Songs From The Hole: A Visual Album Soaked In Humanity
by Heesun Park
At the age of 15, Jacobs “JJ’88” took a life. Three days later, his brother had his life taken.
Jacobs’ story feels almost biblical in nature, so filled with cosmic ironies that it should be a Greek epic. Condemned to a double life sentence, Jacobs saw the birth of his nephew fall on the same date of his brother’s murder. He learned that one of his closest companions in prison was the very man who killed his brother. He was put in “the hole.” There he had to make a choice: To continue navigating life by the violence that was ingrained in him, or to liberate himself from the cycle of hurt that he both perpetuated and suffered from.
It was from this reckoning that his album Songs From The Hole was born. Containing piercingly raw but extremely well-written rap lyrics against high-quality and varied instrumental productions, the tracklist holds its own against the work of acclaimed socially conscious rappers like Kendrick Lamar.
As a film, Songs From The Hole (2024) feels like a perfect union between documentary filmmaking and a visual album. When the talking heads of Jacobs’ family and loved ones are exhausted, poetic scenes fill the screen, allowing JJ’88’s music to speak in lieu of Jacobs, who goes unseen and is heard only through collect calls for majority of the runtime. This structure and dance between the reality of Jacobs’ sentence and the dreamy visions of his life outside the prison walls at times feel too loose to bear a nearly two-hour runtime. But the quality of JJ’88’s music, the visuals of Songs From The Hole, and the way they magnify Jacobs’ circumstance of being both victim and perpetrator brings the film above the empty and vain marketing attempts that have become emblematic of music video production today.
There is real power to Songs From The Hole. Raised in a community commanded by street violence, Jacobs was taught to seek power through the ability to inflict pain. But when the carceral system’s punitive model of justice rendered him powerless and denied him acknowledgement of his growth and rehabilitation, it was from the shadows of this powerlessness that his meditations on justice, humanity, hope, redemption, reconciliation, and freedom were able to emerge.
Make no mistake—though it was from “the hole” (a prison colloquialism for solitary confinement) that Jacobs honed his art and through that, found his redemption, this is not a movie about the success of the American prison system. Songs From The Hole isn’t just a story, and Jacob isn’t an exceptional hero. It’s a reality, and it’s one that is shared by countless Black and Brown people failed by the systems around them.
Songs From The Hole is a movie about what happens when one’s humanity is recognized. When one’s potential for good is fostered. And in a post-2020 timeline where we have become perhaps desensitized to persisting conversations on abolition and prison reform, the message of Songs From The Hole rings clear: humanity yields hope.
