Erik Nielson - Rap on Trial: Race, Lyrics, and Guilt in America

RAP ON TRIAL

RAP ON TRIAL

RACE, LYRICS, AND GUILT IN AMERICA

ERIK NIELSON and
ANDREA L. DENNIS

with a foreword by
KILLER MIKE

For my boyz

Andrea L. Dennis

I dedicate this book to Sam, Mac, and Sandra

Erik Nielson

CONTENTS

by Killer Mike

FOREWORD

It is difficult to overstate the influence of hip hop.

In the black community, it has been particularly important. For one, it has allowed many rappersmyself includedto become successful entrepreneurs, creating a new business class that has given us access to the American Dream. After the loss of a wide range of manufacturing jobs over the last several decades, hip hop has become a financial cornerstone for my communityone that extends far beyond the recording industry. It is, after all, a multibillion-dollar industry, one that provides opportunities for upward mobility within communities where such opportunities are far too rare.

At the same time, as an art form, it serves as a safe space where we can celebrate our blackness and each otherand be comfortable in our own skin while we do it. It has offered us a kind of therapy as well, a place to express even our rawest feelings.

And it has given us a way to say just things in unjust times.

Thats why police and prosecutors use of rap lyrics in criminal trials is of such grave concern. Left unchecked, it has the potential to silence a generation of artists who are exercising their First Amendment right to express themselves. These are voices we should be encouraging, yet our criminal justice system has consistently looked for ways to punish them.

As a kid, I saw the government try to criminalize the music of Luther Campbell and 2 Live Crew for obscenity. I watched as the FBI and other law enforcement agencies targeted N.W.A for lyrics deemed too violent, too disrespectful of police. And I saw how police and politicians railed against Ice-T and Body Count for voicing the frustrations that many people in this country felt in the face of persistent police brutality. These are just a few examples of the concerted efforts by our government to silence hip hop artists, and as a young man the irony wasnt lost on me. As much of this was happening, I was in high school learning about the American Constitution and the Bill of Rights, which laid the groundwork for a republic that wasin theory anywayradically different and vastly more free than others.

That was when I first began to understand that American law has a duality, regarding people differently not only based on race, but based on class and based on culture as well. On one hand, many artists from other musical genreswhich can be just as dark and violent as rap can bewere being celebrated for their music, while rap artists were being vilified. And now we are seeing more and more examples where they are being prosecuted, sometimes for their lyrics alone.

I am sometimes asked whether this is all a big misunderstanding. Is it just that police dont understand hip hop, so they mistakenly view it as a threat? Are prosecutors treating violent rap lyrics as confessions of criminal behavior because they are simply ignorant about conventions of the genre?

The answer is no. Hip hop has become one of the most popular and influential genres of the last century. People understand it well enough. But prosecuting rap artists, who are predominantly young men of color, is politically expedient. Rap on trial is a continuation of what former vice president Joe Biden did in support of the 1994 crime bill warning America of predators on the streets, young people without any conscience developing who needed to be removed from society. (The bill has been widely criticized as overly harsh and a major contributor to mass incarceration.) It has been expedient for politicians on both sides of the aisle to make the least of us the heel, the villain, the arch-nemesis of the established order.

Often, people dont care about whats just; they just care about order. They dont want it disrupted, and children from marginalized communities, particularly young men who call out injustice by saying fuck government, are challenging the order that American society is comfortable with. Prosecutors know that locking up young men of color carries political capital, and theyve figured out a way to use rap lyrics to do it.

Right now, aspiring rap artists need to know they are being targeted by the authorities, and they need to balance their right to free speechand their desire to push the envelope of free speechwith the reality that police are watching. What scares me is that in some situations, such as the recent case involving Jamal Knox from Pittsburgh, a young rapper calls out police officers by name and directs threatening-sounding lyrics at themand the courts use that as a reason to punish him. The court acts as though this kid just turned into a Navy Seal-trained hitman who is going to look up these officers addresses, go to their houses, and kill their families, crime-movie style.

To those artists, I would say: you have to save yourself. Ask yourself how you can use your imagination to guard against this persecution while still pushing the line on speech. Id take the Law & Order approach: take real stories and events, but change them up. If the police officers real name is William Bradley, then change it to Bradford Williams.

Your imagination, which gives you the ability to express yourself freely, can also be used to protect yourself. So to younger artists, my advice is this: cloak your truth in some mystery, even as you keep pushing the line for absolute freedom of speech. In this environment, thats the best thing you can do.

But we also need to change the environment that makes such measures necessary. Thats what Rap on Trial is trying to do, first and foremost by giving historical context to the injustices that are happening right now. It is also giving name and voice to many of the people who are suffering as a result of those injustices. And I appreciate that. Because black men are too often our martyrs and messiahs, uncredited. We are often lost in the pages of history, and this book is taking a small but meaningful step toward changing that.

Right now young men who sing and rap and rhyme are suffering for their ability to say what they want to. We all benefit from the artists who push the boundaries of speech, and so as a country we should see a collective interest in protecting them. This is especially true for artists who criticize the state, because once the statewhich is supposed to be a representation of the peopleis above reproach, we are entering Orwellian waters.

That scares the shit out of me.

For black Americans, the stakes are particularly high. If you want to know how society is going to treat people under the law, look first at how they treat the most marginalized, the people that are in the minority. African Americans, the descendants of slaves, are the petri dish for what the law is going to do. If we dont hold the line on our freedom of speech and the right to express ourselves as artists, we will be the first people dragged off to jail.

As this book documents, its already starting to happen, and thats why I am in this fight.

Michael Render (aka Killer Mike)

RAP ON TRIAL

INTRODUCTION

McKinley Phipps was something of a prodigy. Born into a family of artists and raised in New Orleanss Third Ward, Phipps always had a gift for words. As a boy, he began writing poetry, which he sometimes recited at local coffee shops, but by the late 1980s, as rap music was becoming a national sensation, he saw the chance to turn his love for words into a career.