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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.

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Poetic (In)Justice? Rap Music Lyrics as Art, Life, and Criminal Evidence

by Andrea Dennis
December 17, 2007

The Takeaway: A key foundation of the “rap on trial” scholarly movement, this Article challenges the biases, assumptions, and questionable evidentiary reasoning behind courts admitting defendant-authored rap lyrics as criminal evidence.  Part I documents the admission of rap music lyrics composed by defendants as substantive evidence in criminal cases. Part II seeks to debunk the judicial assumptions revealed in Part I by discussing the commercialization of the rap music industry, notions of authenticity in rap music, and the poetics (i.e., artistic conventions) of rap music lyrics. Part III applies the information from Parts I and II to demonstrate that defendant-authored rap music lyrics are of questionable evidentiary quality. Part IV suggests a framework that may be employed when evaluating the admissibility and credibility of lyrical evidence.

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