“You can’t assume that Bob Marley actually shot the sheriff.”
Here’s why rappers like Jay-Z want prosecutors to stop using hip-hop lyrics as evidence in court ...
Here’s why rappers like Jay-Z want prosecutors to stop using hip-hop lyrics as evidence in court ...
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00:00Jay-Z, one of several artists teaming up to block rap lyrics from being used in court.
00:06This comes after violent lyrics from several rap artists have been admitted as criminal evidence in trials.
00:30I think they know inherently and from personal experience that their music sometimes is viewed
00:51differently by the judicial system, and frankly, it's a vestige of white supremacy in our courts
01:01that prosecutors could get away with linking rap music lyrics to this type of criminal behavior.
01:10It seems to be a growing trend on the part of prosecutors to turn an artist's lyrics against him or her in a criminal trial.
01:30The other thing that's particularly troubling about it is that this type of prosecution and the introduction of these types of lyrics
01:39has a really apparent racial bias.
01:42The rap just started popping this year and violence been popping for the longest.
02:08You know what I'm saying? So it's like, if you get rid of every gangsta rapper in the game right now and blackball them out the industry
02:15and just say you can't make no more music right now, it's still going to be violence.
02:18We the jury in above-entitled action find the defendant Calvin Broadus not guilty of the crime of murder in the first degree.
02:48I got federal agents in front of my house.
03:02One, two, three, four, five, six cars.
03:06It's beyond us. It's nothing I could do.
03:10Rap is just like any other creative expression.
03:15So, you know, you can't assume that Bob Marley actually shot the sheriff, but you also can't assume that there's a man buried in Edgar Allen Poe's floorboards.
03:28These types of artistic expressions, you know, are really across the board and need to be respected as such by prosecutors and more largely by our judicial system.
03:59We've identified at least 500 instances in which lyrics have been used either to investigate or charge or ultimately prosecute.
04:09And in some instances, even fashion a sentence for an individual.
04:14Bill would guarantee freedom of creative expression in New York state by prohibiting prosecutors from using evidence of creative expression as criminal evidence against a person without clear and convincing proof that there is a literal or factual nexus between, say, rap music, lyrics and the facts of a criminal case.
04:44Part of the trick here in Albany to get legislation passed is to get attention to bills that you might support.
05:10And we think that the hip hop artists who have lent this bill their attention is going to help push it forward.
05:20And I'm hopeful that with the support of so many advocates, we can get this bill across the finish line before the session ends.