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Publication Date

4-3-2026

Document Type

Comment

Abstract

“Freddy Mercury did not confess to having ‘just killed a man’ by putting ‘a gun against his head’ and ‘pulling the trigger.’ Bob Marley did not confess to having shot a sheriff. And Johnny Cash did not confess to shooting ‘a man in Reno, just to watch him die.’” However, a troubling trend in state and federal courts across the country is that rap lyrics are not being granted the same protections and latitudes that other forms of artistic expressions are afforded. In a movement that is shocking—yet formulaic—creators of rap music are seeing their lyrics used against them in court as autobiographical confessions instead of artistic expression.

The longest trial in the history of Georgia, State v. Jeffery Williams (“YSL RICO case”), was a case that seemed to be written by a team of Hollywood’s greatest writers. The case commenced in 2022, when prosecutors indicted twenty-eight defendants on charges alleging violations of Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (“RICO”) statute, along with multiple associated violent offenses. The scope of the case was extraordinary, as evidenced by the fifty-six count indictment. The charges included murder, assault, robbery, theft, gun possession, and illegal drug possession, arising from conduct in and around the Atlanta metropolitan area dating back to 2012. The trial itself was marked by a series of unusual and highly publicized incidents, including the inadvertent playing of pornographic material in open court, the stabbing of a co-defendant while in pretrial detention, allegations that another co-defendant engaged in a drug transaction inside the courtroom, the unintended livestreaming of jurors’ faces, and the incarceration of a defense attorney for contempt—an order that was subsequently stayed. However, the trial ultimately centered on the prosecution’s strategic and controversial use of Jeffrey Williams’s— professionally known as Young Thug—rap lyrics as evidence to implicate him and others in the alleged criminal conduct. This is an ever-growing evidentiary tactic that raises First Amendment concerns created by viewpoint-based discrimination against rap music and the culture it is connected to.

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