Netflix’s Documentary ‘Songs From The Hole’ Is In contrast to Something You’ve Seen Earlier than

Music, in its purest, most potent type, doesn’t simply have the facility to entertain; it additionally has the facility to alter lives for the higher. In all probability nobody understands that greater than James “JJ’88” Jacobs, a previously incarcerated musician who discovered hope throughout a double-life jail sentence by penning freedom songs from solitary confinement.

At the moment, freedom (at the very least within the figurative sense) got here by means of Jacobs’ craft, which allowed him to liberate his thoughts behind bars throughout what was arguably the darkest interval of his life, subsequent to the violent act he dedicated that landed him in jail. Simply three days after he took a life on the streets at age 15, his brother’s life was taken from him, too.

It took years for a then-incarcerated Jacobs to unpack the occasions that led to that tragic loss and traumatic level in his youth. Nonetheless, by means of soul-baring raps and self-reflection in solitude, he was lastly in a position to make sense of them, so the story goes within the award-winning movie he helped compose, “Songs From the Hole.”

Developed in distinctive partnership with director Contessa Gayles and producer richie reseda, the acclaimed documentary-visual album — which debuted on Netflix earlier this yr following its 2024 SXSW premiere — is each a portrait of Jacobs’ life earlier than, throughout and after jail, in addition to a testomony to the solace and readability he discovered within the lyrical journal entries that helped him confront his inner struggles.

From the second that “Songs From the Hole” begins, it’s evident that it’s no strange movie. The primary voice you hear is Jacobs’, carried over the static of a jailhouse telephone name as he describes the profound isolation of being locked up in solitary confinement (“the hole,” as he calls it) with nothing however his ideas. His phrases materialize on display screen separately as handwritten script on lined pocket book paper, identical to the type he used to document his rhymes in the course of the two-and-a-half months he spent within the gap.

The display screen cuts to black earlier than you hear Jacobs, nonetheless unseen, singing over a jazzy instrumental of brassy horns and regular drums. A younger boy wearing all white then seems, leaping round freely in a mud jail yard, his lengthy braids flopping within the air. Jacobs, narrating, says, “If I could go back and talk to 15-year-old James, I would have a conversation with him about who he is.”

That is the rhythm of many sequences in “Songs From the Hole”: narrator Jacobs providing a eager perception over the telephone alongside uncooked documentary footage, or one in all his songs taking part in in opposition to the backdrop of a putting music video that brings to life an imagined reminiscence or dream of his, every one peeling again one other layer of his tumultuous story.

It’s an experimental construction that Jacobs developed with reseda and Gayles — the latter greatest identified for steering the CNN documentary “The Feminist on Cellblock Y” — early on of their movie’s roughly five-year manufacturing. Drawing on 15-minute jail calls with Jacobs, interviews together with his household and outdated photographs, the filmmakers weave a compelling story that blends impressed visuals and documentary footage with revelations about Jacobs’ real-life testimony, all set to his poignant music. The result’s a redemptive story wherein Jacobs finds peace, understanding and, most of all, the unconventional energy of forgiveness.

That’s in the end what makes “Songs From the Hole” — the 96-minute movie and the accompanying hip-hop album Jacobs wrote and recorded whereas incarcerated — such a resonant show, in contrast to the rest to emerge from inside the U.S. jail system. The venture isn’t one other examination of contemporary incarceration that focuses solely on Jacobs’ time behind bars, however fairly his private transformation throughout these years, utilizing a musical odyssey to take viewers on an emotional coming-of-age journey that he’s nonetheless grappling with himself.

“It’s a completely different approach to telling an incarceration story because it is music first and centers ’88’s own artistic expression, first and foremost, as the tool and main vehicle for telling his story,” Gayles defined to HuffPost.

“Unlike most of the world, we respect incarcerated people beyond just the fact that they’re incarcerated,” reseda added. “I feel like our film centers the spirit of a human, as opposed to centering the system that oppresses them.”

Therefore, you by no means see the within of the jail the place Jacobs served 18 years of a life sentence within the movie. Gayles stated the selection was each unintended and deliberate, spurred throughout her preinterview calls with Jacobs amid the COVID-19 pandemic that in the end turned the movie’s predominant narration.

“We started recording them once we realized that, with COVID-19, we couldn’t get into the prison,” she defined. “Then, when things opened back up, we decided that actually was a much more effective way to tell the story. That was a creative solution that made a lot more sense for our film.”

A humanizing one, too, because the method neatly allowed “Songs From the Hole” to delve even deeper into Jacobs’ transferring story, which started lengthy earlier than he killed a younger man on April 16, 2004, and was convicted of homicide.

Earlier than Jacobs was despatched away to a California state jail, he grew up in North Lengthy Seaside. He was raised in a supportive household: his father, William, was (and nonetheless is) a preacher and his mom, Janine, directed the church’s kids’s choir, wherein Jacobs and his sister, Reneasha, sang. Their older brother, Victor, in the meantime, watched over them all through their childhood, even when he, like Jacobs, was drawn to the streets.

