FirstRepair to release reparations-focused hip-hop album Aug. 28

by My Ly August 17th, 2025

My LyDecember 3rd, 2022

Album cover for “The Reckoning, Freedom Songs for Reparations,” produced by FirstRepair and Ras Kass. Credit: FirstRepair

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Growing up in Evanston, Robin Rue Simmons, former Fifth Ward councilmember and founder of reparations advocacy nonprofit FirstRepair, said hip-hop music was an early inspiration for her to connect more closely to her roots and to politics.

“It was that music that inspired me really to explore my African culture,” she said. “I began wearing an African medallion and really began to feel more power than I had before. I felt loved and capable and supported in my community, but through hip-hop, I began to feel power and authority and more agency than I had before.”

Now, Rue Simmons is hoping to inspire others in that same way with a new album that celebrates Black liberation and reparations. FirstRepair is releasing The Reckoning, Freedom Songs for Reparations on Aug. 28. The record features several artists based in Evanston and from other cities across the country.

“It’s reflective of the community that has been harmed,” Rue Simmons said. “And so we can amplify our brilliance, our place, our voice and our culture through art expression, while also educating not only our community, but even our allies, on why reparations are right and just.”

Two of the songs on the album, The Reparations Anthem and Agitate, Educate, Organize, were released as singles last year, “and that grew into an album,” Rue Simmons said.

Other songs on the record include Demand Reparations, Generational Wealth, We are and Still Blessed.

“The album is a collection of artists and artist activists that care about the life circumstances of Black people, make the demand through their art, educate through their art and organize through their art,” Rue Simmons said.

She created FirstRepair following her time serving on the City Council, during which she led Evanston’s effort to pass the first reparations law in the nation in 2019. Now in her work with FirstRepair, she advises other municipalities that are trying to create their own reparations programs.

Rue Simmons added that this album is also a way for the nonprofit to educate the public on reparations on a more accessible and popular platform.

“What I’ve learned over the last several years is that reparations is a heart and mind matter,” she said. “Public education is the way that you prep and prime a community for the conversation, and making reparations common sense and commonplace takes a lot of narrative work, and art is a format in which we can come together, and it is less polarizing, it’s less provocative, it’s far more engaging sometimes than a paper or an academic report.”

She said she hopes the album will also engage the younger generation, similar to how rap inspired her.

“We have a younger generation that is not as engaged as we would like to see them, not just in the reparations conversation, but broadly in the political space, the legislative space and civic engagement,” she said. “And I believe that arts and culture is a way to engage our younger leaders and younger community members more so than we have in the past.”

FirstRepair will hold a fireside chat on the day of the album’s release at its headquarters at 1900 Asbury Ave. The debut event will feature former NBA player Craig Hodges, who is featured on the album cover, and Pulitzer Prize winner Yohance Lacour.