Hard rhymes

Beanie Sigel is on the brink of a breakthrough. The roly-poly rapper has two albums and a successful clothing line under his belt, but he’s hungry to make the leap into platinum-sales-and-household-name territory.

So last week, as Sigel’s “The B. Coming” became the premiere release from Island Def Jam’s new Damon Dash Music Group label, the Philadelphia rapper launched his shot at becoming what CEO Dash calls “a franchise and a phenomenon.” One thing, continues Dash, can do the trick: promotion.

There’s the rub. Sigel is in the Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility in the City of Brotherly Love, serving a one-year sentence after pleading guilty to federal drug and weapons charges. From prison, he cannot do in-store appearances; from his disciplinary stint in solitary confinement, he cannot do interviews.

“What can I say? My hands are tied,” sighs Dash, who helped launch the careers of such musicians as Cam’ron and Foxy Brown. “The music will have to speak for itself.”

Unless, however, absence speaks louder than words. Without saying a thing, Sigel, born Dwight Grant, has set himself in the midst of a contentious trend in hip-hop, one that could generate more discussion -- and deliberation -- than old-fashioned promotion: jailhouse rap.

It’s not a wholly new phenomenon; in 1995, Tupac Shakur’s “Me Against the World,” recorded before the rapper entered prison for sexual abuse, was released after his incarceration and went to No. 1. Nor is it terrifically hard to explain: With 44% of the prison population made of up African American males, according to a 2003 U.S. Department of Justice study, coming up with rhymes and lyrics is a natural outlet for young men raised on hip-hop and faced with time and creative energy to burn.

What’s new is a dramatic increase in the number of releases as well as the stature of the incarcerated rappers making them. Both factors have propelled jailhouse rap to a new level -- one that some cultural observers are deeming the hip-hop generation’s version of the prison writings of Eldridge Cleaver, Angela Davis or Assata Shakur.

“What’s happening with rappers speaking from prison is absolutely along the lines of what we saw with prison writers back in the ‘60s,” says Paul Butler, a law professor at George Washington University and author of a recent Stanford Law Review article arguing that hip-hop’s ideas about criminal justice deserve to be taken seriously. “Rappers are the griots of their generation,” he says. “When they confront prison, we’ll hear about it.”

Not everyone is thrilled about what they hear; or even cares to hear it.

“Shyne may have released a critically acclaimed album,” says Roland S. Martin, nationally syndicated columnist and author of “Speak, Brother! A Black Man’s View of America.” “But he’s in jail for shooting up a nightclub. At what point do we confront the reality of what the rapper has done to end up in prison?”

The litany of releases, however, is growing. Koch Records has put out “The Truest [Expletive] I Ever Said,” an album by New Orleans rapper C-Murder, who is serving time in Gretna, La., on a 2003 murder conviction. Pimp C, a member of Texas rap duo UGK, is in a Houston jail for aggravated assault; Rap-A-Lot Records released Pimp C’s “The Sweet James Jones Stories” last month. Mystikal, a Grammy nominee for his 2001 album “Tarantula,” is serving six years for sexual battery but is reportedly recording in his cell in St. Gabriel, La.

Rap’s most prominent inmate is former Sean “P. Diddy” Combs protege Shyne, who signed a $3-million deal with Def Jam while serving time for a 1999 Manhattan nightclub shooting. His 2004 album “Godfather Buried Alive” landed him in magazines, on MTV -- and in hot water with the New York State Crime Victims Board, which launched a case against him for violating the state’s “Son of Sam” law, created to prohibit criminals from profiting from their crimes. Recently, a Brooklyn judge froze funds from the Def Jam contract pending the outcome of a civil suit against him by two of the shooting victims; undeterred, the rapper is now prepping two summer releases: a new album and a documentary co-produced by Mark Wahlberg.

And now that Lil’ Kim -- convicted of perjury last month and facing up to 20 years in prison -- is said to be diligently recording, the first behind-bars release from a female rapper may be in the making.

The African American outsider voice belongs to a musical tradition that runs back decades, to the jailhouse blues of Leadbelly and Son House, and even centuries, to the field hollers of slaves.

Could jailhouse rap be the latest incarnation of this voice?

Angst for the future

Such a question was doubtless beside the point to Sigel, who recorded “The B. Coming” with more pressing matters on his mind.

