A Prayer in Hell

While there are several layers of allegory and metaphor at play on this album, with one hand presenting X-Raided as an urban Messiah who has to grow into his cultural understanding and is resurrected after having been “sacrificed” in order for the plight of his peers to be empathized with; and the other presenting X as a “Neo” in The Matrix who has to defeat the “machine” (that being the criminal justice system; cultural bias; negative cultural influences; or the government that created all of the above) – A Prayer In Hell plays out more like a psychedelic trip, positioning X-Raided as an Alice In Wonderland type of character with the intoxicating allure of gang culture serving as the mushroom that he consumes and the concept of “the streets” and everything that comes with it being the Wonderland.

In that sense, King Iso, who anchors the album by serving as its narrator, plays the role of its Cheshire Cat, dropping clues for both X-Raided and the listener along the way; while Tech N9ne is its Mad Hatter, encouraging X-Raided to “arise to a new beginning” and to embrace his “new life” as a member of Strange Music, Inc.

The title track begins with a paraphrased Carl Jung quote which originally reads: “No tree, it is said, can grow to heaven unless its roots are in hell.” This statement itself is a spiritual and educational rabbit hole containing massive amounts of information on the subject of claiming one’s humanity by coming to terms with the concepts of good, evil and redemption.

His reference that A Prayer in Hell is “the origin story of a nefarious orphan,” finds X-Raided reimagining his conception as the result of an encounter between an angel and a demon (Count Dracula). This part of the story informs the entire album with the concept being that X-Raided is part human, part angel and part demon. He spends the great majority of the album attempting to balance and even reconcile all three of those aspects of his personality, harkening back to the aforementioned Carl Jung quote.

The Carl Jung quote sets the stage for an album with a cover that represents “hell” as time itself with “heaven” seemingly being the attainment of freedom by way of self-efficacy (which is a whole other rabbit hole in and of itself). The clocks on the album art all have different times on them, alluding to the fact that X-Raided’s prison sentence was “indeterminate” and he never knew what his release date was or if and when he would ever go “home.”

Then there is The Parasite, which likely symbolizes the demon X-Raided refers to on the title track, almost serving as the first mention of the album’s antagonist- which in Alice in Wonderland terminology would be our Queen of Hearts. The song Parasitic finds X-Raided embodying the demon, essentially yelling “off with their heads” to symbolize the psychology of “the streets” and its laws, which X-Raided sees as both real and fake; simultaneously dangerous but only given power by our own belief and participation in them, much like the Queen of Hearts and similar to the rule that if you die in the Matrix, you die in the real world as well.

This Parasite speaks through X-Raided several times on the album, which is alluded to by King Iso, who says “It was what it was” prior to the section of songs that belong to the Parasite. This section of the album ends after the song Parasitic, as X-Raided explains that education itself is the only way to exorcise this particular demon. King Iso returns and says, “That was then, this is now,” moving the album forward into its next section,
which begins with The Bridge (yet another metaphor hidden in plain sight, with both the title and the function of the song being one and the same).

X’s decision to close the album with the autobiographical track Many Apologies is that much more powerful when we note his references to Abraham Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Human Needs,” one of which maintains that the a child’s “house” not only meets sheltering-related needs but also physiological needs. This is jarring because as X-Raided once said, he doesn’t really have a “home” due to him having been lost in time for so long. He has no real attachment to anywhere because he went from Earth to Hell, and then existed in purgatory during his period of self actualization – which he experienced prior to his release from prison and his entrance into his “heaven.”

For all of its allegories and metaphors, in a nutshell, this album is essentially about a dysfunctional childhood and the damage that can result from being born to parents who fail to ensure that a child’s hierarchy of human needs are met… and the difficulty of having to reconcile that fact on one’s own. As the album’s protagonist, X-Raided had to raise his inner child himself and find redemption through education, self-help and a desire to make amends. In that sense – if X is Alice in Wonderland – then the album itself is the “White Rabbit” that must be followed to discover the truth, which is eventually stated by King Iso at the end of Many Apologies:

“It is what it is.”