videos and songs to damage me.”
Another person speaking on this subject is the King of Prison Hip Hop, who knows a thing or two about getting one’s voice over the prison walls.
I wish the brother commercial success in what he’s doing, but be sure to take some of them coins and give back, like to a women’s shelter, or to an organization for battered and abused women. Other than that, “What are we doing here, just another Canadian culture vulture?” And you wonder why we put out songs like, “Not Like Us.” Hip Hop has a very evolved culture, and one of those things is giving back. That’s the price for participating in this culture; especially to our Sistas during Black August.
The Black August reference is to the month-long memoriam to freedom fighters that was started in San Quentin State Prison in the 1970s. C-Note, an American prison artist, and also known as the King of Prison Hip Hop, has a long history of coming to the defense of women and Black women in particularly, noting it was okay for Jermaine Dupree to patronize strip clubs, and heralded when women made money with their bodies, but had a problem when women made money with their minds, disparagingly calling their rap content Stripper Rap, as noted in the Muzique Magazine article, “How Female Mc’s Have an Advocate in the King of Prison Hip Hop,” as also written about in “Black Music: Existence & Resistance from the Soul.”
C-Note who was arrested in 1997, has been incarcerated for over 27 years. In 2000, C-Note wrote the 16-bar piece Once Upon A Time… In 2015, he teamed up with former California prisoner, and Sacramento based producer Jr Wagner, aka jRiZzz. Working over the phone, they created a truly collaborative work between an artist and his beat maker. Once Upon A Time…, its music version, utilizes C-Note’s storytelling prowess, laid over a Dr. Dre inspired, jRiZzz’s beat. The result, a remarkable docu-drama of going from the Penthouse to The Big House. In 2020, C-Note was able to create and publish his “movie” version of Once Upon A Time…
It’s examples like these that debunk the Canadian rappers claim, he, and he alone has cracked the quality music sound code, where the Americans have not, inside their own prison systems.
Da Movement Music Credits:
Vocals & Lyrics: I-Self, Silent Jungle, Mac, PC
Beat produced by Silent Jungle
Strings: Nathan Schram
Additional Instrumentation: Trvp Lvne
Additional Production: BL Shirelle, gHSTS & gUITARS, Fury Young
Vocal Engineer: dr. Israel
Mixed by Matthew Cullen
Mastered by Dan Millice
Executive Produced by Silent Jungle, Fury Young & BL Shirelle
Album artwork: Fury Young
The Masses’ vocals recorded by dr. Israel at Allendale Correctional Institution (Fairfax, SC).
Beat recorded by Silent Jungle at Allendale Correctional Institution.
Add’l instrumentation by Trvp Lvne recorded at Restricted Movement L.L.C. (Philly, PA).
Strings recorded by Nathan Schram at Waterbear Studio (New York, NY).
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