Having secured his place in hip-hop circles as a ferocious lyricist, signed to Roc-A-Fella Records by Jay-Z, Sigel had a rap sheet to be reckoned with: eight arrests, one of which he’s serving time for. Then, in 2003, came an attempted-murder charge, to which he pleaded not guilty.

His attempted-murder trial last April was a chic, theatrical affair. Sigel looked dapper in fedoras; Dash, Jay-Z and Beyonce on the sidelines. It ended with a hung jury and Sigel is slated to be retried in September, but the first trial became fodder for headlines -- and a compelling album.

That album was completed through six weeks of house arrest, during which Sigel stayed at Dash’s New York loft and shot music videos, promotional documentaries (including “The Trial: Beanie Sigel,” for BET and “The Truth: Beanie Sigel” for MTV2), and his final scenes in “State Property 2,” the Dash-produced and -directed crime flick -- in which Sigel, aptly enough, goes to jail -- that hits theaters nationwide April 13.

Like the bulk of behind-bars jailhouse rap, including most of Shyne’s album, Sigel’s “The B. Coming” is not about prison but about the petrifying possibility of it. Voraciously heaping words atop lush, soulful beats, Sigel is a man awaiting a verdict, an insomniac veering between panic and pain, remorse and resilience, callousness and contrition: “I’m staggering/ Runnin’ in places tragic/ My heart in the faith I don’t practice/ I still pray, Allah/ Forgive me for my actions/ ‘Cause I spit gangster, think Muslim and act Kaffir.”

Shyne’s “Quasi OG,” from his “Godfather Buried Alive,” is pre-prison rap at its best: “Walking through the depths of hell/ It’s hard for me to smile/ When I’m innocent and still, I’m facing trial/ God save me/ Secret societies manipulating the dumb, deaf and blind/ and yet they want to blame it on Shyne/ Like I’m responsible for the country’s murder rate/ Responsible for babies born high off base.”

Listening to pre-prison rap is akin to reading a book whose ending you already know: That dire ending hovers over every beat, haunting the listening experience.

Weighing the message

Unlike Sigel, C-Murder (real name: Corey Miller) recorded his entire album from prison. Like Sigel, the rapper insists he is innocent, claims his lyrics and persona (and, yes, stage name) were used against him in court, and confronts an uncertain fate: He was convicted of second-degree murder in 2003, but a state district judge last year ordered a new trial. Last month, a Louisiana state appeals court overturned that order, clearing the way for Miller’s sentencing. Facing a mandatory sentence of life without possibility of parole, he plans an appeal.

The brother of rapper Master P and once a member of Master P’s flashy No Limit family, C-Murder, known for his contribution to the less-than-grave 504 Boyz track “Wobble Wobble,” has now turned his attention to racial profiling, county conviction rates and a life that’s had him “stressin’ since my adolescence,” as he rhymes on the track “My Life” from the new album.

His terse style reeks of prison: It’s so sober it borders on flat, so nihilistic it makes one wince. “Did U Hold It Down” is a poignant love letter written from a jail cell to the girl he left behind: “The Lord is testing me/ I don’t know why they keep arresting me,” he laments.

Yet by phone from prison, C-Murder insisted that his musical style has not been affected by his abode. “I still got my same style and my same flow, as far as club music and bounce music,” he says flatly, with more than a hint of resignation.

His assertion suggests a key difference between classic prison writing and jailhouse rap: The latter has patently commercial aims. Listeners can take only so much politics and prison before demanding a bouncy club anthem. That could explain why most tracks on Shyne’s album -- including those recorded as phone calls from prison -- are standard bling-and-beef rap fare.

C-Murder curtly sums up his motives for recording: “I wanted to be doing something besides sitting in jail sulking,” he says. The rapper was encouraged by his lawyer, Ron Rakosky, who showed up during visiting hours with a small recorder that held pre-produced beats, to which C-Murder added his rhymes. Rakosky wasn’t hampered by “Son of Sam” laws, which do not exist in Louisiana.

“But even if they did,” Rakosky adds, “[C-Murder] was no more trying to profit from his crime than Martha Stewart was trying to keep her business afloat while she was in jail.”

Hearing of C-Murder’s album, the jail’s sheriff, Harry Lee, furiously pointed to warning signs posted in parts of the jail noting that recording is prohibited. His ire was further stoked by the video for the album’s first single, “Y’all Heard of Me” -- which uses footage, shot by Court TV and a local station, of C-Murder in prison. Claiming he had signed off on the footage but not on its use in a music video, Lee promptly scrapped all of the rapper’s previously approved television interviews.

