This essay is part of Redemption Songs, a limited-run newsletter that spotlights one song each week by incarcerated artists. Sign up now to get a new song each Sunday afternoon until September:

Police Used Mac Dre’s Music Against Him. In Jail, He Used the Phone to Get Revenge.

Listen if you like: Too $hort, E-40, Mistah F.A.B., P-Lo

Americans built more than 900 prisons between 1980 and 2004, but the story of mass incarceration is also about what disappeared in those years. As crime rose and politicians fearmongered, prison officials used dubious evidence to shrink education programs, including many focused on music. They stopped letting prison bands do things like tour under armed guard or play in-house rodeos. Prosecutors even used the lyrics people wrote in jail against them at their trials.

But the impulse to make music didn’t disappear. It just traveled underground and found new outlets.

Enter Mac Dre, who turned his prison phone into a microphone.

Born Andre Hicks, Mac Dre found success in his early 20s in his hometown of Vallejo, California, according to a recent piece by journalist Jessica Kariisa for KQED. He had sold marijuana as a teenager and spent time in juvenile lockups. This was the era of “Fuck Tha Police” by N.W.A. and the 1992 Los Angeles riots, sparked by the acquittal of police caught on camera beating Rodney King.

Like many young Black men of his generation, Mac Dre grew angry at police for targeting and harassing him. In 1992, he released “Punk Police,” a blistering criticism of the Vallejo Police Department. He included a detective’s real name in the lyrics, and taunted the department for failing to solve recent bank robberies.

“What’s next?” he rapped. “You gon’ frame somebody?”

Right after the song came out, Vallejo police arrested Mac Dre and his friends for conspiring to rob a bank. He maintained his innocence — and the banks in question were never actually robbed. According to police records reviewed by Reveal, Mac Dre was in a motel room while his friends drove to a bank, but they abandoned the robbery at the last minute.

Prosecutors claimed Mac Dre was the crime’s ringleader and played “Punk Police” for the jury. It was an early example of rap lyrics being used as evidence in court, a phenomenon that has exploded since then.

But it was a weird choice in Mac Dre’s case: Prosecutors usually try to interpret lyrics as confessions, but Mac Dre simply raps about his innocence: “I’m a dope rhyme dealer, not a money stealer.”

Still, the jury convicted Mac Dre of conspiracy, and he went to federal prison for four years. The punk band Bad Brains had recently recorded its lead singer over the phone in a Washington, D.C., jail. Mac Dre’s producer, Khayree Shaheed, took the idea a step further. According to another rapper, X-Raided, who was in jail with Mac Dre, Shaheed used soldering tools to connect a landline phone directly into a studio mixing board.

Mac Dre rapped about being locked up and even called radio shows from jail to promote the songs. There is no public evidence that he was ever punished for using the phone this way, or that doing so even violated a prison rule. He was released in 1996, and his star kept climbing until 2004, when he was shot and killed after a show in Kansas City. His murder remains officially unsolved.

Countless other rappers would later use prison phones to record, including X-Raided, Lil Wayne, Gucci Mane and the late Drakeo the Ruler. The environment invites a certain self-seriousness, but Mac Dre brings a lighthearted trickster energy. On “Back n da Hood,” he thanks the police — again by name — for getting him media attention through his trial: “You put me on the news and tried to spread that lie. Then record sales jumped to an all-time high!”

At a technical level, there is no way around the grainy sound of these phones. But artists often use limitations to their advantage. Mac Dre wrote poignant lyrics — about missing home — knowing they would land more powerfully because he literally sounds so far away.

LINER NOTES:

Artist: Mac Dre | Song: “Back n Da Hood” | Album: “Back n Da Hood” | Year: 1992 | Location: Fresno County Jail, Fresno, California | Producers: Mac Dre and Khayree