In Prison (Trikont) album art
A selection of “Afroamerican Prison Music from Blues to HipHop” compiled by Jonathan Fischer & Ian Ensslen and published by Trikont in their Black and Proud series.
No country in the world locks up more of its citizens than the USA and nearly half of the 2.2 million prisoners are African Americans. One out of eight African American men between 20 and 35 is in prison: a circumstance which has serious effects upon African American society and culture – not least upon its music. This collection brings together work songs of the chain gangs, imprisoned bluesmen like Robert Pete Williams, the prison-soul of the Escorts, the enraged hip hop accusations of Tupac Shakur, Brand Nubian and K-Solo as well as prison songs by Bobby Womack, Curtis Mayfield, the Last Poets, Nina Simone, the Temptations and more.
The cover typography features Just van Rossum’s FF Karton. FontFont released this stencil face in 1992, together with four more typefaces by Van Rossum. The fivesome is also known as the “Instant Types” and includes styles based on vernacular letterforms made with stencils (Karton, Flightcase), stamps (Confidential, Stamp Gothic), and embossing tape (Dynamoe).
It looks like some of Karton’s many points were pulled out to make it more spiky (P, O).
