{"id":41904,"date":"2025-07-24T19:26:05","date_gmt":"2025-07-24T19:26:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/2025\/07\/24\/new-bill-aims-to-stop-rap-lyrics-from-being-used-in-court-nationwide\/"},"modified":"2025-07-24T19:26:05","modified_gmt":"2025-07-24T19:26:05","slug":"new-bill-aims-to-stop-rap-lyrics-from-being-used-in-court-nationwide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/2025\/07\/24\/new-bill-aims-to-stop-rap-lyrics-from-being-used-in-court-nationwide\/","title":{"rendered":"New Bill Aims to Stop Rap Lyrics From Being Used in Court Nationwide"},"content":{"rendered":"


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\n\tThe nonprofit organization Free Our Art is partnering with elected officials, educators, and music industry organizations to combat the criminalization of rap. Together, they\u2019re advocating for the federal Restoring Artistic Protection Act (or R.A.P. Act) bill, which was reintroduced to the House today, and aims to \u201climit the admissibility of evidence of a defendant\u2019s creative or artistic expression against the defendant in a federal criminal or civil case.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAlong with their federal bill, which is sponsored by Georgia Rep. Hank Johnson and California Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove (previously sponsored by former New York Congressman Jamaal Bowman), advocates are pushing for bipartisan House bills in Missouri, Georgia, New York, and Maryland. They have successfully passed bills in California and Louisiana. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tNumerous elected officials have sponsored bills in their home states, including Rep. Phil Christofanelli (Missouri), Rep. Kasey Carpenter (Georgia), Rep. Tanner Magee (Louisiana), Delegate Marlon Amprey (Maryland), former Assemblyman Reggie Jones-Sawyer (California), Assemblywoman Catalina Cruz, and Senator Jamaal Bailey (both of New York). Free Our Art also boasts a slew of industry alliances, including the RIAA, Recording Academy, BMAC, SONA, MAC, and Artists Rights Alliance.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tFree Our Art was formally launched on March 13. The nonprofit\u2019s Executive Director, Philip Walotsky, says he was called to advocacy through Kevin Liles, who started the #ProtectBlackArt petition in 2022 in the wake of the YSL indictment, which infamously included rap lyrics.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tTheir Creative Industry Advisory board boasts prominent industry figures such as co-chairs Willie \u201cProphet\u201d Stiggers of the Black Music Action Coalition and Dina LaPolt of LaPolt Law and Songwriters of North America. And their Scholars and Legal Defense Advisory Board consists of co-chairs Lucius Outlaw, a Howard University Professor, and Erik Nielsen, a University of Richmond professor and author of\u00a0Rap on Trial,<\/em>\u00a0as well as<\/span> producer of the Emmy-nominated\u00a0As We Speak<\/em>\u00a0documentary, which chronicled the criminalization of rap lyrics.<\/span> The board also includes prominent defense attorneys Brian Steel and Drew Findling. Nielson tells Rolling Stone<\/em> that his research team has tabulated \u201cover 800\u201d cases where rap lyrics were used as evidence in criminal cases.<\/p>\n

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\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n

\n\t\u201cWe know that you probably need to add a zero or two to that number to get a realistic sense for how many cases we\u2019re talking about,\u201d he says. \u201cThere are virtually no examples of any other art form being used this way over the last 75 years. A handful at most, and all of them that I\u2019m aware of were either dismissed or reversed. So it\u2019s very clearly a practice that targets this one art form. And it\u2019s not hard to understand why that is, but it definitely leads to miscarriages of Justice.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThey\u2019ve had bills passed in California and Louisiana, while Nielson says he\u2019s frustrated about the \u201cstalls\u201d of the New York and Maryland bills. In September 2022, California Governor Gavin Newsom enacted the Decriminalizing Artistic Expression Act (AB 2799), which requires judges to probe prosecutors on the purpose of including lyrics as evidence in criminal trials. In August 2023, Louisiana passed the Restoring Artistic Protection Act (HB 475), which requires pre-evidentiary hearings in cases where lyrics are used as evidence. Walotsky notes that the bill is a step in the right direction for the Louisiana justice system.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIf you talk to defense attorneys in any other state, they will look at you sideways because pretrial evidentiary hearings are standard everywhere else,\u201d he says. \u201cIt just [wasn\u2019t] standard in the state of Louisiana. So while we didn\u2019t necessarily get the bill that we wanted in Louisiana, it was ultimately something that was a considerable improvement based on where they already are.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n

