Milwaukee rapper Speech helps prisoners in ‘16 Bars’
Todd “Speech” Thomas lives a blessed life as the leader of pioneering, socially conscious hip-hop group Arrested Development. But coming of age in Milwaukee, his life could have taken a different path.
“A lot of my friends were either murdered, committed suicide or were imprisoned,” Thomas told the Journal Sentinel. His son Bakari, 21, was in prison for three years. So were three of Bakari’s friends.
“It’s been an issue that is really dear to my heart,” Thomas said. “We know we have the largest incarceration rate in the world. … The damage that is being done to entire generations of people and entire communities, we won’t be able to fully measure.”
Concerns about prison reform led Thomas last year to Richmond, Virginia, where he helped prisoners put their pain and heart into music as part of an innovative rehabilitation program. The experience was captured in the powerful new documentary “16 Bars,” showing at this year’s Milwaukee Film Festival.
Thomas will be at a festival screening Saturday, with director Sam Bathrick. Bathrick also will attend a screening Sunday, and the film will be shown again Oct. 24.
Seeing ‘amazing potential’
Thomas — who won two Grammys with Arrested Development in 1993, including for best new artist — heard about REAL LIFE, a nonprofit helping prisoners and ex-prisoners in Richmond get back on their feet, through the group’s manager, Joe Lamont.
One of its services is a music program where prisoners get to write and record songs in a studio at the Richmond City Jail.
“I started to see more clearly the amazing potential in all of these people, and understand the amazing hardships that they have had to face,” Thomas said.
The film focuses on four men who worked with Thomas in the program.
Fresh out of jail, Teddy Kane struggles to overcome his past mistakes and trauma. He was suicidal and homicidal at 9, and was an addict who saw a friend get shot and killed by the time he was 15.
Anthony Johnston was abused by his stepfather; one time, he was beaten so hard, he said, his legs were swollen purple. Homeless for two years before going to jail, Johnston’s anger issues and self-sabotaging nature jeopardize his chances to make a better life.
De’Vonte James followed in his drug-dealing mother’s footsteps. “I’ve never had a good life,” he says at one point in the film. “I’m ready to break that cycle.”
And Garland Carr became addicted to heroin when he turned 22, his habit leading him to bank robbery and other crimes. He kept using in prison, and was using after completing an eightyear sentence. He found himself back in jail just nine months later.
“These are people who have real stories, family members who love them, who have made mistakes in their lives and something to offer the world,” Bathrick said.
“You can’t arrest away the problems. These issues of addiction, mental health and poverty are things that need to be addressed.”
‘A superstar who may never be’
The four men address them headon in “16 Bars” through incredibly powerful songs. James plays the guitar beautifully — he was in a band before his bandmates got addicted to heroin, and he began selling them drugs. Kane records bruising rhymes about systemic racism, and in one of his rap songs, Johnston creates a striking image of time as “a deadly weapon/waiting for you to slip up/waiting for you to give up.”
And it isn’t hyperbole when Thomas describes Carr as “a superstar who may never be.” He’s a prolific country songwriter with rich, remorseful lyrics, natural charisma and a honeyed voice.
As Bathrick seeks a distributor — it’s on the film festival circuit for now, with Milwaukee one of the first stops — Thomas is producing a “16 Bars” album, using recordings he made with the four men and others in the program. The plan is for the album’s release to coincide with a wider release of the film next year, with proceeds benefiting the artists.
Bathrick is also coordinating screenings in prisons and with organizations helping ex-prisoners, providing mental health services and addiction recovery, “to see how the film can be a tool for advocacy around these issues,” he said.
Two organizations in Milwaukee are partners with the “16 Bars” film festival screenings — Project Return and Clean Slate Wisconsin — and Bathrick will be meeting with leaders from both groups while he’s in town.
“This is meant to create a conversation,” Bathrick said of “16 Bars.” “The messy truth behind why people are behind bars, why they get out and go back in, what the community’s role and responsibility is, what is really the possibility for redemption — there are no easy answers for that.”
“But a dream for a film like this is it can move the needle in some way.”
Speech’s daughter in the film fest spotlight
The “16 Bars” screenings aren’t the only reason the Milwaukee Film Festival is “special to me,” Thomas said.
His daughter, Zoe Renee, is the star of the feature film “Jinn,” about a 17year-old’s relationship with her mother, who converts to Islam. “Jinn” is screening at 10 a.m. Oct. 20 at the Oriental Theatre, 2230 N. Farwell Ave.