Hello everyone. Do you like music? I like music. Do you enjoy connecting media to socio-politico-cultural events and developments? Boy, do I ever. Shall we?
Before I even get started, let me clear up a potential misconception. In this post, I did not set out to discuss how hip-hop lyrics have been used as evidence against rappers on trial. I wanted to talk about how a song I heard reminded me of another song. But alas, I am cursed with long-windedness. So, as a way of introduction, we’re going to start with the use of song lyrics as evidence in a legal trial.
Such a prosecutorial tactic, in addition to being legally questionable (ever heard of the First Amendment?), is a racist double standard. If Johnny Cash had committed a murder, I highly doubt lyrics from “Folsom Prison Blues” – “I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die” – would have been used as evidence. It seems to only be applied to rap music. About a decade ago, New York rapper Bobby Shmurda and his music collective/street gang (depending on who you ask) GS9 were convicted of a variety of charges as a group under a RICO indictment.1
Police claim that Shmurda was the ringleader of GS9, which operated as a criminal gang in Flatbush, Brooklyn, dealing drugs and committing murders. Shmurda himself eventually pled guilty (after initially pleading not guilty to more extreme charges) to one count of conspiracy and one count of weapons possession, and was sentenced to seven years. This was covered at length by the NPR Podcast series Louder Than a Riot, which I recommend.
Shmurda’s mega-viral smash hit music video
During Shmurda’s entanglement with the law, the Supreme Court of New Jersey ruled in a separate case that song lyrics could not be read as evidence in a trial unless they have a “strong nexus” to the crime in question. New Jersey was concerned with the case of a different rapper, Vonte Skinner, who had been convicted of murder in 2008 using lyrics he wrote years prior as evidence. Justice Jaynee LaVecchia wrote in her opinion;
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 endeavors on those subjects. [Skinner’s] lyrics should receive no different treatment.
While Shmurda’s lyrics were, by his own account, biographical, the New York Police Department agreed. Editor’s note: after I wrote this, I realized that a) Shmurda’s lyrics were not entered as evidence and b) he did not go to trial. However, it was the trumped-up RICO charges that made him take such a punitive plea deal. And his lyrics did hang over the case, as the police regarded them nearly as a confession.
Recently, Shmurda was celebrating in the streets with Knicks fans after Game 1 of the Finals. My New York sources tell me that should the Knicks win the championship, there are plans to tear down the Statue of Liberty and replace it with a 150-foot depiction of Shmurda flinging his Knicks cap into the stratosphere in celebration.
Moving on.2
More recently, Atlanta rapper Young Thug and his record label/gang, YSL, were eventually found not guilty after one of the longest and most expensive trials in the history of the State of Georgia. I couldn’t break down the whole trial even if I tried, as prosecutors alleged that YSL operated as both a legitimate record label and a street gang. The trial included an alleged drug exchange in the courtroom, the arrest of two different attorneys, a succession of three presiding judges, and this bizarre moment in which one of Thug’s songs was played as an admission of evidence.
Your honor and may it please the court, turn that shit up
Judge Glanville, the first of the three judges, said “I’m going to conditionally admit particularised lyrics” because the prosecution was,
not prosecuting your clients because of the songs they wrote. They’re using the songs to prove other things your clients may have been involved in … I don’t think it’s an attack on free speech.
Over in the U.K., some rappers are required to submit their lyrics for approval as part of their parole agreements. The British government has removed rap videos from YouTube for allegedly inciting violence. That argument reminds me of gun-control advocates who seek to have violent first-person shooter video games regulated. Rap music, or gangster movies, do not cause violence, rather they portray a violent world that already exists. They are a symptom of a larger, systemic issue, and cracking down on them misses the forest for the trees.
But anyway, this isn’t even what I set out to discuss. Isn’t that so like me, to start talking about one thing, get distracted and embark on a lengthy tangent, and nearly forget my original point.
This weekend, I listened to the new-ish album from the Irish hip-hop trio Kneecap. You might not have ever heard of them. I hadn’t either before last year, when a few of my friends returning from their study abroad in Ireland would not shut up about them. In October, their biographical movie of the same name came to Matsuyama’s one and only indie cinema, Cinema Lunatic.
Kneecap are Irish republicans, who rap in a mixture of Irish and English. Their Irish republicanism manifests in strong, principled political views. They uncompromisingly advocate for a unified Ireland (and to this extent promote Irish culture and language) as well as broader solidarity with Palestine and Cuba. The movie was also a mix of English and Irish, and I just about had a stroke trying to understand the movie in Irish with Japanese subtitles. But it was like a funnier 8 Mile. Their music is intense and infectious, with hardcore EDM-style beats. My favorite song of theirs is probably “H.O.O.D.”
For their views and statements, they have been subjected to harassment and discrimination from their own government and others abroad. A grant from the British music industry’s trade association was blocked by the Department for Business and Trade. Kneecap filed a discrimination suit, which they won, and split the proceeds between Catholic and Protestant youth groups in Northern Ireland.
In the midst of their rapid rise to fame in 2025 – they played sets at Glastonbury and Coachella, two of the biggest music festivals in the UK and US, respectively – Mo Chara was charged with terrorism for allegedly displaying a Hezbollah flag during a November 2024 concert. Chara denied the charges, saying that the flag was thrown on stage during the performance and that they “do not, and have never, supported Hamas or Hezbollah.” Due to this, Kneecap was forced to cancel concerts across Europe and North America. Chara’s case was eventually thrown out of court on a technicality.
