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With high-profile rapper Young Thug’s criminal trial beginning this week, the black rapper whose lyrics were used by prosecutors as evidence of criminal conduct, despite frequent references to violence and other dark themes, has been criticized for the practice. Calling for an end to .Although it is mentioned in many works of art, it is only weaponized against hip-hop artists.
Young Thug, whose real name is Jeffrey Lamar Williams, was one of 28 people charged in May with alleged gang activity linked to multiple murders, shootings, and murders. , was accused of violating Georgia’s Extortion Influence and Corruption Organizations (RICO) Act. A series of home invasions spanning almost a decade. Several men in his Atlanta rap crew, YSL, have pleaded guilty, with 14 of them, most notably Young Thug, facing charges. The trial is expected to last six to nine months.
Young Thug and other defendants allege that YSL is a group of rappers. However, prosecutors say the group is a gang that has committed numerous crimes and plans to use lyrics referring to crime and violence as evidence in court.
An ongoing lawsuit has unearthed painful memories of hip-hop artist McKinley Phipps, known professionally as “Mac.” He was signed to No Limit Records and spent 20 years in prison before being convicted of manslaughter.
“Hip-hop itself is just a medium, a predominantly black medium, which can be described negatively or positively, but over 99% of the artists writing these songs are highly exaggerated. It is pure fiction, I claim.
In 2001, Phipps was convicted of murdering a 19-year-old boy in a Louisiana club and sentenced to 30 years in prison.
Authorities had no physical evidence or weapons linking Phipps to the shooting, and Phipps, who was 22 at the time, had no criminal record. However, Phipps’ trial was primarily focused on lyrics used in his rap songs, which prosecutors likened to potential violence, he said.
“Murder, murder, kill, kill” and “pull the trigger” were some of the lyrics quoted by prosecutors, he said.
The District Attorney’s Office for the 22nd Judicial District of Louisiana did not immediately return a request for comment.
“This idea that this is autobiographical is not true. Unfortunately, it’s almost a marketing ploy because audiences want edgy and violent material just as much as they like movies with lots of action.” said Phipps.
He was pardoned by Louisiana Governor John Bell Edwards in April 2021 and released from prison on parole two months later. Although his conviction remains valid, Phipps has maintained his innocence and is critical of the evidence used against him at trial.
Phipps said he saw what he believed was a story similar to his own unfolding when Young Thug unearthed painful memories of his lost years in prison over creative expression. .
“I think prosecutors have more than lyrics to use against someone in court. Why would lyrics come up when there is actual evidence?” he said. “This has to stop at some point.”
prejudice against rap music
It’s not uncommon for prosecutors to use rap lyrics as evidence in criminal trials, according to researchers at the University of Richmond.”
Karis E. Kubrin, a professor at the University of California, Irvine who has studied the use of rap lyrics in the justice system, said prosecutors use this tactic because it is effective in obtaining convictions. rice field.
While criminal cases of lyrics being used to prove intent or indicate motives are the latest signs, she said rap music and hip-hop more broadly have a long history of social control and policing. rice field.
Through her research, Kubrin discovered prejudices against rap music and artists, she said, adding that much of that prejudice was racialized.
In a 2018 study conducted by Kubrin and others and published in the Journal of Experimental Criminology, different groups of participants were presented with the same musical lyrics and were asked to sing in either country, heavy metal, or rap songs. I was told there is. Participants gave higher overall negative scores to perceived rap lyrics and determined that the authors of those lyrics were more likely to be of bad character and involved in criminal activity.
When race information was not provided, participants who guessed the songwriter was black judged him more negatively on the same scale than participants who guessed the writer was white.
“Rapping and racing are so intertwined,” said Kubrin. In other words, the use of lyrics from rap music, a historically black genre, could infect jurors with anti-black racism, regardless of whether the defendant himself is black.
defense of practice
Fannie Willis, the Fulton County prosecutor handling the case against Young Thug and other YSL members, has defended the use of music lyrics in the trial.
Willis told reporters at a news conference in August, “If you decide to admit your crimes once and for all, I’m going to use it.” . People can keep getting angry about it. I have legal advice. If you don’t want to use rap lyrics, don’t confess to a crime. Or at least get out of my county. ”
“You can’t commit a crime in my county and then decide to brag about it. Do it as a form of intimidation and never be held accountable,” she said.
Willis’ office did not respond to a request for comment from NBC News.
Willis says the court is on her side, but black artists who have been convicted of crimes through their music say the practice interferes with First Amendment rights and also discriminates against predominantly black art forms. He says he will misunderstand and criminalize it.
San Diego-based rapper Tiny Doo, whose real name is Brandon Duncan, was arrested in 2014 on suspicion of conspiring to participate in gang activity, including a shooting.
At his preliminary hearing, prosecutors presented rap lyrics and social media photos to show he had gang membership, but there was no evidence linking him to the shooting.
After Duncan was imprisoned for seven months, a California judge dismissed the charges against him, citing a lack of evidence to bring him to trial.
The ordeal still haunts Duncan, calling his experience “injustice.”
“It’s the best racism ever for me. I know it because I went through the exact same thing,” he said. We can benefit from it, but we don’t? Where is our freedom of expression?” he said. It’s not putting the film’s screenwriter in jail, it’s just doing it to inner-city folks who are actually using lyrics as a way out of a pretty awful environment. ”
Duncan has asked Georgia prosecutors to retract the use of the lyrics in her lawsuit against Young Thug, saying hip-hop artistry is based on black lives but it’s not necessarily autobiographical. I’m looking for
The movement to stop using lyrics has been gaining momentum since last year.
Last September, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law the Decriminalizing Artistic Expression Act, making it the first state to restrict the use of rap lyrics as evidence in state courts.
In New York, SB S7527, which limits the admissibility of evidence of a defendant’s creative or artistic expression in criminal proceedings, failed to pass last year’s legislature and will be resubmitted for vote in the next legislature.
At the federal level, a bill entitled Restoring Artistic Protection (RAP Act) was introduced in the House of Representatives in August and is still in the legislative process.
Emerson Sykes, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union who specializes in First Amendment cases, said courts were reluctant to address these issues. It is a particular misunderstanding of the artistic expression in question and may have a particular prejudice against these defendants. ”
Rap music tends to skip the full analysis of whether it’s really relevant, whether there’s “a really definite connection between the content of the expression and the particular crime at hand,” Sykes said. He said the introduction of the lyrics was both an issue of evidence and an issue of free speech.
“No one thinks Johnny Cash really shot the guy in Reno, right? Although there’s a lot of very dark country music and other genres about all sorts of dangerous things that are part of human existence.” , no one interprets it as an admission of some sort of criminal liability.
“And we’ve seen time and time again that certain types of lyrics are interpreted as guilty in court, while similar types of artistic expression are either true or guilty. It means that it does not have the meaning of
Sykes said the criminal justice system was highly unfair and prejudiced against defendants, especially young black and brown defendants, and that his approach to hip-hop was based on the idioms and ways in which the genre uses certain language. He claimed that it was “probably a deliberate misunderstanding”.
“Hip-hop often vividly verbalizes the good, the bad, and the ugly of black life,” he said. “The criminalization of black lives is certainly a theme, reflected in the use of these lyrics, reflexively seen as evidence of crime.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com.
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