BL Shirelle

Co-Executive Director (she/her)

BL Shirelle is the Co-Executive Director of Die Jim Crow Records, the first non-profit record label for currently and formerly incarcerated artists in United States history. She is also a phenomenal songwriter/rapper, producer and justice-impacted artist herself, raising up her community and sharing her art and activism with the world.

Her label debut solo album Assata Troi, which she also executive produced, garnered critical acclaim from Los Angeles Times, Pitchfork, NPR, Passion of Weiss, BBC, Interview Magazine and Philadelphia Inquirer, among others. Assata Troi is an epic fusion of hard-hitting poetry, rap, and r&b with a gritty rock edge.

Growing up in 1990s uptown Philadelphia during the crack epidemic, BL was exposed early on to the harsh realities of addiction. She began expressing her experiences and emotions, starting to write raps in the third grade. Though she was passionate about pursuing a career in music, BL got involved selling drugs, survived a police shooting and spent most of her twenties in the Pennsylvania prison system. 

During her second and final stint, she decided it was time to get serious. She spent her last few years incarcerated practicing guitar, writing lyrics, and participating in a TedX event in which she helmed a prison band. It was this TedX video which caught the attention of Fury Young, and the two began a correspondence during BL’s final months in prison.

When BL was released in December 2015, she hit the ground running. Within a few years she had released two mixtapes, contributed vocals and lyrics for the Die Jim Crow EP, and had been featured in Rolling Stone. As DJC grew into a non-profit and eventually a record label, BL joined the board, engaged in the label’s strategic planning, and developed a clear leadership role within the organization.

For three years serving as our founding Deputy Director, BL harnessed her skills as an administrator and manager, with a natural talent for engaging fans and supporters, executive producing albums, and strengthening programming with our constituents. Appointed Co-Executive Director of DJC in 2022, BL leads the label’s communications and development, while sharing programming duties with her Co-ED, Fury Young.

BL is currently working on albums from B. ALEXIS and THE MASSES, among other projects. She also works closely with Simply Naomi —who she met in prison — a Philadelphia native and gospel/R&B legend who was incarcerated for 37 years and commuted of her life sentence in 2019.

BL Shirelle has been a guest speaker at Augustana University, Stockton University, Goucher University, and Susquehanna University and is a teacher assistant at Yale Divinity School of Music and Wesleyan University. She has performed at MoMA PS 1 and at DJC virtual performances during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic to raise funds for PPE Into Prisons alongside such acts as DIIV, Eve 6, Hurray For The Riff Raff and Shamir, among others.