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Antwain Steward, a.k.a. Twain Gotti, in music video for "Hip Full Of Gun" (Screenshot/Youtube)
Next month, a 23-year-old aspiring rapper in Virginia named Antwain Steward — he goes by name Twain Gotti — will stand trial for a double murder. What led police to Steward was not a gun or a fingerprint, but the lyrics in a song called “Ride Out”:
Violence has been at the core of rap since its inception. But in the last few years, prosecutors have started using songs as evidence for particular rappers’ particular alleged crimes. “In most cases prosecutors are using the lyrics — whether they found them prior or they’re sifting through YouTube videos — to portray accurate depictions of the individual’s past behavior or imply that these lyrics are reflections of an individual’s criminal disposition,” says Charis Kubrin, Associate Professor of Criminology, Law and Society at UC Irvine. “Like, ‘Look, if they can rap about it they can certainly do it in real life.’”
Kubrin points to the case of Vonte Skinner, who was sentenced to 30 years in prison for attempted murder in 2008. (The conviction was overturned in 2012 and the state is appealing that decision to the New Jersey Supreme Court.) The prosecutor read the jury more than 13 pages of Skinner’s rap lyrics, most of which had been written years before the incident. “And not only that,” Kubrin says, “the lyrics constituted the central piece of evidence against Skinner.”
Since rap itself makes a claim to ‘keeping it real,’ the issue is complicated in a courtroom. “If you don’t listen to rap music or know anything about it, it may seem like well this person is making an autobiographical confession or an actual threat in their music,” Kubrin concedes. But she points out that rap uses the same artistic devices as other forms of art, including metaphor and exaggeration. But ‘keeping it real,’ she argues, is in large part “a marketing pose, an artistic convention.”
Kurt suggests that cracking down on lyrics might actually encourage rappers to be more explicit. Kubrin notes that in the history of rap music, “the tension between law enforcement and rappers fueled a lot of the raps early on.”
→ Should a rapper’s lyrics be admissible as evidence in a court of law? Tell us in a Comment below.
Everybody saw when I mother f***king choked himProsecutors will argue that the lyrics amount to a confession of the crime.
But nobody saw when I mother f***ing smoked him
Roped him, sharpened up the shank then I poked him
357 Smith & Wesson beam scoped him.
Violence has been at the core of rap since its inception. But in the last few years, prosecutors have started using songs as evidence for particular rappers’ particular alleged crimes. “In most cases prosecutors are using the lyrics — whether they found them prior or they’re sifting through YouTube videos — to portray accurate depictions of the individual’s past behavior or imply that these lyrics are reflections of an individual’s criminal disposition,” says Charis Kubrin, Associate Professor of Criminology, Law and Society at UC Irvine. “Like, ‘Look, if they can rap about it they can certainly do it in real life.’”
Kubrin points to the case of Vonte Skinner, who was sentenced to 30 years in prison for attempted murder in 2008. (The conviction was overturned in 2012 and the state is appealing that decision to the New Jersey Supreme Court.) The prosecutor read the jury more than 13 pages of Skinner’s rap lyrics, most of which had been written years before the incident. “And not only that,” Kubrin says, “the lyrics constituted the central piece of evidence against Skinner.”
Since rap itself makes a claim to ‘keeping it real,’ the issue is complicated in a courtroom. “If you don’t listen to rap music or know anything about it, it may seem like well this person is making an autobiographical confession or an actual threat in their music,” Kubrin concedes. But she points out that rap uses the same artistic devices as other forms of art, including metaphor and exaggeration. But ‘keeping it real,’ she argues, is in large part “a marketing pose, an artistic convention.”
Kurt suggests that cracking down on lyrics might actually encourage rappers to be more explicit. Kubrin notes that in the history of rap music, “the tension between law enforcement and rappers fueled a lot of the raps early on.”
→ Should a rapper’s lyrics be admissible as evidence in a court of law? Tell us in a Comment below.
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Charis E KubrinProduced by:
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