Jacobs, a rapper, singer and songwriter, had a love for music rising up within the church, figuring out it largely as a non secular instrument, he stated. Nonetheless, he didn’t start utilizing it as a way of self-expression — and, by extension, a cathartic outlet — till he wanted it most, when he went away to jail as a teen.

“I wasn’t taking it that seriously until I was incarcerated,” the rapper shared with HuffPost, “where I was like, I can actually write these songs and talk to some of the homies who in here locked up with me. And we could talk about our life and escape through this and process what we’re going through.”

Incarceration not solely revealed Jacobs’ musical items but in addition different inventive skills, like his knack for envisioning vibrant storylines and turning them into tangible narratives, very like these seen all through “Songs From the Hole.”

A number of of the movie’s music movies function younger actors portraying Jacobs and his older brother throughout their adolescence, capturing moments of each pleasure and anguish — from witnessing Victor’s arrest to the tragic second he was shot and killed. Different visuals illustrate Jacobs’ interior turmoil throughout his incarceration, comparable to a half-animated sequence wherein an actor embodying him stands helpless behind cell bars whereas Jacobs raps about “livin’ in a steel grave.”

“I’m not formally trained,” Jacobs stated of writing the visible album’s music video remedies, crediting help from Gayles’ “brilliant edits” and reseda’s additions. “But I do have a love for film. Growing up, especially when I was in YA and juvenile hall, and even when I went to adult prison, I did read scripts [and] treatments. I was interested in music videos, filmmaking and the process.”

Jacobs continued, “Honestly, because my creative process comes with not just sounds in my head, with these lyrics and melodies, but also visuals, and being a very visual person, it was easy to write the [treatments] down.”

“It wasn’t necessarily easy to make it into a more cohesive piece,” he added. “… [But] over time, and through Contessa’s mentorship and guidance, it became more of a cohesive story for our intention.”

The collaboration of “Songs From the Hole” took place considerably naturally. It started shortly after Jacobs met reseda, a fellow musician and previously incarcerated producer, after being transferred to the identical jail. Coincidentally, this was proper across the time reseda had recorded, produced and launched his personal album on his twenty fifth birthday whereas nonetheless behind bars.

“When ’88 came to the prison, everybody was telling me, you need to meet this kid,” the producer recalled to HuffPost. “And when we did meet through our homie Talib — who’s still fighting for his freedom now — I was like, he could rap very well; he could sing very well.”

“His approach to the stories that he was telling was not one that was glorifying nor judging,” reseda continued. “There was also a deep spiritual draw that I had to his work. There was a spiritual commitment in his work, and he knew what he wanted. He also put in the time to be clear about what his vision was for the project.”

In accordance with reseda, who additionally produced the unique music for “Songs From the Hole,” Jacobs drew heavy inspiration from basic soulful works like D’Angelo’s “Voodoo” and Kendrick Lamar’s “To Pimp a Butterfly” when shaping his visible album’s inventive path. That made the producer much more excited in regards to the imaginative and prescient Jacobs was intent on pursuing in an effort to share his lived reality.

“I really got to know his story through making the music with him,” stated reseda, noting that he initially didn’t perceive the intricacies of Jacobs’ journey, together with how he unknowingly met the person who murdered his brother.

“When we finished [the album], we just knew it was too big,” reseda continued. “It wouldn’t do it justice to just have it posted online. This album had the power to heal community. That’s how it felt to me, so we were like, let’s do a visual album.”

Enter Gayles, whom Jacobs and reseda already knew from showing in her 2018 documentary on a rising feminist motion inside their all-male jail. In accordance with reseda, the 2 had been notably impressed by Gayles’ method to the topic, particularly how she portrayed it with authenticity with out together with jail officers or anybody who represents the establishment.

“And so I trusted her with this story,” the producer continued of “Songs From the Hole,” jokingly including that Gayles was additionally “the greatest and only director that we knew” for the venture.

Fortunately for them, “she said yes to directing it.”

The primary time Gayles heard the tracks that will turn into the “Songs From the Hole” album was throughout her final day of filming “The Feminist on Cellblock Y,” when Jacobs and reseda had been performing within the jail’s health club.

“They had the rental keyboard in the gym on a trash can, and richie was on the keys, and ’88 was singing and rapping some of the songs,” the director remembered. “Some of their friends were gathered around and knew all the lyrics.”

“I was really taken with, one, their friendship and collaboration,” she added, “but also with ’88’s talent with the lyricism [of his songs].”

It wasn’t till after Jacobs and reseda requested Gayles to helm their visible album that she obtained to listen to the extra polished cuts of the “Songs From the Hole” tracks that the 2 recorded collectively in jail. And after receiving Jacobs’ handwritten lyrics by means of snail mail, “I got to see the storytelling and the intricate poetry that’s in there, and really appreciate it more,” Gayles famous.

