What you make a distinction in the book but tween the high profile rap artists that we know to bach and you know. Who are pretty much left alone not completely right but but theyre the judicial system has really gone after amateur or local explained whats happened well thats right i mean there are some isolated digs the samples of more high profile well known artists who have been caught in the crosshairs of this as well but as a general rule this is something that amateur rappers are facing and there are a number of reasons for that but one of them is i mean above and beyond the fact that they lack the name recognition that well known artists like tupac or have its that theyll select the resources to mount anything like a vigorous defense and so they become more vulnerable its. Easy for prosecutors to use rap lyrics against these young amateurs either to get convictions or more often to scare them into taking a plea bargain well we dont have the help in the pony you say we dont really know the extent. To which people have been incarcerated for in essence rob because most of our force are a lot of them are forced to play out thats exactly it we dont have a sense of the true numbers the true ski scale of any of this i mean we know that the 5 or so 100 cases that weve identified are just scratching the surface but thats exactly right were certain that the majority of these cases will never make it to a legal database because theyve theyve brazelton a plea bargain that is a very common tactic that prosecutors use because defendants know if those lyrics show up in court theyre in big trouble what do you think is has generated this this assault on rap. That thats a thats a short question that has a lot of answers i mean i would say that this this phenomenon what we call rap on trial is a variation on a centuries old dynamic of punishing speech punishing expression particularly among marginalized groups particularly black americans you see that from the very beginning from in the antebellum south their. Slave singing was banned drumming was banned so they have what are the call slave hollows of places which harbor yes thats one name for them but exactly be idea that when you when you read sort of the testimonials of slaves and obviously the work of a number of historians right there are these hush arbors were places often in the wilderness often where people would stand the slaves would stand in a circle and they would they would compose often accept brainiest lee but they had to do it out of the view of the slave owners who would often punish them severely if they were caught even singing and so if you begin with that sort of premise that black speech and expression is punished then we have lots of examples in the ensuing centuries i mean obviously the f. B. I. Cointelpro with j. Edgar hoover is a great example but this resides in a much longer tradition of viewing black expression and black art as a threat and something to be. Even with jazz artists like Billie Holiday just terrorized by the f. B. I. Absolutely i mean j. Edgar hoover and the f. B. I. Were some of the biggest consumers of black art and black literature partly because they saw any sort of black radicalism as as as a serious threat perhaps the most significant threat that american democracy faced and so right jazz artists faced even cabaret laws in places like new york where they were often used as cudgels to. Punish artists or keep them out of the city we actually see that today there is even now there is widespread often police driven venue resistance when it comes to rap artists its very difficult in many cities across the country to even book a show because of Police Pressure and then Insurance Companies who charge premiums that are just affordable so it seems that the 2 major institutions that have gone after rap artists are the police and the dish area correct government process absolutely and we have contemporary examples i mean if you think of an w. A. And when they released their iconic song the police and i love to say that the bleep with. The police when they release their iconic protest on f. The police the f. B. I. Started writing letters to their label their shows were often sort of you know in detroit they were arrested for performing the song we have many examples of rappers being punished for obscenity Luther Campbell in 2 live crew would be the most sort of obvious example but the judiciary and police have yes worked in tandem for as long as there has been hip hop for as long as there has been rap music there has been this antagonism and those are the 2 institutions that are primarily response from the book its been quite an effective technique in the court its absolutely effective its frighteningly effective and its effective not only in securing convictions but as the practice Gains Momentum and as judges continue to not do their jobs as gate keepers in the courtroom and as appeals are continually unsuccessful we see that there is no reason to believe that this is going to slow down at all prosecutors have realized that if you can get these inflammatory lyrics in front of a jury they can be highly prejudicial and secure convictions even when evidence is weak otherwise although as you point out i think there was a study somebody did with country western. Yes lyrics of. Johnny cash talks about shooting im a woman writer and or Folsom Prison or something or she shot a man in reno just where i die in the shot delia the murder ballad is actually it really is a prominent feature in Country Music so its a great example of another genre that does include violence in this in this. Study they gave just the lyrics to a group of people and some of them are rap and some of them are Country Music i mean can you explain what i guess so the 1st study and i say the 1st because its been replicated in the last couple of years the 1st study was in 1909 a social psychologist named cary freed basically took some stock lyrics that was from a folk song actually and violent lyrics and just put them on a page stripped away any indication of who the artist was or what their johndroe was then she divided people into 2 groups