For nearly four decades, American prosecutors have treated rap lyrics as confessions, with at least 500 criminal cases hinging on that assumption, some ending in convictions and even an execution. This piece examines the practice and reform efforts like Maryland’s Protecting Artists’ Creative Expression Act seeking to limit lyrics as evidence.
For nearly four decades, American prosecutors have operated under a quiet working assumption: that rap lyrics are autobiography, that violent bars are confessions, and that a jury hearing a Black defendant’s verses will naturally connect the music to the crime. At least 500 criminal cases have turned on that assumption. Some defendants were convicted. Some are still in prison. One was executed. Maryland’s Protecting Artists’ Creative Expression Act — the PACE Act — is the first East Coast state law to formally reject that assumption and force courts to ask a question the system has been ducking since “The Message” hit the radio in 1982: is this evidence, or is it just bias dressed in a legal robe?
The Law: What PACE Actually Does
PACE is deceptively simple in its public framing: Maryland will be the first state on the East Coast to impose consistent standards on how creative expression — rap lyrics, visual art, performance — can be used in criminal proceedings. [CBS Baltimore] It does not ban lyrics from courtrooms outright. What it does is close the loophole that allowed prosecutors to slide rap into evidence on the theory that the defendant wrote it and it sounds violent.
The law’s engine is a four-part test. Before a judge can even consider admissibility, prosecutors must demonstrate that the creative work was intended as a literal statement about the specific facts of the case, is specifically connected to those facts, and is not simply artistic expression or storytelling. [AllHipHop] In other words: no more “he rapped about guns and this is a gun case, therefore the jury should see his mixtape.” The law requires courts to ask whether the lyrics are actually evidence of this crime or just evidence that the defendant makes rap music.
Delegate Marlon Amprey, who represents Baltimore’s 40th district and helped shepherd the bill, has been unambiguous about what practice PACE is designed to stop. Lyrics are “often being used against young Black men, young Latino men, in ways in which they’re trying to say they’re more violent because of the kind of music they create,” he said. [CBS Baltimore] If a song has nothing to do with the facts of a trial, it “shouldn’t be used in court.” That’s a state legislator saying plainly what scholars and artists have argued since the early ’90s: the criminalization of rap is the criminalization of Black expressive culture.
Kevin Liles — Baltimore native, label executive, and chairman of Free Our Art — calls Maryland “the safest place in America for creativity and freedom of expression,” and he is already looking past the state line. New York is next, with two bills targeted for the same legislative cycle. [CBS Baltimore] That expansion plan matters: it frames Maryland not as a one-off progressive gesture but as the first domino in a state-by-state reckoning.
The Body Count: Broadnax, Death Row, and Rap as Capital Evidence
When Maryland lawmakers sent PACE to the governor, Texas had just executed James Broadnax. On April 30, 2026, Broadnax was put to death by lethal injection at the Texas State Penitentiary — and prosecutors had used more than 40 pages of his handwritten rap lyrics during the sentencing phase to argue that the death penalty was appropriate. [Rolling Stone] The lyrics were not introduced to prove guilt. They were introduced to prove that Broadnax, who wrote them as a teenager, was the kind of person who deserved to die.
The lines prosecutors read to the jury are violent in the way that most trap-era rap is violent — exaggerated, horror-movie bravado, the kind of imagery that appears on a thousand albums without anyone treating it as a threat assessment. [HotNewHipHop] In a capital sentencing hearing, that same imagery became moral character evidence — a signal to jurors that this was a man to execute rather than imprison. What makes the Broadnax case an especially sharp example of the problem is what was on the table: his cousin Demarius Cummings came forward before the execution and confessed to being the actual shooter. That confession was not enough to stop the lethal injection. The rap lyrics, introduced only at sentencing, had already done their work. [Rolling Stone]
A coalition of artists, executives, and scholars — including Killer Mike, Young Thug, T.I., Kevin Liles, Anthony Anderson, and more than 30 others — filed an amicus brief arguing that prosecutors had “improperly relied on artistic expression to support a death sentence.” [Rap Industry] Texas appellate attorney Chad Baruch led the brief; Professor Lucius T. Outlaw III of Howard Law and hip-hop scholar Erik Nielson supplied the scholarly scaffolding. Their core argument was precise: treating rap as aggravating capital evidence invites racial bias, misreads the genre’s conventions, and circumvents constitutional protections. The appeals failed. But the coalition that built the brief is the same ecosystem that built PACE — and the juxtaposition of events could not be more instructive. In Texas, rap lyrics helped kill a man. In Maryland, weeks later, the same argument those amici made became state law.
Four Decades of “Rap on Trial”
PACE arrives after nearly 40 years of prosecutors, police, and judges treating rap as something closer to a criminal database than an art form. Andrea Dennis, a University of Georgia law professor and co-author of Rap on Trial: Race, Lyrics and Guilt in America, has tallied at least 500 cases where rap lyrics were used as evidence in criminal proceedings. [Freedom Forum] In many of those cases, the lyrics weren’t tied to the specific facts on trial. They were used to build a character portrait: this is the kind of person who would do this kind of thing.
