California on Friday enacted a new law limiting prosecutors from using rap lyrics as evidence against criminal defendants. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a series of bills, including AB 2799, which requires ...

Rap is a lyrical expression of social, cultural, and political issues in present society. Unsurprisingly, rap music is the most popular genre of music and features predominantly Black artists ...

This year marks 50 years since hip-hop began, and today, one element of the genre seems to be on trial. In recent years, many rappers — both mainstream artists and those in their mixtape era — are ...

Atlanta rapper Young Thug, whose real name is Jeffery Lamar Williams, is seen on a monitor as he waits for a virtual appearance before a Fulton County magistrate judge on May 10, 2022. (Arvin ...

James Broadnax wrote rap lyrics at 19 that were later used as evidence to convict him of double murder.

Hip-hop, like any art form, is a means of creative expression. And while rap music is often semi-autobiographical, when Kanye West recorded in 2018, “I thought about killing you / Premeditated murder, ...

No one believes that country music legend Johnny Cash shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die. When Cash in 1968 released “Folsom Prison Blues,” a ballad about shooting and killing a man for no ...

In a big win for creative expression, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed The Decriminalizing Artistic Expression Act, which restricts the use of rap lyrics as evidence in court in California. “For too long, ...

Young Thug performs onstage during the 2022 SXSW Conference at Waterloo Park in Austin on March 17, 2022. The trial of Grammy Award-winning rapper Young Thug, real name Jeffery Lamar Williams, began ...

Some of rap music’s biggest names have come out in support of a Black man, whose rap lyrics were cited during his sentencing in Texas. He is on death row. In 2009, a nearly all-white jury convicted ...

James Broadnax was a teenager when a jury convicted him of capital murder, with his rap lyrics presented as evidence he posed a threat of ‘future dangerousness’ James Broadnax has been locked up in a ...

Gary Bryant Jr. exchanged gunfire with a man in an Antioch apartment parking lot on a July afternoon in 2014. Both were struck by bullets. Bryant survived and the other man died. Police said it was ...