Rap isn’t just entertainment. It’s applied writing. Every strong verse uses voice, structure, evidence, and emotional control ...

SALEM — Should music, specifically rap lyrics, be considered evidence in a court of law? This is a question jurors nationally and in the Salem Superior Court are grappling with. Unique evidence in the ...

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the Decriminalizing Artistic Expression Act into law on Friday. The bill will limit the use of lyrics as evidence in legal proceedings. Advocates of the bill say using lyrics ...

NEW YORK (AP) — The man accused of killing Run-DMC’s Jam Master Jay can’t have his rap lyrics used against him at trial, a Brooklyn judge decided Tuesday in a ruling that doubled as a history-filled ...

Opening statements for the trial of Young Thug and Young Stoner Life Records (YSL) began on Nov. 27, over a year and a half after Young Thug’s May 2022 Georgia indictment. The prosecution alleges that ...

The racial bias of courts using rap lyrics to criminalize artists of color. California is the first state to prevent courts from criminalizing Black and Brown artistic expression, after passing ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I write about the business and law of music. Two men were convicted in federal court on Tuesday in Brooklyn of murdering Jason ...

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 ...