Should Rap Lyrics Be Admissible in Court? | Smart News

Young Thug and Gunna, two distinguished rappers in the Atlanta hip-hop scene, are at the moment facing charges of alleged gang-related exercise—and their own lyrics are serving to construct the case. 

Thug and Gunna are simply the newest in a line of rappers whose lyrics have been used towards them in court docket as proof. In these instances, prosecutors deal with rap lyrics as “nothing more than autobiographical accounts—denying rap the status of art,” Charis E. Kubrin, a criminologist on the University of California, Irvine, tells the New York Times’ Livia Albeck-Ripka. 

But in California, that tactic could quickly be unlawful.

A bill, which might prohibit using lyrics and different inventive expressions as proof in felony proceedings, has handed unanimously in each homes of the California legislature; it now awaits Governor Gavin Newsom’s signature. The invoice would require a court docket to contemplate the chance that such proof might “inject racial bias” into felony proceedings.

In gentle of the indictment of Thug and Gunna, activists and followers have adamantly supported the invoice. But its breadth spans past rap, defending different genres of music in addition to poetry, movie, dance, visible artwork and writing.

“It has broader implications than just music,” Assemblyman Reginald Jones-Sawyer, who launched the invoice, tells Billboard’s Bill Donahue. “This is about the right to free speech under the First Amendment and just as important, especially to people of color, it’s about the right to have a fair trial, regardless of your profession or what you say in public. To have that used against you—it’s wrong.”

California just isn’t the primary state to try such a legislation. Earlier this yr, New York’s State Senate handed an analogous bill, which acquired public support from stars like Jay-Z, Meek Mill, Big Sean and Robin Thicke.

Similar laws is unfolding on the federal degree, too. In July, two Congressmen, Hank Johnson of Georgia and Jamaal Bowman of New York, launched the Restoring Artistic Protection Act, which goals to “protect artists from the wrongful use of their lyrics against them in criminal and civil proceedings.” 

In a statement, Johnson’s group quotes from a 2021 case, Bey-Cousin v. Powell, in which defendants sought to make use of hip-hop artist Muadhdhin Bey-Cousin’s lyrics towards him.

“Freddy Mercury did not confess to having ‘just killed a man’ by putting ‘a gun against his head’ and ‘pull[ing] the trigger.’ Bob Marley did not confess to having shot a sheriff. And Johnny Cash did not confess to shooting ‘a man in Reno just to watch him die,’” the 2021 opinion reads.

Jones-Sawyer believes that if California passes this invoice, it might flip the tide for courts throughout the nation, he tells Billboard. 

“As California goes, so goes the rest of the country,” he says. “We are famous for being the first to tackle the hard issues, we’re famous for having progressive ideas and rights and for pushing the envelope.”

California can be the setting for one of many earliest distinguished examples of rap lyrics getting used as authorized proof. In 1996, Calvin Cordozar Broadus Jr., recognized higher as Snoop Dogg, was tried for homicide in Los Angeles, and prosecutors cited lyrics from “Murder Was the Case” as proof aginst him. The rapper was acquitted.

Groups just like the Black Music Action Coalition California, the Public Defenders Association and Smart Justice California have endorsed the California invoice, per the Times. So has Harvey Mason Jr., CEO of the Recording Academy, the group behind the Grammys.

“It’s bigger than any one individual case,” Mason tells the Times. “In no way, at no time, do I feel that someone’s art should be used against them.”