All of the hubbub about Kneecap’s provocative statements is, in their words, a “coordinated smear campaign” to that is an “effort to derail the real conversation” about “the ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people.” It reminds me of much of the reaction to the encampments on college campuses from a year or two ago.
Many people seem much more outraged by a statement or a flag than the horrific scenes of slaughter that we have seen. Why is that?
Anyway, what I really wanted to talk about was the song “Carnival” from Kneecap’s new album FENIAN. As I listened to it on the bus, its portrayal of courtroom proceedings reminded me of another politically provocative song from nearly 40 years ago – NWA’s “Fuck tha Police.”
I’m relying on Genius.com’s translations of Irish, but Mo Chara takes the first verse as if he were testifying on the stand. Speaking directly to the judge, he invokes the history of how the British courts have treated Irish activists (for his actual trial, he retained the services of attorneys who have represented other notable Irish figures), and says that this whole circus is a reaction to Kneecap’s Coachella statements. The chorus contains a sample of Kneecap supporters chanting “free Mo Chara” outside of the courthouse and goes,
There’s a carnival coming to a town near you
Kneecap vs thе Crown, so come here, you!
Stеp up!
And view their new attraction, circus of distractions
Away from their actions is where they will steer you
It’s not hard to deduce what they’re saying here. Accusations of terrorism and antisemitism, whether they are levied at Kneecap or anyone else, are attempts to distract from the genocide in Gaza.
In the second verse, Moglai Bap discusses Gerry Conlon, an Irish man who was falsely sentenced to life in prison for the Guildford pub bombings. He served 14 years before being released, and was represented by Gareth Pierce, who was part of Chara’s legal team. Bap ends the verse with “Investigate the people join armies far and wide / Instead of the People who oppose a fuckin’ genocide.” He adds “the Brits are at it again / repeating history” in the third verse.
Chara returns to hammer home the point in the final verse: “International law is gone out the window / Fuckin’ listen! / All this killing, you’re complicit.”
Now while Chara was actually on trial, and Ice Cube’s writing is a work of fiction, the parallels are obvious. Chara contends that his trial, and other efforts to silence free speech in the name of opposing antisemitism or terrorism, are distractions from the genocide in Gaza.
NWA uses the format of a court proceeding to allow Ice Cube, MC Ren, and Eazy-E to speak to police brutality against Black people. Where Kneecap were testifying in their defense, NWA subverts the courtroom format by putting the LAPD on trial. It’s “NWA court in full effect” with “Judge Dre presiding, in the case of NWA versus the police department.” Cube, as the lead prosecutor raps, “police think / they have the authority to kill a minority” and “searching my car / looking for the product / thinking every n*gga is selling narcotics.” Eazy-E says “they put out my picture with silence / ‘cause my identity by itself causes violence.”
Straight Outta Compton, the album that “Fuck tha Police” appears on was released in 1989, the same year as Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing. Both address the issue of police brutality. While police brutality, racial and otherwise, has existed as long as the police itself, no doubt much of genteel America was unaware of the scope of the issue in 1989. The savage beating of Rodney King by LAPD, which was videotaped and subsequently lead to the 1992 Los Angeles Riots, broadcasted police brutality and its consequences directly into the living rooms of Americans nationwide.
While you would have to be living under a rock in our information age to not be aware of the savagery occuring in Gaza, no doubt activism from Kneecap and countless others has helped turn the tide of public opinion. A recent study illustrates how public opinion on Israel has shifted across the world. While many Muslim-majority nations have always held negative opinions of Israel, more recent shifts have occurred in Europe, Asia, and the Americas. More American sympathies now lay with the Palestinian people than ever before. Just like NWA, Kneecap has helped to bring more recent public awareness to a long-standing issue.
Thanks for reading. I decided to turn a thought, which blossomed into a conversation with a friend, into a blog post. You should check out Kneecap. I also like “Get Your Brits Out,” “Fine Art,” and “Amach Anocht.” If you can think of any other hip-hop songs with a court-style format, let me know.
- From NPR:
Short for Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations, RICO was created in 1970 to take down the crime rings that had plagued cities like New York and Chicago for decades: groups like the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club or mob families like the Gambinos, organizations with hierarchy. Laws like RICO allow prosecutors to hold anyone in the enterprise responsible for the worst thing someone in their circle has done.
In 2016, there was a federal RICO case known as the Bronx 120, which involved a much bigger sweep than the GS9 raid: 120 people rounded up from the Bronx neighborhood Eastchester in the middle of the night by an army of police in tactical gear. Co-organized by the NYPD, DEA and Homeland Security, it was called one of the biggest “gang takedowns” in U.S. history. The district attorney at the time said the men were charged with racketeering, narcotics, illegal firearm charges and a handful of murders.
[Babe] Howell [a professor of criminal law at the City University of New York and a seasoned defense attorney] says it’s worth paying attention to the exact numbers. “There are eight homicides associated with that sweep,” Howell says. “That’s 112 who didn’t do the homicides, all getting painted with a RICO conspiracy that includes murder.”
According to Howell’s research, most of the Bronx 120 were guilty only of misdemeanors like marijuana sales, but ended up pleading to felony charges because of RICO. The vast majority of those convicted were under 30 years old. Whether or not a defendant in such a case is ultimately proven to be a gang member has little bearing on the end result. (As a side note, a recent study showed 86% of federal RICO prosecutions involved people of color.) ↩︎ - While I could have discussed 6ix9ine, a rapper whose lyrics were cited in his indictment, I chose not to because I find him and his music repugnant. ↩︎
Leave a Reply