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Freer Records, a label that works with “prison-impacted” musicians, recently announced it would release the first-ever album made by a woman behind bars. That achievement is hard to fact-check, but it’s believable: Of the dozens of American prison albums I’ve found from the last century, nearly all feature men.

The woman behind the album, “9th & Gasoline,” goes by the moniker B. Alexis. Her face is on the cover. But I’ve been asked not to tell you her real name or where she’s serving a 30-year sentence for murder. (Her marketing materials just say it’s in the South.)

BL Shirelle, the Freer Records co-executive director who produced the album, told me that both she and B. Alexis are concerned that if they reveal her full identity, she could face retaliation from the prison where she’s in custody.

They’re right to be cautious. It’s easy for prison staff to find a pretext and retaliate. Rappers in Michigan and South Carolina facilities were sent to solitary confinement after they released music videos using illegal cellphones (something B. Alexis has not done here). Prison staff said they were threatening facility safety by using these devices. The U.S. Supreme Court allows some censorship when there are “legitimate penological concerns,” but the legal standards can be ambiguous.

B. Alexis accepts the possibility of retaliation. “I think the pros are well worth any risks,” she told me in a message relayed by her label. “Anything I endeavor to do concerning my music is out of integrity, so the risks or consequences don’t bother me.”

Formerly known as Die Jim Crow, New York-based Freer is the only label today focused on prisons, and has worked with incarcerated artists in Colorado, California and another state the label won’t name. Shirelle told me she had to learn how to negotiate with facilities to bring in recording equipment. “They might put you in the gym or the janitors’ closet,” she said. “We build pretty impressive soundproof studios out of PVC pipe and old blankets.”

Shirelle said B. Alexis’ facility let Freer, a nonprofit, hold auditions for artists who wanted to record with the label in 2019. B. Alexis, who shot and killed a woman when she was 17, rapped about how she was forced into sex work when she was 13. “Women often glorify prostitution in music, but she wrote about genuinely trying to survive off her body, and it stuck with me for weeks,” Shirelle told me. “She uses everything as a teachable moment and doesn’t feel sorry for herself.”

When B. Alexis went to prison, she had recently given birth to a son, Ja’Mir. (Some of her family members are named on the album.) Eighteen years later — after the halfway point in her sentence — Ja’Mir was shot and killed at a bus stop. His death was ruled a homicide but never solved.

B. Alexis raps movingly about watching her son grow up from prison on the song “I Can’t Lie,” but her approach is usually more oblique. It can feel like you’re in her head, as she talks to herself about how the horrors she faced shaped the horrors she perpetrated. “The pistol had been loaded long before my fateful calling,” she raps on “Fight to Live.” But at other times, I hear a decision to keep the listener one step away, as if she knows you might feel a sense of voyeurism. I hear in these lyrics remorse but also a challenge: Who are you to judge me?

There is also hope and consolation. On “Black Barbie,” the first track, B. Alexis is comforting a woman who could well be herself: “I see the hurt and pain you try to hide behind your eyes.”

“When I wrote ‘Black Barbie,’ I was in a place of feeling inadequate, like I could not measure up to the expectations of those around me,” she told me. “I started thinking about the young women in my ‘hood who I thought had it all. I realized I really wasn’t too different from them. We all were trying to fake it ’til we made it.”

In early press for the album, Freer tried to shroud B. Alexis’ identity more completely, releasing photos in which she held up a notebook over her face, as if she were the Sia of prison. To promote “Black Barbie,” the label sourced a Barbie doll from the year B. Alexis was born and made a video in which the doll slowly breaks out of its box, strips off her clothes, and dances in freedom — but is then handcuffed and shoved back inside.

As the album’s release approached last month, B. Alexis decided to let Freer put her face on the album cover. So far, Shirelle tells me, there are no reports of retaliation from her prison.

LINER NOTES

Artist: B. Alexis | Album: “9th & Gasoline” | Song: “Black Barbie” | Year: 2026 (first released as single in 2022) | Location: Undisclosed | Words and vocals: B. Alexis | Beat production: Trvp Lvne | Acoustic guitar: gHSTS & gUITARS | Vocal recorded by: dr. Israel | Mixing: Bear-One | Mastering: Swaya | Album artwork and lyric video: Fury Young