[Verse 1]

Fat Boys out here talking bout plight of jail

But I gotta ask, from where do they hail?

Brooklyn also known as King County

Gilmore’s Gulag talking prison bounty

So now it makes sense that the poor make the rich

In the land of the free...for the Capitalist

Brooklyn had to suffer from War on Drugs

It destroyed their economy, and a family’s love

So now let’s refocus and look at the real foe

Alexander likes to call it the New Jim Crow

Money pumped into policing the hood

You know these white folks were up to no good

Republicans won by being tough on crime

And Reagan said, let’s give ‘em minimum time

Fat Boys out here, from the hood

I just wish for them, justice was good

[Hook 1]

In jail, in jail, in jail, in jail cause you have no bail

In jail, in jail, in jail, in jail the system failed

In jail, in jail, in jail, in jail cause you have no bail

In jail, in jail, in jail, in jail the system failed

[Verse 2]

Thirteenth amendment said slavery’s done

Except for those living in prison

We like to pretend that we’re far from the past

But racism persists with the new racial caste

The light never shines on the prison complex

They’re making money off social death

Castin a shadow on our forgotten sons

Whose lives that have barely begun

Heard of Jersey 4? Or Ms. B?

If you did maybe they’d be free

Unnecessary obsessions with weed possession

We want rehab and not a death wish

Prison means punishment, not reform

Cause once you’re out, you're back in the hole

Recidivism sits at 50 percent

Without a job how do you pay rent?

[Interlude]

“What you hear in popular discourse on talk radio stations or in the newspaper is ‘lock them up’, ‘lock them up yesterday’ or ‘kill them.' You see, and it becomes a political –again– an engine, feeding an industry.”

-Mumia Abu-Jamal

[Hook]

In jail, in jail, in jail, in jail the system failed

In jail

In jail, in jail, in jail, in jail cause you have no bail

In jail, in jail, in jail, in jail the system failed

[Verse 3]

A new epidemic--mass incarceration

We sold it to the globe, so now there’s nowhere to run

Unless you go to Norway, where you’ll have a good time

Or in Rwanda, where they forgive your crimes

Crime and punishment, they go hand in hand

Like prison and money, supply and demand

Shoutout Angela, she a real one

Only way to progress--prison abolition