The legal mechanisms prosecutors have relied on are mostly Federal Rules of Evidence 403 and 404 — prejudice-versus-probative-value balancing and the character-evidence bar. Courts have not applied them consistently or neutrally. In Commonwealth v. Simmons, a Pennsylvania appellate court allowed lyrics as valid rebuttal to a defendant’s character evidence, declaring that “literary works that are relevant to character testimony are admissible” and that the lines in question didn’t outweigh their probative value with prejudice. [Rap on Trial Legal Guide] Translation: if you put your own character in evidence to help yourself, the state can answer by playing your most reckless verse.
The case of Mac Phipps — No Limit Records artist, New Orleans native — is one of the most documented illustrations of how this plays out. In 2001, Phipps was convicted of manslaughter after a shooting at a club where he was performing. There was no physical evidence linking him to the gun. A security guard on the scene confessed to the shooting. Multiple witnesses later recanted or described police pressure to name Phipps. What prosecutors had, and used, was his rap persona — violent lyrics offered to the jury as proof of the kind of man he was. [NPR] He served 21 years before being granted clemency and released on parole in 2021. The documentary As We Speak: Rap Music on Trial, which premiered at Sundance in 2024, centers cases like his to show that the Mac Phipps dynamic is not a bug in the system but a feature — and that the feature is operating as intended.
Erik Nielson, the film’s co-author and a leading scholar on the subject, names the core prosecutorial move plainly: some prosecutors argue that “this artistic expression is some form of confession.” [The Source] Kemba, the rapper whose advocacy anchors the documentary, points to the downstream effect: the system doesn’t just tie specific lyrics to specific crimes. It uses them to make sweeping judgments about character that then govern everything from bail to sentencing to parole. The lyrics become a portrait, and the portrait follows the defendant everywhere.
Young Thug, Georgia, and the Counter-Example States
If Maryland is trying to future-proof itself against rap-on-trial abuses, Georgia has been an object lesson in what happens when the rules stay ambiguous. The Young Thug RICO case — Georgia’s longest-running criminal trial — became a national story in part because Fulton County prosecutors introduced 17 sets of rap lyrics as part of their case against Thug and YSL. [CBS Baltimore] Judge Ural Glanville allowed those lyrics in under certain conditions, but the public perception — fed in part by clips of prosecutors reading bars in open court — was that Thug was literally testifying against himself every time a verse was entered into evidence. [The Source]
The trial prompted Georgia lawmakers to file their own legislation restricting how artistic works can be used as evidence, pushing for “clear guidelines” on admissibility. [The Source] That framing — “clear guidelines” — is itself an implicit concession that courts have been making these calls arbitrarily. PACE says the same thing more directly: the ambiguity has not been neutral.
Lil Durk’s case is the current live version of the same fight. Prosecutors pointed to an unreleased track, “Scoom His Ass,” found on a co-defendant’s phone, arguing that a lyrical reference to Beverly Hills was significant given its proximity to the location of the alleged crime. Durk’s legal team maintains that the song is narrative and performance — a rap storyline, not a real-world statement. [The Source] The question hanging over that case — whether art can be treated as evidence of real-world crimes — is exactly the question PACE answers in Maryland with a presumption toward “no.” In states without that protection, the answer remains up to the judge’s mood and the prosecutor’s argument.
Congress, the RAP Act, and the Industry’s Line in the Sand
At the federal level, the Restoring Artistic Protection Act — the RAP Act — has become the national vehicle for pushing PACE-style logic into courts that operate under federal rules. First introduced in 2022 and stalled in committee, the bill has been revived with heavyweight backing: Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, the Recording Academy, the RIAA, and a coalition of advocacy organizations have all aligned behind it. [The Source]
Representative Hank Johnson, a lead sponsor, reaches for a comparison that lands because of how obvious it is once you say it: “Freddie Mercury didn’t confess to murder. Johnny Cash wasn’t tried for shooting a man in Reno.” [The Source] Nobody drags “Bohemian Rhapsody” or “Folsom Prison Blues” into court as literal admission. The argument is not that violent lyrics should never be admissible — it’s that they should be admitted under the same evidentiary standards as any other genre, any other art form, any other statement made by a defendant who also happens to be a creative professional. Rap has been operating under a different standard, and the industry knows it.
What’s notable about the RAP Act coalition is who showed up to sign on. This is not a civil-liberties organization grinding alone in Washington. It is the biggest labels in the world, the Recording Academy, the RIAA, and Black-music-focused groups like the Black Music Action Coalition deciding together that the reputational and legal risk of staying quiet is greater than the risk of stepping directly into a First Amendment fight. [AllHipHop] That alignment is its own signal: what used to be treated as a criminal-justice problem for individual defendants is now being treated as an industry-wide structural problem — which, of course, it always was.
