In courtrooms across the country, judges and juries are being asked to contemplate rap music as criminal evidence. This growing trend warrants caution and begs many questions, the most obvious being: “Why rap?”
As the New Jersey Supreme Court recognized in State v. Skinner, 218 N.J. 496, 517, 521 (2014), no one believes that Bob Marley actually “shot the sheriff,” or that Edgar Allan Poe truly buried a man beneath his floorboards. And yet, rap music is rarely extended the same freedom of expression or nuanced interpretation. In fact, rap is being introduced in criminal proceedings far more than any other genre of music. Social science provides a disturbing backdrop for this disparity: a correlation between anti-rap attitudes, anti-Blackness and racially discriminatory behavior. Christine Reyna, et al., Blame It on Hip-Hop: Anti-Rap Attitudes as a Proxy for Prejudice, 12 G.P.I.R. 361 (2009).
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