Making music from death row
“Every life hinges on poverty, gender and race,” Rrome Alone declares in the 2024 song, “and the pay of the attorney defending your case.”
It’s rare that I talk about my day job in this newsletter, but in my capacity as Director of Product at The Marshall Project—the nonprofit newsroom focused on criminal justice—I recently had the honor of designing a project called Redemption Songs. Each week, reporter Maurice Chammah tells a story of American mass incarceration through one song by an incarcerated artist.
This week, I’ll highlight the account of a rapper on death row recording an album over a prison phone line. In an age of frictionless streaming, I can hardly think of a better embodiment of the art of escaping algorithms than that.
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With ‘Live on Death Row,’ Rapper Rrome Alone Condemns the Death Penalty
Listen if you like: Run the Jewels, Ice Cube, Public Enemy
Fifty years ago this month, the death penalty as we know it today was born. The U.S. Supreme Court allowed executions to return across the country after a four-year moratorium. Since then, death row has been covered in books, podcasts and documentaries. Because I have made some of these myself, I am especially blown away by the concise punch of the song “Live on Death Row,” in which the rapper Rrome Alone tells you pretty much everything you need to know on the subject in just over three minutes.
Rrome Alone is the moniker of Alim Braxton, who is on death row for killing another incarcerated person while serving time for two murders in his native Raleigh, North Carolina.
“Though I can never justify my crimes, I believe in the possibility of redemption,” he writes in his book, “Rap and Redemption on Death Row,” which The Marshall Project excerpted in 2024. “Rap is only a tool. My ultimate goal is to make amends for the crimes I have committed and to help innocent people on Death Row win their release.”
“Live on Death Row,” a standout track on his 2024 album, “Mercy on My Soul,” positions Braxton as news correspondent “reporting straight from the trenches / Separated from the angel of death by mere inches.” He had friends voice the roles of news anchors, and says the concept was inspired by the death row writings of journalist and activist Mumia Abu-Jamal.
“I said I wanted to be a reporter in the middle of a hurricane, wind blowing all around,” Braxton said of the chaotic production by Nick Neutronz. The lyrics are a sweeping indictment of the American death penalty, from the way “every life hinges on poverty, gender and race / And the pay of the attorney defending your case” to the indignities of a last meal: “You might get steak on your last night / Before the State send you to the next life.”
Like the rappers Mac Dre and G. Dep, Braxton developed techniques to record vocals over phone lines. To deal with split-second delays in his landline phone connection, he used rap songs on the radio as a kind of metronome to steady his delivery. More recently, he got access to a tablet, which allows him to communicate with producers from his cell. Last year, one of Braxton’s outside collaborators took their ongoing experiment further, running a photo and audio of him through AI to make him look like he’s talking on video.
Braxton says that when the other men on death row heard the song played on a local radio station, there was “elation,” because “somebody here was getting attention for doing something that wasn’t bad.” I asked if corrections officers were angry about the line “Cupcake parties for the COs / After an injection from the needle.” Braxton said they were indifferent, probably because few of them had been around for North Carolina’s last execution in 2006.
Since he recorded “Mercy on My Soul,” Braxton’s lyrics have centered his faith; he studies Arabic and recites the Qur’an. In the recent song “Mu’min and Kufar” (“Believer and Disbeliever”) he writes about twins in a womb, debating whether there is life beyond their current state. You can hear a heartbeat, which Braxton said is his mother’s own, recorded during a medical exam. And there is an interfaith dimension: He based the story on a Christian video he saw on his prison tablet.
Braxton is in a surreal but common situation on death row: He technically faces execution, but North Carolina hasn’t actually carried one out in two decades. The last governor commuted death sentences, but state lawmakers recently passed a new law aiming to shorten death row appeals and restart executions.
So he’s effectively serving a life sentence with a slim but fluid chance of execution. He wants to use whatever time he has to fight for people he believes are innocent on death row. He writes about them on a Substack and pushes journalists and podcasters to cover their cases. Despite his own circumstances, he says he feels lucky to be able to contribute art and activism to the world: “When I was sentenced, a judge said to me, ‘May God have mercy on your soul.’ I later reflected and thought, ‘You know, God has indeed had mercy on my soul.’”
LINER NOTES: Song: “Live on Death Row” | Album: “Mercy on My Soul” | Vocals: Rrome Alone | Production: Nick Neutronz | Scratches: DJ Spectakular | Additional Vocals: Michael Betts II and Mark Katz
This article was first published by The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system. Sign up for their newsletters, and follow them on Instagram, TikTok, Reddit and Facebook.
I love stories that make you rethink what's possible, and this definitely did that. Thanks for sharing something I probably never would've found otherwise.