Jail Time, Vol. 1

It’s hard to imagine that this well produced album was entirely recorded in what must be a pretty bleak place: the Central Prison of Douala, in Cameroon. The compilation is the first full length release by Jail Time Records, a non-profit music label that set up a full recording studio in the prison and worked with dozens of inmates. With lyrics in French, English, and several local languages, the tracks are a mix of rap, grime, dancehall, and pop, interspersed with little skits — field recordings from inside the prison, intimate phone conversations between inmates and their families — that add a genuinely poignant human dimension to the whole thing. You can feel the pain and frustration in the urgent, raw delivery by artists like Ba’a, while others deal directly with the prison experience in their lyrics, like  D.O.X. and Vidou on “Offline,” which is about the mental health struggles of inmates. Jail Time ends on a contemplative note with the beautiful, bluesy voice of Petit Batonette.