In addition, Rakosky is now allowed to bring only a pencil when meeting with his client.

Atlanta rapper T.I. (born Clifford Harris) incited similar controversy last summer when, on work release from his stint in jail for probation violation, he shot a promotional video inside Atlanta’s Fulton County Jail. Then-Fulton County Sheriff Jackie Barrett told news outlets that she did not authorize the shoot, during which one prisoner escaped.

Listen and learn

What smells of crass commercialization -- prisons: trendy backdrops for rappers! -- may in fact have loftier aims. Notoriously overcrowded, Fulton County Jail has been blasted by the Southern Center for Human Rights, which claims its conditions constitute cruel and unusual punishment; following the T.I. scandal, Barrett -- under federal investigation for mishandling department funds -- was suspended. Watching T.I. or C-Murder pose behind bars, do teenage viewers see protest statements and social commentary -- or their favorite rapper, looking cool in orange?

“These videos in no way make prison look cool,” asserts Stephen Hill, senior vice president of music programming and talent at BET.

“Actually,” he continues, “if ever there were a deterrent for kids, it’s the sight of their favorite rapper -- who used to ... wear diamonds -- wearing an orange jumpsuit, filmed with a camcorder against a stark background. It does not look sexy. Their life before? Very sexy. Their life now? Not sexy at all.”

And what of Sigel’s clothing line, State Property -- is that a label that youths, many of whom are African American, ought to plaster on their chests?

“Beanie isn’t advocating anything,” explains Dash. “It’s more like he’s saying you can be a person that’s been in jail and still have a successful clothing line, and still have aspirations.”

As for C-Murder, he says, “The kids can listen to me and learn not to turn their back -- to turn on the TV and get educated about the system and the laws so that they don’t end up in this situation.”

So while his first single is drenched in gangster swagger -- “Test me with that glock you get popped, boy,” he rhymes -- C-Murder’s music, like that of Sigel and other jailed rappers, ultimately includes a built-in moral.

However lurid their boasts, the very fact of who’s delivering them -- imprisoned men -- denotes that actions reap penalties. Can any amount of behind-bars flossing alter that hard-and-fast lesson?

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Albums that capture the view from there

Beanie Sigel

“The B. Coming” (Damon Dash Music Group)

***

On the follow-up to 2001’s disappointing “The Reason,” the bruising Philadelphia rapper, who started serving a one-year prison term after recording this, regains his focus and delivers a powerful, meditative collection that documents his tumultuous life. As a rapper, Sigel favors a straightforward delivery that earns points for his emotion and urgency. There’s not a lot of lyrical complexity, but Sigel’s no-nonsense look at the eternal struggle between right and wrong benefits from directness.

Sigel flexes a bouncy flow and details his agility with firearms on the lively “Gotta Have It” and pensively wonders about his fate on the paranoid “Feel It in the Air.” But Sigel’s guests sometime steal the spotlight. Redman’s lyrical gymnastics dominate the boastful “One Shot Deal” and UGK’s Bun B flexes his superior storytelling abilities on the drug-championing “Purple Rain.” These Grade-A performances give a shot of adrenaline that balances Sigel’s somber mood.

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Pimp C

“The Sweet James Jones Stories” (Rap-A-Lot 4 Life/ J. Prince Entertainment)

***

This nasal-voiced rapper of the Texas rap duo UGK has appeared in the last several years on hits by Jay-Z and Three 6 Mafia, among others. Before this highly anticipated debut solo album surfaced, Pimp C was imprisoned on assault charges. His album features the talented rapper engaging in frank, sometimes brutal discussions of his favorite topics: pimping, sex and drug trafficking. His attention to detail and the soulful guitars and smooth strings backing him make for a captivating listen.

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C-Murder

“The Truest $#!@ I Ever Said” (Koch Records)

**

The New Orleans rapper, convicted in 2003 of second-degree murder, recorded his new album in prison, and the results are often stilted and lack the depth, passion and energy contained on his earlier material. But when he reworks Akon’s 2004 prison-themed hit “Locked Up” as “Won’t Let Me Out” and teams with rappers Mac and Curren$y on “Camouflage & Murder,” C-Murder displays the gritty flair that made him a star.

-- Soren Baker

Albums are rated from one star (poor) to four (excellent).

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On the Web

To hear samples from Beanie Sigel’s “The B. Coming,” visit calendarlive.com/beanie.

Contact Baz Dreisinger at Calendar.letters@latimes.com.