Exhibit A: Criminal Court Cases That Put Rap Lyrics On Trial

Rap has always carried testimony, but in courtrooms across America, it has been treated as confession. Over the past three decades, prosecutors have lifted lyrics off tracks and reframed them as evidence. It has collapsed the distance between industry persona and autobiography.

Some of Hip Hop’s most visible names have been caught in that dragnet. Meek Mill had probation hearings where bars were quoted back to him. Bobby Shmurda saw his breakout anthem used to bolster a conspiracy case. Young Thug’s RICO trial leaned on dozens of lyrics to argue YSL was not a label, but a gang. Tommy Canady received life in prison when a jury believed his lyrics reflected a true-life murder.

Other genres have played with violence and crime, yet only Rap has been consistently criminalized for it. Heavy Metal can revel in blood and violence. Country can reference shootings and abuse. Rock can center drug use, sexual exploits, and reckless lifestyles. Yet, when Hip Hop does the same, the lyrics too often walk into court as if they were sworn statements. People question whether Rap lyrics on trial will become the legal system's new normal.

These cases show how the justice system polices young Black artists, twisting metaphor into confession, and how Rap itself gets trapped between imagination and intent.

The court didn’t need a confession because, apparently, mixtapes were enough. In 2012, during a Philadelphia hearing, a judge warned Meek Mill not to mention District Attorney Noel Ann DeSantis in his lyrics, referencing Meek's song, "The Ride." In it, Meek spits, “The D.A. said she hate me but I don’t understand / When I just rocked a show in front of 50,000 fans / I think that b*itch racist, she probably in a clan.”

No new charges were filed, but the court scrutinized his behavior and used his words against him. Meanwhile, the judge told him to "tread lightly," and DeSantis even spoke with Fox Philadelphia about those Dreamchasers 2 bars that landed Meek in hot water.

"Everyone is entitled to free speech, but the defendant obviously has a personal issue with this prosecutor," shared DeSantis. "Lobbing personal insults, it just tries to dissuade the prosecution or dissuade the judge from focusing on the defendants actual actions. He certainly tells his opinion, but when you're under supervision you have to respect the judge, the prosecutor, the police.”

Meek didn't take the criticism in stride. "DeSantis never says anything good about me," Meek said to the judge. "I rap with my heart; it's how I feel. She's talking down to me every time. She's talking about me like I'm a criminal. I just make sure I give back to my community, show love and motivate the kids."

It wasn’t the last time his music shadowed him into court. In 2017, during a high-profile probation violation case, prosecutors pointed to his behavior and leaned on his image as someone who rapped about defiance. The violations were minor as court paperwork alleged popping a wheelie on a dirt bike in New York, an alleged altercation at a St. Louis airport, missed travel approvals, and drug tests that didn’t come back clean. Nothing carried serious charges, yet together they were enough to send him back to prison under a system designed less to rehabilitate than to monitor and punish.

Instead of softening his lyrics, Meek sharpened his impact. He co-founded the REFORM Alliance with Jay-Z and others, pushing for parole and probation reform. His docuseries, Free Meek, mapped the years he lost to supervision that acted more like a leash. The sentence for a teenage mistake grew into a public case study in how Black men are monitored long after sentencing.

Taymor Travon McIntyre, better known as Tay-K, was 16 when prosecutors in Texas charged him in connection to a 2016 home invasion. The alleged plan was to rob a man they believed was selling drugs. The robbery unraveled, and 21-year-old Ethan Walker was killed.

Placed on house arrest while awaiting trial, Tay-K cut reportedly off his ankle monitor and fled. While on the run, he recorded “The Race,” a song that doubled as both anthem and evidence. The track opened with the line, “F*ck a beat, I was tryna beat a case / But I ain’t beat that case, b*tch I did the race.” In the video, he taunted his would-be captors and posed next a wanted poster. The track went viral, fueling memes and co-signs, but digging Tay-K into a deeper hole with the law.

Later, in court, those same lyrics were introduced to the jury. Prosecutors played the video and read the bars as literal proof of intent and lack of remorse. For Tay-K, citing it was only a metaphor wasn’t an option.

The rapper's legal troubles doubled down in 2019, he was sentenced to 55 years for his role in Walker’s murder. Then, Tay-K was charged with another murder while on the run, and the assault of a 65-year-old man during a robbery. Each case added time, stacking decades onto a sentence that already guaranteed he would spend most of his life in prison.