It was over the course of extra conversations that the filmmaker linked the dots between Jacobs’ story and the context wherein his gut-honest music was written within the gap.

Jacobs spent a lot time in that 6-by-6 cell, mendacity on the ground, fascinated by essentially the most devastating month of his life and the “worst thing” he had ever accomplished. Between taking one other younger man’s life and being in the identical jail as the person who took his older brother from him, to not point out not having his personal freedom, grief weighed closely on his spirit. Music, oftentimes, was his escape from that cycle and circumstances, and so Jacobs made a behavior of creating beats on his chest or bunk that ultimately turned full-blown confessional songs. Within the midst of this therapeutic journey, Jacobs was in a position to forgive his brother’s killer, who, earlier than figuring out his true identification, impressed him to replicate on the importance of his personal wrongdoings and repent.

“I was like, whoa, this is incredibly powerful,” Gayles stated of the revelation, which is all of the affirmation she wanted to assist convey “Songs From the Hole” to life.

“Like richie said, [the film] has the potential to really affect culture and heal community through the music and the story,” Gayles stated. “And if we can figure out a way to make them sing together, then we’d have something really special.”

The imaginative and prescient for “Songs From the Hole” was bold from the beginning. Nonetheless, placing it collectively whereas Jacobs was serving out his sentence — which included a number of, emotionally fraught makes an attempt at parole, as seen in a single notably heartbreaking scene within the movie — proved terribly difficult all through a lot of the venture’s prolonged growth.

Gayles famous that roughly one music video was filmed per 30 days over the course of a yr, with materials nonetheless being rewritten up till the shoots. On the identical time, interviews with Jacobs’ household had been carried out, a course of that in the end benefitted the visible album creatively and logistically.

“As I was learning the story more deeply from everyone’s perspective and getting to know them better, there were things that I was writing into the treatments that worked their way into the music videos,” Gayles shared. “That was really intentional, but also like a gift that we had time in between each [music video] to continue to rewrite them and let the project be really iterative in that way.”

Within the midst of this, Jacobs was nonetheless deeply concerned within the filmmaking course of, even from far-off. He stated reseda would usually make journeys to CVS or Walgreens to print out screenshots of dailies from the shoots and mail them to the musician so he might preserve observe of how his imaginative and prescient was coming collectively.

“That was a cool experience to be able to have some things that went from in my head to on paper to now seeing screenshots of things that were exactly in my head, too,” shared Jacobs. “There were some things that started off one way in my brain, and over the course of collaboration, it took a fuller form. And then there were other things that were exactly how I saw it in my head, and it was just like, this is crazy.”

“Especially being an incarcerated person,” he added, “I just want to stress that our visions for our lives, our art, it’s not often we get to see them while we’re in prison. But I had the privilege of being able to collaborate with Contessa and richie and be able to see my visions and ideas come to fruition, while I wasn’t even sure if I was going to be able to see them on the other side of the gate.”

“It was just cool knowing that it was happening.”

In 2022, Jacobs was launched from his life sentence. Not confined to imagining what “Songs From the Hole” may seem like from inside a jail cell, he returned residence about eight months into the movie’s enhancing course of and ultimately obtained to see it for himself, though that first viewing was admittedly robust together with his time inside nonetheless painfully recent.

“It was hard to watch,” Jacobs stated. “I was trying to put myself in artist mode and think about this like an artist. But once we finished and started to show the film [publicly] early on, there were a couple of scenes that I was just gonna cry on automatically, because it took me back to that moment. Especially the moment of seeing me and my dad on the phone after hearing that I didn’t get found suitable and paroled.”

“That was a hard thing to watch fresh out of prison, because it was still fresh in my spirit,” he continued. “But the more and more I watched it, the more and more it became clear that I’m watching it from this side [as a free man].”

There was a time when Jacobs didn’t know whether or not he’d ever see the world past jail partitions once more. Since his launch, although, he’s been taking advantage of his freedom, screening his documentary-visual album in prisons, museums and group facilities throughout the nation as a part of a collective therapeutic motion, in addition to pursuing music professionally.

Simply final month, the musician held a solo present in Los Angeles, performing tracks from “Songs From the Hole” for a crowd he as soon as might solely image from behind bars. Once I requested whether or not he had ever believed such a second may be doable whereas he was incarcerated, Jacobs replied, “I hoped it would.”

“I imagined being on stage in front of people and sharing this music,” he stated, a slight smile rising on his face as he excitedly described the theme of his stay present, impressed by “jam sessions in solitude.”

“In solitary confinement, I would have a full band,” Jacobs shared. “Sometimes I would have a whole orchestra around me, and be in my cell, but in my mind, it’s 50,000 people [in the crowd], and I’m going nuts. And then when you peek into the window of the cell, it’s just a guy standing there, a cappella, rapping lyrics.”

“I would imagine these moments,” he concluded, “and now that they’re here, I’m truly grateful.”

“Songs From the Hole” is streaming now on Netflix.