and she gave one group those lyrics and said these lyrics came from a country song took the exact same lyrics and gave them to the other group and said these came from a rap song and measured their responses and what she found is that the group that believed that these were rap lyrics found them to be significantly more threatening and in need of regulation than those who believed it was a country song and that was in 1909 that study was replicated i think 2016 to see if maybe raps mainstream appeal has changed these dynamics it has not those those differences still exist and persists you talk about various scenarios that are used by prosecutors lets run them the diary. Right the diary is. Essentially when prosecutors argue that the lyrics are confessions so if the lyrics were written after the whatever a crime is being alleged if they were written afterwards then what police will say is if you read these lyrics these are auto biographical journals thats how one prosecutor in a case i testified and characterized them and they start reading them and representing them as literal truth and facts and so if there is a shooting they look for a lot you know if there was a shooting they look for a line where he talks about shooting even though those are stock lyrics from a number of rap songs and theyll say that those were a confessional that you actually quote in trials where they will take bits and pieces of lyrics theyre not even contiguous no i think there was a rapper was talking about his father was a vietnam vet and they just twisted it thats the case you opened with the case of mack phipps who from no limit records right what what the prosecutor did was he not only altered the lyrics but he took not only did he represent the lyrics themselves in correctly in each song he then took bits and pieces from 2 different songs put them together and represented those as max words they were essentially about max vietnam veteran father but the prosecutor of course omitted that detail and attributed the words to mack just really just to make it seem like he was the violent person that he needed him to be to get a get a can i just serving a 30 year sons 30 years sentence he was he was found guilty 10. 00 to 2. 00 because louisiana was one of the states where you were none unanimous jury verdicts could still result in a conviction so right he was convicted tended to at the lesser charge of manslaughter he has been reluctant to accept any kind of parole because that would require him to essentially admit to a crime that hes not going to admit 30 years. Motive and intent essentially its the it all boils down to the same misreading of rap essentially reading the lyrics literally in this case its often when the lyrics were written before any crime right so now it cant be a confession if it was written beforehand and so all of a sudden what prosecutors will do is theyll use these lyrics to establish a number of things that could be somebodies motive or their intent it could be their knowledge of say Drug Trafficking theyll say oh see this person is aware of this violence that type of thing thats often how prosecutors will represent the lyrics if they were written beforehand and there are a number of cases that ive worked on and studied were lyrics written years before the crime that make no mention of the details of the crime are are used this way effectively for prosecutors threats that is a smaller but growing subset of cases and thats unlike the 1st 2 scenarios that you that you mentioned in which rap lyrics are being used as evidence of somebodies guilt in an underlying crime with threats the lyrics themselves are the crime because the 1st amendment according to the courts does not protect what are called true threats these lyrics are read as direct threats to another person and prosecuted as such and that the those cases are the minority but they are definitely growing and why do you think this is so effective with juries. I think its. I think its effective because the rap lyrics i mean i should say that rap itself is very diverse lots of different types of rap music but the kinds of pop as a song about his mother yes absolutely and we dont even these amateur cases when i go through all their lyrics before a trial say and theyre talking about their girlfriends d their cars but prosecutors cherry pick the lyrics that unfortunately map to many enduring stereotypes that people have about young black and hispanic men because thats thats who these defendants are almost no white defendants almost no female defendants and so i believe that these lyrics are effective for prosecutors because they reinforce these stereotypes about criminality hypersexuality that make it easy for jurors to see this young man as a predator somebody deserving of punishment even if the evidence doesnt bear that out but when we come back well continue our conversation about criminalizing rap with. d trade and investment to become magic spells to come get you cannot make development. Most people think about trade they think about goods and services being exchanged between countries and the investment chapter of a trade agreement as opposed to something very different but wont when investment leads to toxic manufacturing the destroyed sacred sites or ruins the environment. That means that local communities that are being poisoned if they object if they do anything that the company feels is interrupting their profits they can be says. Well multinationals are taking on the whole nations Philip Morris is trying to use an i. S. D. N. To stop tour of the way from implementing new tobacco regulations aimed at cutting domestic smoking rates a fringe company sued egypt because egypt resists minimum wage democratic choice over trump Corporate Law joining us as we try to fund dont want to touch it. Welcome back to on contact we continue our conversation about criminalizing rap with eric wilson so now in the age of social media. Police are quite. Intrusive in terms of following social media. To a den of fire and arrest suspects and charge suspects based on what they put up explained that it what weve seen is that the use of rap lyrics