In Fulton County, the state of Georgia set out to prove that Young Stoner Life Records wasn’t a record label at all, but a street gang with a corporate front. The case was broad, every detail carried weight, and prosecutors leaned on Rap itself as evidence. Over a dozen lyrics, pulled from Young Thug and his affiliates, were entered into the record. Songs like “Anybody,” “Ski,” and “Slatty” were reframed as instructions meant to preserve and expand the gang, not art.

Young Thug’s lawyers pushed back. They argued that Rap, more than any other genre, builds worlds out of exaggeration and persona. The violence, they said, was metaphor, not motive. Even the monikers were redefined for the jury with “Thug” as "Truly Humble Under God" and “YSL” as "Yves Saint Laurent." The defense argued that turning those names into criminal codes was an attempt to criminalize a Black art in a way that other genres are free to perform without consequence.

The trial dragged on and became the longest in Georgia's history, and the courtroom was dominated by lyric sheets and questions of intent. In the end, Young Thug accepted a plea of five years in prison, commuted to time served, along with 15 years probation and the risk of further time if he violated terms. Other YSL members took probation or walked free.

His outcome looked like a compromise, but it also marked a turning point. Rap lyrics had been reframed as overt acts, no longer entertainment but admissible evidence. For the courts, that break was victory. For artists, it was a warning that every bar could be read back as autobiography and used as truth.

In Los Angeles, Drakeo the Ruler’s voice stood out as an influential voice of new age West Coast artists. His verses were abstract and coded, filled with slang that even fellow Angelenos sometimes had to decode. That style became his trademark, the sound of a South Central native carving out a his lane in Rap. Yet, when police tied him to a 2016 shooting outside a Carson party, prosecutors argued that his bars were not art at all, but an admission.

The state had little physical proof connecting him to the crime. Instead, they leaned on his music. Songs like “Flex Freestyle,” performed with his Stinc Team crew, were reframed as admissions of gang activity.: "I'm ridin' round town with a Tommy gun and a Jag / And you can disregard the yelling, RJ tied up in the back." Prosecutors presented the tracks as “digital fingerprints,” tying him to conspiracy and positioning his art as motive.

Civil rights advocates warned of the danger. Rap, a genre built on exaggeration and alter agos, was again being policed as a personal account. In 2019, a jury acquitted him of murder and attempted murder, but the trial left scars. Drakeo spent three years behind bars, facing restrictions even after the acquittal. Sadly, Drakeo was stabbed and killed in an ambush backstage at the Once Upon a Time in L.A. festival in 2021. The crime remains unsolved.

The trial against Boosie Badazz in Louisiana was less about a weapon or a motive and more about how his words were read. He was charged with orchestrating the murder of Terry Boyd. It was a 2009 case in Baton Rouge that swung between conspiratorial accusation and courtroom spectacle. Prosecutors argued he hired a teenage trigger man, “Marlo Mike,” via a letter. The judge refused to dismiss the case, despite attempts to suppress testimonial evidence from the co-defendant, who also faced multiple charges across violent incidents.

Then came the music. Prosecutors played “187” and “Bodybag,” two tracks where Boosie reportedly echoed real-life violence. A forensics expert claimed parts of “Bodybag” were recorded mere minutes after Boyd’s death. Another verse from “187” was allegedly laid down less than an hour before the killing. Boosie’s defense countered that it was never meant to be interpreted as a confession, and that the jury was being swayed more by fear than facts.

Less than ten minutes of deliberation was all it took. The jury returned a unanimous not-guilty verdict on the murder charge in 2012. This case revealed how coded vernacular, a staple of Hip Hop, can be repurposed as prosecution. In that courtroom, a slang-laced verse read like affidavit.

The summer of 2014 ran on Bobby Shmurda’s voice. “Hot N***a” blasted from radios, the Shmoney Dance lit up social feeds, and Epic Records rushed to sign him as the face of a New York Rap revival. It was a viral breakout and the kind of momentum that turns a neighborhood name into a national one. Still, the same song that carried him into the spotlight would later shadow him into a Manhattan courtroom.

On the track, Bobby dropped names, referenced shootings, and delivered lines that blurred the border between bravado and neighborhood gossip: “Mitch caught a body ’bout a week ago.” For listeners, it was part of Hip Hop’s coded storytelling, inflated but familiar. However, for authorities, it was corroboration. Then, law enforcement raided GS9 in December 2014, executing an investigation into a crime and Hip Hop as whole. Bobby and more than a dozen associates were arrested on charges that included conspiracy to commit murder, weapons possession, and reckless endangerment.

