STEEL ROOTS OUT NOW 🔥🌹🔥
Today, Steel Roots is OUT 😤😤 A visual EP by me, BL Shirelle, alongside my comrade in art and struggle, Blak Rapp MADUSA. But Steel Roots ain’t just a project—it’s my testimony. It’s my memory. It’s every ghost I still carry walking free.
Written by BL Shirelle
Cover art by Henry “Sandman” Fuller and Aaron Romero
This project was born from the Dignity Act of Pennsylvania, passed in 2023. On the surface, it looks like progress: no shackles on pregnant women, trauma-informed training for officers, free feminine products, a little bit of bonding time between newborns and their mothers. Those things matter. But the truth is—the bill was gutted. Democrats gave us a bunch of lip service, until the Republicans swept in and passed what little did get passed.🗝🔓 ⛓️
What we needed most never made it through. Medical aid for the terminally ill. Real protection for aging prisoners. Accountability for psychiatric and medical neglect that is killing people every single day. Those parts were stripped away before it passed. And I still wake up with their faces in my head.
I’ve seen too much.
I’ve seen women wasting away, bones poking through skin, still forcing a smile and whispering, “They saying ain’t nothing wrong with me, baby,” while we helped them wash, while we begged the system to do something. I’ve seen beloved elders like Ms. Nija, once strong enough to hold whole units together, barely standing, still joking on her way to hospice that her family would own the prison after she was gone. I’ve laughed and cried with women who were already dying and had to make peace with it behind bars.
Gendercide: Blak Rapp MADUSA
I’ve seen suicides—roommates hanging from ladders, neighbors giving me their meds so I could numb my pain and then never waking up themselves. I’ve stepped on bodies getting off the top bunk making my way to count. I’ve seen women die from swine flu because they couldn’t stand up, and instead of help, they were cursed at. I’ve seen guards look a dying woman in the face and tell her she was fine. These things don’t leave you. They stain you. They shape the way you breathe.
So when people tell me the Dignity Act was a win, I nod, but inside I’m grieving what never made it into that law. Because I know too many names that law could have saved.
But I also know this: SUPPORT changes everything.
Still from “Go” video directed by Jimmy Giambrone
When my grandmother was alive, she called. She called the wardens, the deputies, and the lawyers. I felt the difference in the way they treated me. I wasn’t invisible. I wasn’t left to rot. I had backup. Every woman inside deserves that kind of love, that kind of presence. And too many don’t have it.
That’s why I made Steel Roots. It’s not just to tell the story. It’s to DEMAND ACTION.
Promise You This: BL Shirelle x Blak Rapp MADUSA
Here’s what you can do, right now, TODAY:
— Write a letter to a woman inside.
— Pick up the phone and make a call when you hear about neglect.
—Send $10 so she can cover a sick call without having to choose between medical care and a bar of soap.
—Say her name. Share her story. Refuse to let her be erased.
I could stay stuck on the dead. I could list every woman I saw carried out of prison. But Steel Roots is about planting something else. It’s about turning pain into power, grief into action. It’s about steel cracking open, roots pushing through, finding light.
This project is my challenge to you: PICK ONE ACTION. Follow through. Don’t let these women stand alone.
Listen to Steel Roots and know—this is bigger than music. This is life or death.
I love y’all and I hope you enjoy the project! 🩷🩷🩷
STEEL ROOTS OUT NOW!!
Attica Energy: BL Shirelle
Look out for the documentary dropping soon.