Why Rap Gets Read as Confession
Underneath all of this is a question that PACE answers legally but doesn’t fully explain culturally: why does the system read rap as confession in ways it almost never applies to other genres?
The first answer is experimental. Research summarized in legal guides and scholarship shows that when mock jurors are given identical violent lyrics labeled as either “rap” or “country,” they are more likely to view the “rap” author as dangerous and guilty. [Rap on Trial Legal Guide] The label itself triggers the bias. The same line that reads as tongue-in-cheek in one genre frame becomes autobiographical threat in another. That’s not a legal argument — it’s a documented psychological effect, and it is operating every time a prosecutor plays a verse for a jury.
The second answer is what Nielson and others have called the authenticity trap. Hip-hop has long prized “realness” as both an aesthetic value and a marketing strategy. Prosecutors weaponize that ethos by arguing that because hip-hop markets authenticity, what’s in the lyrics must reflect real life. [The Source] Kemba’s counter — that this collapses a performance persona into the person — is the argument PACE is designed to codify. An expert witness in the Top5 murder trial in Canada spent two days on the stand and filed a 20-page report explaining drill music, the construction of rap personas, and why stage character cannot be mapped onto real-world behavior. His core point: a rap persona is “entertainment” and “shouldn’t be admitted in the court as evidence.” [AllHipHop] The fact that two days and twenty pages were needed to make that argument tells you how far the default assumption runs in the other direction.
The third answer is race. PACE’s authors, Broadnax’s amici, and congressional advocates all converge on this point: targeting rap is targeting Black culture, and the disparity is not subtle. Barack Obama, writing in May 2026, described hip-hop as “journalism set to a beat,” pointing to “The Message” as a dispatch from a reality most Americans had never had to confront. [Rolling Stone] If you take that seriously, then using rap lyrics as a tool of prosecution is using a form of Black journalism against its authors. It is punishing people for documenting the conditions they live in. That’s not a new pattern in American history — but PACE is one of the first statutes that treats it as a legal problem requiring a legal solution.
How Maryland Turns a Legal Fix into a Culture Pivot
So why does PACE register as something larger than a technical evidence statute?
First, sequence. Broadnax’s execution, with his own teenage bars read against him in a capital sentencing hearing, lands like a ghost over the bill signing. [AllHipHop] In the space of weeks, you get the most extreme possible expression of what’s at stake — art used to justify killing its author — and a state-level answer that says: not here, not like that. The timing is not symbolic. It is historical.
Second, coalition. This isn’t a single organization grinding away in isolation. Free Our Art and the Black Music Action Coalition, Kevin Liles and Willie “Prophet” Stiggers, Delegate Amprey and a Baltimore-based legislative apparatus, national artists attaching their names to amicus briefs, and the major labels and recording institutions behind the RAP Act — all of them are aligned, publicly, around the same argument. [AllHipHop] That breadth signals to courts and legislators that this is no longer a fringe position. It is the consensus view of the Black music industry about how its art has been used against it.
Third, exportability. Liles is already naming New York as the next target. Georgia has a bill in motion. Congress has the RAP Act queued. PACE is positioned as model language — a reference point for other jurisdictions looking for a way to stop the bleeding without foreclosing the rare case where a lyric might genuinely constitute direct evidence. The four-part test travels.
Finally, symbolism that actually means something. Maryland is home to Baltimore — a city whose relationship to hip-hop, crime, and policing has been publicly argued for decades. Governor Wes Moore, who is Black, signing a bill that explicitly names the racialized use of creative expression in that context is not a routine bill signing. It is a state choosing a side in a 40-year argument. PACE does not end rap on trial. Prosecutors can still argue that a lyric directly tied to a specific incident should come in. Judges can still get it wrong. But the law drags a practice that has thrived in ambiguity into bright-line territory. It forces courts to admit what they’ve been doing — and to justify it under rules written with the realities of Black art in mind. [AllHipHop]
The Verdict on the System
Maryland’s PACE Act is a public admission from a state government that yes, the system has been weaponizing rap — and that the practice has been disproportionate, racially patterned, and constitutionally suspect. Between Broadnax’s execution, the Young Thug RICO trial, Mac Phipps’ spliced-together bars, and the 500-plus cases Andrea Dennis has catalogued, there is a 40-year through-line of courts treating Black storytelling as self-snitching. [Freedom Forum]
What’s different now is that the response isn’t just complaint — it’s legislation. Lawyers building doctrine, scholars supplying empirical receipts, artists and executives filing amicus briefs rather than just posting, and state lawmakers translating all of it into statute. Whether other states and Congress follow will be the real test of whether the country is ready to stop putting hip-hop itself on the stand. Maryland has already ruled. The docket is open everywhere else.
Timeline: Rap on Trial — From the First Courtroom to PACE
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