The breakout moment that made Bobby Shmurda famous also became evidence against him. After “Hot N***a” put GS9 in the spotlight, law enforcement treated the track as more than music. Prosecutors argued that its lyrics matched alleged crimes connected to a gang, reading the bars as a record of conspiracy. Facing the risk of decades behind bars on weapons and conspiracy charges, Bobby took a plea deal for seven years. He ultimately served six, released in 2021 after time already spent in jail was credited toward his sentence.

We sat down with Bobby Shmurda in 2022, and he spoke with us about laws that now protect artists in New York. “When they try and do that sh*t in the state, I be like ‘Yo, they can’t do that sh*t in the state,'" said Bobby. "I’m telling my lawyer and he like, ‘Yo, they could put it in there but the judge [has the right to decline using it if] they don’t want to.’ So now they can't use it,” he explained. “The feds can’t use it, the state can’t use it. So, it’s good in New York but that sh*t need to happen all over the country.” 

Still, the rapper offered up a warning shrouded in advice.

“Now listen, just because they passed the f*cking law guys, do not go on the f*cking record talking about you just shot Johnny in his face. Please guys, please guys,” he said as he laughed. “Do not go saying some dumb sh*t. But you can express yourself. Express stories better. But don’t do not do anything like, ‘I just shot Johnny in his face.’ Like, what the f*ck, bro? Be mindful still, I feel. Still be mindful.”

Tommy Mundswell Canady was just 15 when his words pulled him into a courtroom. In Racine, Wisconsin, investigators had little to work with after 19-year-old Semar McClain was found shot in the head in an alley. Authorities didn't have eyewitnesses or fingerprints to work with. What they did have was a track Canady uploaded to SoundCloud two days after the killing.

The song, “I’m Out Here,” described carrying a .22 and shooting someone in the chest. Investigators believed the parallels were too sharp to ignore. In a twist, McClain’s stepfather recognized his son's name in the lyrics and alerted authorities. Detectives said the track gave them the evidence they were missing, including the motive, method, voice of the alleged shooter himself.

At trial, prosecutors played the song for the jury twice. It was shown once at normal speed and again slowed down to highlight the disputed words. Canady’s defense argued that jurors misheard, that he said “mawg” not “Semar,” and that the lyrics were just an expression, not an account of true events. Still, the jury sided with the state.

Canady was convicted of first-degree intentional homicide and sentenced to life in prison, with the possibility of parole after 50 years. On appeal, the Wisconsin court upheld the ruling, declaring the lyrics admissible because of their direct link to the crime.

A Los Angeles murder trial put rap lyrics on display in a way the courts had rarely seen. At the center was Snoop Dogg, accused after a man was killed by the rapper's bodyguard while riding in his car. The case drew national attention as one of Hip Hop’s rising stars was suddenly facing a possible life sentence. Prosecutors reportedly played Snoop's track "Murder Was the Case" for the jury, a song recorded before the shooting, and suggested its bleak story was a mirror of reality. They also quoted the Long Beach legend's collaboration with Dr. Dre, "Deep Cover," seizing on its line about “187 on a undercover cop” as if it were a journal entry instead of a performance.

The defense reminded the court that lyrics are creative work, not sworn accounts. Snoop’s lawyers argued that putting Rap on trial was an attempt to criminalize imagination, a strategy that would never be used against Rock, Country, or Punk musicians who also glorify violence. The jury agreed. Snoop was acquitted, but the damage lingered. His trial became one of the earliest and most public examples of prosecutors treating Rap lyrics as evidence.

Last year, Killer Mike weighed in on the justice system using Rap lyrics in criminal court cases.

"They’re not gonna say that the art is a representation of the imagination and the thought," Killer Mike stated. "They’re gonna say it’s you. ‘You are a killer, Mike! And we’re gonna lock your ass up.’ It’s a shame we live in a country where a white woman who killed her husband can write an article called How to [Murder] Your Husband. And that article is not allowed to be used. The prosecutor had to find another way to convict her. But I can say some random sh*t on a song and prosecutor can clumsily — with no rhythm — can say that sh*t to a judge, as if he knows what the f**k I’m talking about or has some type of expertise [on what] I’m talking about."

Rap has always carried the weight of real life, but it is still music as a form of expression, not a sworn statement. When courts blur that line, they risk turning art into evidence and creativity into confession. The ongoing Drake and Kendrick Lamar case shows how easily lyrical sparring can be pulled into legal arenas, even when no crime is in question. The details have changed, but the strategy remains familiar: words written for performance pulled into a courtroom, judged outside of their art, and wielded against the culture that created them. For artists, the danger is clear. If a punchline can be reimagined as proof, then the culture itself is on trial.

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