Was a Grammy-winning rapper singing about crimes he committed or simply expressing himself as an artist?
Under the alias Young Thug, Jeffery Lamar Williams, 31, has sold more than 2.5 million albums and been hailed as “”the 21st century’s most influential rapper”.
But prosecutors in his native Atlanta are not impressed. In May of 2022, Mr Williams was arrested on racketeering and gang-related charges and has been in jail since. This month, he was denied bond for a third time.
Prosecutors allege that Young Stoner Life (YSL) Records, the rap label Mr Williams founded, is the front for an organised crime syndicate responsible for “75 to 80% of violent crime” in the city.
Part of their evidence to make that case? The lyrics that have garnered Mr Williams legions of fans.
“I never killed anybody but I got something to do with that body,” he proclaims on the 2018 song Anybody, for example. “I told them to shoot a hundred rounds.”
Listeners of rap music rarely flinch at the genre’s predilection for violent references – but rap artists in courtrooms around the country have been finding out for years that judges and juries might.
Rap lyrics have been used in more than 500 criminal cases around the US over the past two decades as evidence.
Now, a new bill in US Congress aims to stop the practice, raising questions about free speech, artistic expression and race.
The Restoring Artistic Protections or Rap Act was introduced last month by Congressman Hank Johnson, a black Democrat from Georgia, who argues that the use of rap lyrics as criminal evidence is racist.
“Bringing rap lyrics into the fact-finding process oftentimes is just another way of creating prejudice and bias in the minds of jurors and judges, and that’s wrong,” he said.