Lil Nas X is raising funds for nonprofit The Bail Project to provide cash bail for incarcerated people nationwide. 

What You Need To Know

  • Lil Nas X is raising funds for nonprofit The Bail Project to provide cash bail for incarcerated people nationwide

  • The singer made the announcement alongside the debut of his prison-themed music video for “Industry Baby” on Thursday

  • The movement to eliminate cash bail from the U.S. criminal justice system has picked up steam in recent years

  • Since its launch in 2018, The Bail Project said it has paid $47 million to bail out more than 17,000 people

The 22-year-old singer, whose real name is Montero Lamar Hill, made the announcement alongside the debut of his prison-themed music video for “Industry Baby” on Thursday night.  

The video shows Lil Nas X being sent to Montero State Prison, a fictional location based on his own name. In the (very NSFW) video, Lil Nas X dances with several other nude inmates before donning a pink jumpsuit and working out in the prison yard. 

Thanks to some help from rapper and songwriter Jack Harlow, who is featured in the song, Lil Nas X leads a prison break — after much dancing and celebrating, of course. 

But in a statement posted to The Bail Project’s website, the “Call Me By Your Name” singer wrote that the devastating impact of incarceration “isn’t just theoretical for me.”

“Music is the way I fight for liberation. It’s my act of resistance,” he wrote in part. “But I also know that true freedom requires real change in how the criminal justice system works. Starting with cash bail.”

“This isn’t just theoretical for me. It’s personal,” the singer continued. “I know the pain that incarceration brings to a family. And I know the disproportionate impact that cash bail has on Black Americans.”

 

The organization, which grew from the New York-based Bronx Freedom Fund in 2007, aims to end the cash-bail system in the United States by “providing free bail assistance and pretrial support to thousands of low-income people every year,” per its website. 

The movement to eliminate cash bail from the U.S. criminal justice system has picked up steam in recent years. Opponents of cash bail, which is intended to ensure that defendants return to court if they’re set free awaiting trial, say the time-honored practice is a penalty on poverty. 

Advocates of eliminating the cash bail system claim the poor and innocent must sit in jail awaiting their day in court while the wealthy and guilty go free. Jails are associated with law-breakers, but the liberal-leaning Center for American Progress notes that three of every five people locked up in the U.S. have not been convicted of a crime.

Since its launch in 2018, The Bail Project said it has paid $47 million to bail out more than 17,000 people in more than 24 cities. That prevented more than 100,000 days of incarceration, and reduced the collateral consequences such as loss of jobs, housing and child custody.

According to The Bail Project, when ranked by state, seven of the 10 states with the highest incarceration rates in the U.S. are in the South. And Black Americans bear the brunt of incarceration in the region. Of all Black Americans in jail in the U.S., nearly half are in Southern jails, The Bail Project said. Many prisoners are also saddled with fines and court fees that can lead to reimprisonment if they go unpaid.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.