as evidence really started to explode around say 20072008 that that corresponds almost perfectly with the rise in increase of social media over those early years usage was doubling and so what you saw was that no aspiring artists had new and powerful tools i mean you dont need record labels anymore you dont need radio play you dont need m. T. V. You can use these social media platforms like you tube or sound cloud and market yourself directly to your audience thats really good and thats helped a number of rappers who otherwise would not have been successful make it but what it also does is it gives police a tool and they have been using it obsessive lee in some cases i worked in one in virginia and the head of a gang unit i believe it was in newport news said that his detectives were spending about 50 percent of their time behind the computer doing just this sort of thing not going out into the community not gathering real Real Intelligence or not doing what you would think of as typical police work but really just using the videos and looking for evidence of crimes that they can then prosecute that in that particular case they actually used a video to charge somebody with a case that had gone cold for 5 or 6 years at that point they found a video decided it was a confession write the diary and they went after him for it so thats that is playing out all across the you know the people who are in a rap video and they didnt write the song no and theyre charged yes oh the the Due Diligence just doesnt exist when it comes to rap music in many of the. These cases nobody has a stablish that the person performing the song even wrote it they have not taken any efforts to determine when it was written which is important if youre just characterizing it for example as a diary and in many cases just being in the video not performing that not having written it but standing in the back and bobbing your head and showing support thats used regularly often to show that you are often to create connections that they will say are gang related because often especially in places like california a charge that carries just a few years if you can say it was gang related if you can get a gang enhanced meant it can be 10. 00 to 15. 00 and so oftentimes theyre using those videos to suggest a gang affiliation in many of those those are often the cases that put to a plea bargain because the threat of a gang enhanced mint is so significant that people dont want to take their chances at trying to what extent is this an effort by the state to quassia the very real Police Violence even terror that exists because it does give expression to these out of control police that are using lethal force against on armed primarily black men but any one of color yeah i mean it is its disturbing it i worked on one case where a young man had posted something to facebook and it was a threat towards a courthouse or Something Like that and he even said you know im just kidding you know but he was charged and he was found guilty and he was sent to jail for it at the same time there was a Police Officer i believe in that department or a Neighboring Department who called somebody and left a ranting message on her machine that was overtly threatening he was not even disciplined i think its partly that the state is complicit in silence and voices of dissent voices of resistance it has always done that but its also that police. Themselves are have very thin skin and a lot of these threats cases actually go to court when somebody is threatening a Police Officer its usually when somebody is challenging an Authority Figure a teacher or a Police Officer thats a dynamic thats playing out over and over and its absolutely true that this systematic attack on rap music is i think at some level intended to chill that kind of speech that kind of resistance will you talk about how when local or amateur rappers. Incorporate into there are specific acts of police abuse then theyre really in for it you know and god forbid they name the Police Officer who did it thats right it has now not but that goes back to that distinction that we may have the very beginning between well known artists and amateurs because there are well known artists ill take ice cube for example from n. W. A. He has written songs where he has identified Police Officers the Police Officers actually responsible for the rodney king beating identified them by name and said that he was going to go kill them that made i think he that was one of his more successful albums actually that the song that that im referring to but if amateur artists do it and they get punished almost exclusively and now with the paranoia understandable paranoia around School Shootings and things like that youre also seeing schools begin to discipline students for rap music even if theyre writing down the lyrics that somebody else that a well known artist performs even writing down the lyrics of a well known artists can get you arrested you have cases of that they search a car and they find Something Like that and you know i testified in a case where the gang investigator along with the prosecutor took this kids lyrics notebook page after page and went through lyric by lyric and explained oh this is where he confesses to this and this is where he talks about his gang membership in this is it turns out that that the song that they spent all this time with. It wasnt his he even had the name of the real artist on the top in the title of the song and they had spent all this time characterizing something that this is just a kid writing the lyrics to artist he likes this that happens a lot and terrorism was since the patriot act. Theyve essentially twisted any terrorism laws to go after rappers they can yes and thats correct i mean after 911 you saw states start passing these anti terror laws often broad and sweeping im not even sure if they they were not used that often im not sure if they would survive sort of constitutional scrutiny because theyre so broad but thats correct theyve used anti terror laws to go after rappers and thats when theyre charging these threats those true threats that we talked about are al