I Don't Think People Understand How Silly It Is To Use Song Lyrics As Evidence

You who think, because my poems are aggressive, that I have no peace.

Vector paper cut craft style music composition for jazz concert festival party poster banner card

Yeah, this track right here is at least three murder charges.

Two weeks ago, Young Thug was arrested on RICO charges. RICO, like other conspiracy crimes, can come with heavy sentences that often encourage folks with lower-level involvement in activities to cooperate or snitch in hopes of lessening their time or getting a good plea deal. But who needs informants when you have their own lyrics?

The 88-page indictment filed in Georgia’s Fulton County alleges that Young Thug — an Atlanta rapper who co-wrote This is America with Childish Gambino — is the co-founder of a gang called Young Slime Life (YSL). Gunna, a prominent rap artist on Young Thug’s YSL label, was also charged.

The gang has allegedly committed multiple murders, shootings and carjackings over the last decade or so, promoting its activities via song lyrics and social media, according to prosecutors involved in the indictment.

The two are charged with conspiring to violate the RICO Act, a U.S. law that targets criminal organizations. The indictment refers to multiple music videos by Young Thug, including the following lyric: “I never killed anybody but I got something to do with that body,” and, “I told them to shoot hundred rounds.”

For decades, rap as a genre has had a reputation for realness. This is not the first time that lyrics have been used to prosecute a rap artist; Tay-K and YNW Melly are breathing examples of that. And while trying to imprison someone based on lyrics might seem like it’s too flimsy to a layperson to stick, not all juries feel that way. Going in on a hunch and a story is a thing prosecutors do, and if you don’t believe me, get a load of this classic “joke” from a guy who’s done his fair share of it:

Some courts, namely New Jersey’s Supreme Court, have been seemingly influenced by art criticism concerning major works like Catullus 16 and realized that distinctions can be made between an artist and one’s art:

“One would not presume that Bob Marley, who wrote the well-known song ‘I Shot the Sheriff,’ actually shot a sheriff, or that Edgar Allan Poe buried a man beneath his floorboards, as depicted in his short story ‘The Tell-Tale Heart,’ simply because of their respective artistic endeavor on those subjects,” the justices wrote in their decision. “The defendant’s lyrics should receive no different treatment.”

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But that’s a bunch of applesauce. If prosecutors are gonna do it, which they clearly want to do when it comes to Black folks and their lyrics, I think they should do it! But I just want some consistency. Act on the impulse to go for easy targets like Shooter McShootem on threating with a deadly weapon based on his classic ISTBU:

Yeah, ni***
(?) shit ni***, you already know what time it is, ni***
I know I’ll tell you this though, I go to McDonalds all the motherfuckin’ time, until the motherfuckin’.. shake machine don’t work Imma shoot that bitch up, ni***
Fuck, ni***, got me fucked up
Man, go to the club, you talm bout 60 dollars a
60 dollars?! Ni***, I’ll shoot this bitch up
Ni***, got me fucked up, ni***
The fuck is you talm bout, ni***
What?! 150 dollars? For a bottle of Moet?!
This bullshit ni***, man I’ll shoot this bitch up, ni*** got me fucked up ni***, fuck is you talm bout

But I don’t want them to stop there. I want those bastards to go full Musical Inquisition™. Cull the Billboard for admissions of guilt. All of them. YouTube and Soundcloud — get to collecting. Fear not, I know this task is monumental; I will get the work started for you! Here are some of the other musicians you can take down to boost your reputation— you merely have to branch out into literally any of the other genres whose artists aren’t majority Black.

I say we apply these same textualist standards to the Beatles. Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr have been walking freely for far too long. I’m not too picky, either one of ’em can serve time for the line, “I’d rather see you dead, little girl / Than to be with another man.

The Black Dahlia Murder – Apex

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If a rapper named Young Thug having a group called Young Stoner Life is a clear gang tie, surely naming your band after an infamous murder victim and putting out these lyrics makes you guilty of something:

As I’m blissfully showered in blood
I shake with violent rapture as I gaze at my delicious feast
I cannot stop my salivation
My addiction to murder has peaked
Kneel only to my sick fixations
A complete symphony of your screams
Oh the cruelty of death!
I wield infinite
Lured by the cries of your damnation
I collect ornaments of the dead
Skin tingling with anticipation
I sever the last victim’s head to be put on display

Carrie Underwood – Before He Cheats

This song is a better treatise on property destruction than most wrecking ball manuals. You’ve probably heard the song, but here are the guilty lyrics just in case.

I dug my key into the side of his pretty little souped-up four-wheel drive
Carved my name into his leather seats
I took a Louisville slugger to both headlights
I slashed a hole in all four tires
Maybe next time he’ll think before he cheats

I’m sorry, Carrie, but infidelity is not a defense to trespass to chattels.

While there many more examples of incriminating lyrics, it would be sloppy of me to address the elephant in the room: exculpatory lyrics. Prosecutors hate this one trick!

Frankly, the only chance prosecutors really have of keeping their pretty arrest records once the Shaggy’s Box of lyricism has been opened is to stop anchoring jail time with people’s poetry. Even if the suspect’s lyrics are violent or grotesque. Even if Future just openly promises to commit perjury — it’s music people! Treat their art as art and not a recorded confessional and you’d probably end up with a few more bangers on your playlist. Might have to change how you listen though.

Lastly,

[I]t’s proper for a devoted poet to be moral

Himself, [but] in no way is it necessary for his poems.

In point of fact, these have wit and charm,

If they are sensitive and a little shameless,

And can arouse an itch…

Thugger Thugger Baby

Young Thug, Gunna Indictment Spotlights Use Of Rap Lyrics As Courtroom Evidence [CBC]


Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s.  He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at cwilliams@abovethelaw.com and by tweet at @WritesForRent.