The racial bias of courts using rap lyrics to criminalize artists of color. California is the first state to prevent courts from criminalizing Black and Brown artistic expression, after passing ...

No one believes that country music legend Johnny Cash shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die. When Cash in 1968 released “Folsom Prison Blues,” a ballad about shooting and killing a man for no ...

Rolling Loud and Black Music Action Coalition have launched a PSA to end rap lyrics being used as evidence. The Rolling Loud and Black Music Action Coalition's Rap Act PSA On the first day of the 2023 ...

Opening statements for the trial of Young Thug and Young Stoner Life Records (YSL) began on Nov. 27, over a year and a half after Young Thug’s May 2022 Georgia indictment. The prosecution alleges that ...

Dozens of musicians, music industry executives, legal experts, and more added their signatures to the “Art on Trial: Protect Black Art” open letter defending creative expression and protesting the use ...

When he was 19, James Broadnax jotted down rap lyrics, thoughts and even job leads in a notebook that would become evidence at his capital murder trial. Prosecutors selected lyrics with alleged ...

On July 2, U.S. District Judge Susie Morgan ruled that B.G. must turn in his written lyrics to the government before releasing them. The ruling is the latest setback the rapper born Christopher Dorsey ...

"The portrayal of rap lyrics as literal expressions of criminal intent ignores the longstanding tradition of adopting personas, exaggeration, and hyperbole for artistic effect," writes the NJLJ Young ...

*After languishing on death row in Texas for nearly two decades, James G. Broadnax was executed on April 30, 2026. In 2009, a nearly all-white jury convicted him of robbery and double murder. Broadnax ...

In a big win for creative expression, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed The Decriminalizing Artistic Expression Act, which restricts the use of rap lyrics as evidence in court in California. “For too long, ...