Over a decade fulfilling our mission. 3 LPs, 4 EPs, and 18 Singles by prison-impacted musicians released to international acclaim and a growing audience of 100,000+ streams.

65 incarcerated musicians recorded. 18 formerly incarcerated musicians recorded. 17 prisons visited or recorded in 10 states across America.

Our PPE Into Prisons virtual concert series at the height of the pandemic, featuring major musical acts alongside prison-impacted artists, raised $25K to send 30,285 masks to 26 prisons and jails in 16 states.

Our Instruments Into Prisons campaign with the Union of Musicians and Allied Workers has sent 13 facilities 150+ pieces of instruments/gear, serving dozens of incarcerated musicians with a market value of over $20K in equipment.

From our small beginnings to becoming an international movement, FREER Records remains a champion of our core values of activism and freedom of expression, all with the support of listeners worldwide.

Go behind the scenes of the label with FREER News, for exclusive artist interviews, music video drops, personal stories from inside prison, and ways that you can join creative social justice causes, to help us all get FREER.

First, it was a concept album.

FREER Records began as an idea. This idea started as Die Jim Crow, a project which set out to basically make the greatest concept album of all time. In 2013, inspired by Michelle Alexander’s landmark book The New Jim Crow and Pink Floyd’s rock opera The Wall, musician and activist Fury Young embarked on the quixotic journey to make an epic double album about racial injustice in the U.S. prison system.

The initial idea was to work with formerly and currently incarcerated Black musicians to form a collective narrative that spanned pre-prison, prison, and reentry. Though Young, who identifies as a “New York Jew,” had never been incarcerated or produced a single song before, his personal experiences with friends who had been to prison led to him pioneering the project with a ceaseless conviction.

For six years, while working as a set carpenter, Young pursued Die Jim Crow as a passion project and had the diligence to gain access to prisons across the country for recordings. During this time he built close relationships with several musicians and writers both in and once-in of the system.

Then, a record label.

After a 2019 trip down south in which Young and co-producer/engineer dr. Israel recorded 25 new collaborators in three prisons, it became clear that Die Jim Crow was no longer an LP project but a record label. 

With dozens of unreleased recordings that would not fit on one album, and so many inspiring voices that demanded to be heard, Young approached the Die Jim Crow board of directors with the idea of this record label evolution. With unanimous consent, the focus of DJC shifted from concept album to record label.

In 2020 Die Jim Crow Records (DJC) officially launched as the nation’s first non-profit record label for formerly and currently incarcerated musicians with Young as Executive Director and longtime DJC artist BL Shirelle as Deputy Director. DJC’s’ first two full length albums were released to critical acclaim with features in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, BBC, Pitchfork, The Marshall Project, Grammys.com, Washington Post, Colorado Public Radio, Detroit Metro Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Oxygen, WNYC's The Takeaway, Interview Magazine, Arte TV France, The Atlantic, and Passion of Weiss, among others.

During the peak of the COVID pandemic in 2020, DJC raised $25K and sent over 30K masks to prisons and jails in 19 states with their PPE Into Prisons initiative. The following year they joined forces with the Union of Musicians & Allied Workers (UMAW) and began an Instruments Into Prisons drive; now an ongoing campaign which has sent over $18K worth of gear to a dozen facilities and counting. In 2022, DJC adopted a Co-Executive Director model in which Fury Young and BL Shirelle helm the label together.

Through their decade run, DJC released three EPs, two LPs, and fourteen Singles, establishing a genre-agnostic, at times heavy, ever-inspiring sound.

To a FREER future.

In December 2023, Die Jim Crow celebrated its 10 Year Anniversary at Roulette in Brooklyn, New York. 

This triumphant culminating event celebrated an idea which became a catalyst for over a decade of radical progressive change through art.

Bridging the divide between incarcerated artists and artists in the free world, Die Jim Crow's history as a unique creative collective and overall art powerhouse has lifted up the prison-impacted community as well as all those touched by our music. 

In this spirit, Die Jim Crow has evolved into FREER Records, which launched in January 2024. FREER Records believes in open creative expression for all, and that though we may never be free, we can always be freer. FREER Records has become a diverse and inclusive organization, representing the wide range and creative perspectives of marginalized people impacted by prison and a wider community of artists.

FREER Records will remain a Co-Executive Director model, producing more genres, introducing more artists, and becoming the high-quality multimedia platform they have set out to be.