\n\tLouisiana\u2019s R.A.P. Act will prevent artists from facing the injustice that New Orleans artist McKinley \u201cMac\u201d Phipps did. In 2021, the Louisiana artist was released on parole after being incarcerated for 20 years in a controversial manslaughter case. In 2000, he was a rising rapper on No Limit Records who featured on the 504 Boyz\u2019 \u201cWobble Wobble,\u201d which peaked at No. 17 on the Billboard Hot 100. In February of that year, 19-year-old Barron C Victor, Jr. was fatally shot before one of Mac\u2019s shows while trying to break up a fight.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tSt. Tammany Parish prosecutors nabbed Phipps as their gunman despite a security guard at the venue admitting to the shooting. In 2015, five prosecution witnesses told Huffington Post<\/em><\/a> that they were \u201cbullied\u201d into implicating Phipps as the suspect. During the trial, prosecutors combined lyrics from two of Phipps\u2019 songs to present the idea that he was a violent person: \u201cMurder, murder, kill, kill \/ You mess with me, I\u2019ll put a bullet in your brain.\u201d The first half of the line is from a song of the same name, while the other half is from \u201cShellshocked,\u201d where Mac rapped about his father, noting, \u201cYa fuck with me, he\u2019ll<\/em> give you a bullet in yo\u2019 brain.\u201d Despite the prosecution\u2019s lack of evidence and improper attribution of his lyrics, Mac was convicted and sentenced to 30 years in prison; he notes that because he was granted clemency, he can\u2019t sue the Parish for a wrongful conviction.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tSince he\u2019s received clemency, he and his wife Angelique Phipps have both advocated for legislation restricting the prejudicial use of lyrics (Angelique previously advocated for Mac to be freed while he was incarcerated). When the Phipps\u2019 spoke to Rolling Stone<\/em>, they were set to speak at the New York State Capitol in Albany the next day. \u201cThey want to use hip hop as literal when it\u2019s convenient,\u201d Mac says. \u201cWe have a Dr. Dre, we have a Grandmaster Flash. This is what we do in hip hop. We create identities for ourselves. We know this is not literal; this is metaphoric, it\u2019s expressive. I think [prosecutors] know better. So if you know better, then it leads one to believe that there is an even more diabolical agenda.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSince Mac\u2019s conviction, rap lyrics have been used against many rappers, most prominently Young Thug and Gunna during the YSL trial. Fulton County DA Fani Willis accused Thug, real name Jeffery Williams, of being the head of a gang called Young Slime Life, using lyrics as evidence. Last October, Williams pled guilty to racketeering charges and was sentenced to 15 years of probation. Nielson says he doesn\u2019t see the prosecution\u2019s relative failure in the case deterring other DAs from using lyrics in their trials.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThat [case] was unique because of the sheer incompetence of the prosecution,\u201d he says. \u201cIn many other cases, you are going to see prosecutors continue to do this.\u201d He notes that after YNW Melly\u2019s 2023 double murder case ended in a mistrial, the Broward County State Attorney\u2019s office gathered \u201csong after song\u201d to introduce as evidence in a new trial. <\/p>\n

\n\tNielson says he\u2019d love to see more artists speak up alongside Mac and other advocates such as Killer Mike, with whom\u00a0<\/strong>he penned a 2015 op-ed<\/a>\u00a0condemning the prejudiced use of lyrics.<\/span> \u201cI\u2019ve been disappointed by the fact that more [artists] aren\u2019t speaking out about this,\u201d he says. \u201cI hope as we start to see more high-profile artists caught in this net, that people will speak out.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tCurrently, Free Our Art is working closely with prominent music industry organizations like the Recording Academy, RIAA, and Artists Rights Alliance. Nielsen says he\u2019s impressed by Free Our Art and the Recording Academy\u2019s bipartisan approach to the bills. \u201cThis is a speech issue,\u201d he says. \u201cWe see this as something that people of a variety of political backgrounds can rally around.\u201d The bills have several Republican sponsors, including Georgia State Rep. Kasey Carpenter. \u201cPeople have got to be able to express themselves, artistically, without fear of retribution in court,\u201d Carpenter told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution<\/em><\/a> in February.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tNew York Assemblywoman Catalina Cruz, a sponsor for the \u201cRap Music on Trial\u201d bill (S7527) in New York, says that signing it into law is a matter of free speech that transcends music. The Brooklyn native says she grew up listening to hip-hop and appreciates rappers for lyrics that spoke to \u201cwhat \u2018s happening in the world.\u201d But after Trump\u2019s re-election, Cruz says anyone with a dissenting opinion is subject to consequences.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cFast forward to now, look at everything that\u2019s happening, the organizations that are being defunded because someone in leadership said X, Y, or Z, and it was not in line with what the President wanted,\u201d she says. \u201cI see this as more important than ever, not just to protect Black and brown hip hop artists that are being targeted for their thoughts around the country, but it\u2019s now become a matter of protecting people\u2019s ability to express their thoughts about politics.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWalotsky says they\u2019re optimistic about the bills being passed into law. In New York, they\u2019re hopeful that bill S7527 will pass through the Assembly, which would then leave it up to Governor Kathy Hochul to sign it into law. In Missouri, the Restoring Artistic Protection Act (HB 353) passed the House. In Georgia, HB 237 didn\u2019t pass the 2025 General Assembly session, but it will be alive for the 2026 session.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n

\n\t\u201cThe point is not here to say that every single one of these dudes is innocent or guilty, it\u2019s simply saying that the same set of rules should apply to everyone,\u201d Walotstky says. \u201cThe words that sit above the Supreme Court building in Washington, DC, are \u2018equal justice under law.\u2019 That is the promise of America\u2019s criminal justice<\/a> system. And that\u2019s all you\u2019re asking for, [is] fair trials. That\u2019s why you\u2019re seeing this broad coalition come together, because it\u2019s not only about our constitution, but also at the core of who we are as Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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