About the Campaign
Our Mission
To protect hip-hop culture and its artists, producers, and enthusiasts from ongoing efforts to use rap expression as a prosecution tool to incarcerate people of color.
The foundation of the campaign is that the bounties of hip-hop culture — rap music, visual imagery, dance, and fashion — are creative and artistic expressions that warrant the same legal protection and recognition granted all other music genres and art forms.
Hip-hop culture should never be distorted into a carceral weapon wielded by prosecutors in criminal investigations and cases.
Our Objectives
Protecting Hip-Hop/Rap as Artistic Expression in Court
Judges and juries must recognize rap as artistic expression that is deserving of the same protections, considerations, and respect given to other music genres and art forms. To bring about this judicial recognition, Culture Not Evidence develops resources for defense attorneys to help educate judges and juries about the history, complex nature, poetic structures, lyrical stylings, and musical intricacies of rap, as well as the market and music industry pressures and influences on hip-hop.
Promoting Fair Prosecutions & Trials
The use of rap lyrics and imagery as criminal evidence and prosecution tools undermines due process, prevents fair trials, and simultaneously feeds on and generates racial prejudice. Culture Not Evidence provides direct support and litigation resources to defense attorneys handling criminal cases where prosecutors are unjustly using hip-hop/rap to prosecute the attorneys’ clients.
Advancing Racial Justice
Rap lyrics and imagery are used as prosecution tools disproportionately against people of color. By challenging the criminalization of rap expression, Culture Not Evidence combats racial inequities within the criminal legal system and the racial biases about people of color, especially Black people, that the system promotes and exploits.
Legal Reform
Laws are needed to end (or at least limit) the use of rap lyrics and imagery as criminal evidence and prosecutorial tools. Culture Not Evidence works with legal experts, scholars, hip-hop/rap artists, music industry executives, and criminal justice advocates to engage legislators, draft legislation, and promote legislation seeking to eliminate the use of rap expression as an unjust and biased prosecution tool and tactic.
Supporting Artists and Enthusiasts
Culture Not Evidence stands in solidarity with hip-hop artists and enthusiasts who have been unjustly targeted and prosecuted for their artistic expression and appreciation, and those who have had their art or art appreciation used by the government to seek their incarceration. The campaign provides resources and support to artists and defense attorneys in cases where the government is using rap expression as a prosecution tool or evidence.
Increasing Public Awareness
Through education, promotional, and outreach efforts, Culture Not Evidence aims to raise and increase public awareness about the injustice of the prosecutors and judges disregarding rap as protected artistic expression and prosecutors unjustly using rap expression as a tool to incarcerate people of color.