Living Proof is an album by the incarcerated rap collective Lifers Group, released in 1993.[2][3] The collective was made up of inmates serving sentences of 25 years to double-life.[4][5] The album followed the collective's 1991 debut EP and their Grammy-nominated long-form video.[6] Royalties from the album were put toward the Lifers Group Juvenile Awareness Program.[7]
Production
The album was recorded inside East Jersey State Prison, in Rahway, New Jersey. A temporary studio was built in the prison, and the collective had a week to record.[8]Living Proof was produced by Solid Productions, with, on some tracks, Organized Konfusion.[9] The members of the collective were credited by their nicknames and their prison serial numbers.[10] They wrote all of the lyrics and assisted with some of the musical backing.[11] A video was filmed at the prison for the first single, "Short Life of a Gangsta".[12]
Trouser Press wrote that the album "trades intensity for a showcase of Rahway’s considerable lyrical/musical talents ... The problem is not in the message or the sound—as on-point as ever—but in the very anonymity of the performers."[3]The Gazette thought that "Ice-T may have scarier beats, but he can't top this for tragedy or credibility."[18]
The Chicago Sun-Times stated that "in addition to solid musical production and skillful lyrical flow, the Rahway crew rips a few choice rhymes on 'Jack U Back', a dis of gangsta rappers who glorify street life and mislead listeners about its perils."[14] The Miami Herald declared that the album "is a raw and numbing litany of recrimination, stupid choices and ruined lives, made all the more depressing because you know every word is true."[19]
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