| Living Proof | |
| Type: | studio |
| Artist: | Lifers Group |
| Cover: | Living Proof (Lifers Group album).jpg |
| Released: | 1993 |
| Genre: | Rap |
| Label: | Hollywood BASIC[1] |
| Producer: | Solid Productions, Organized Konfusion |
| Prev Title: | Lifers Group |
| Prev Year: | 1991 |
Living Proof is an album by the incarcerated rap collective Lifers Group, released in 1993.[2] The collective was made up of inmates serving sentences of 25 years to double-life.[3] [4] The album followed the collective's 1991 debut EP and their Grammy-nominated long-form video.[5] Royalties from the album were put toward the Lifers Group Juvenile Awareness Program.[6]
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.[7] Living Proof was produced by Solid Productions, with, on some tracks, Organized Konfusion.[8] The members of the collective were credited by their nicknames and their prison serial numbers.[9] They wrote all of the lyrics and assisted with some of the musical backing.[10] A video was filmed at the prison for the first single, "Short Life of a Gangsta".[11]
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."[12] The Gazette thought that "Ice-T may have scarier beats, but he can't top this for tragedy or credibility."[13]
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." 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."[14]
MusicHound R&B: The Essential Album Guide deemed Living Proof "more refined than the first album, but ... still nothing incredibly compelling."