title: Living Proof (Lifers Group album)
text: # Living Proof (Lifers Group album)
  
  Living Proof is an album by the incarcerated rap collective Lifers Group, released in 1993. The collective was made up of inmates serving sentences of 25 years to double-life. The album followed the collective's 1991 debut EP and their Grammy-nominated long-form video. Royalties from the album were put toward the Lifers Group Juvenile Awareness Program.
  
  ## Production
  
  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. Living Proof was produced by Solid Productions, with, on some tracks, Organized Konfusion. The members of the collective were credited by their nicknames and their prison serial numbers. A video was filmed at the prison for the first single, "Short Life of a Gangsta".
  
  ## Critical reception
  
  Professional ratings :
  
  | Review scores ||
  | - | - |
  | Source | Rating |
  | AllMusic | |
  | Chicago Sun-Times | |
  | Robert Christgau | |
  | MusicHound R&B: The Essential Album Guide | |
  | RapReviews | 7.5/10 |
  
  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." The Gazette thought that "Ice-T may have scarier beats, but he can't top this for tragedy or credibility."
  
  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."
  
  MusicHound R&B: The Essential Album Guide deemed Living Proof "more refined than the first album, but ... still nothing incredibly compelling."
  
  