Join Epilogue Books for an evening of music and stimulating conversation.

Rap and Redemption on Death Row: Seeking Justice and Finding Purpose behind Bars chronicles the struggles and triumphs of a convicted murderer’s path to redemption through music, telling the unique and complex story in his own words as he records an album on death row, something no one has done before. Braxton, AKA Rrome Alone, is currently at work on a full-length album, Mercy on My Soul, which will be released in coordination with the book that will be distributed by Redeye and will be streaming on Apple, Spotify, etc.

Additionally, UNC-Chapel Hill’s The Process Series is adapting the book for a compelling, one-man show (starring Keith Randolph Smith, an American Broadway, television, theater, and film actor) in March. The book grew out of correspondence between Alim Braxton and Mark Katz, a music professor and hip-hop scholar at UNC, that began in late 2019.

Braxton wrote to Katz for assistance in finding a producer to provide the instrumental accompaniment to his rap songs. Out of this correspondence, where one letter turned into well over one hundred, grew a musical partnership and a friendship. Imprisoned since age nineteen,

Alim Braxton has spent more than a quarter century on North Carolina’s death row. During that time, he converted to Islam and dedicated his life to redemption. Braxton, a rapper since the age of thirteen, uses his rhymes as a form of therapy and to advocate for prison reform, particularly by calling attention to the plight of the wrongfully incarcerated. Braxton’s world is complex: full of reflections on guilt, condemnation, incarceration, religious awakening, and the redemptive power of art. Ultimately, Braxton shows us that even amid the brutality of our prison system there are moments of joy, and on death row joy may be the most powerful form of resistance.