Common Visits a Prison in the Powerful Video for ‘Letter to the Free’ [WATCH]

Common just released a beautifully crafted video for his powerful song "Letter to the Free," off his Black America Again album, which he shot inside a prison.

Bilal makes a few appearances in the clip, since he handles the hook duties and songstress Andra Day can be seen as well. Plus, everything is shot in black and white, which matches the cold feeling of the video and makes you pay even more attention to the harsh realities Com is talking about.

By the time things end, the Chicago legend rhymes in the prison's gym area and one of its hallways, while Bilal sings his heart out in a courtyard. "Letter to the Free" appears in filmmaker Ava DuVernay's documentary 13th, which Com talked about in a recent interview.

"I actually approached Ava," he told BlackFilm.com. "This is a subject that's really been recently hovering around me, because I read this book called The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander, who's in the film. When I heard Ava was doing a movie on this, I was like, 'Man, I want to see what this is.' I asked her, and she said she had people submitting music. She was like 'Yo, if you want to submit a song, cool.' I was like, 'I'm going to go write to this' ... And I just started writing before I even got any music."

You can check out the new "Letter to the Free" video above.