The popular rappers are fighting for the First Amendment rights of Jamal Knox, aka Mayhem Mal, who was j*ailed for a song in which he rapped about shooting p*olice officers.
Chance the Rapper, 21 Savage, Meek Mill, and other famous rappers filed a brief in the Supreme C*ourt on Wednesday in an attempt to help overturn the conviction of a Pennsylvania rapper who went to prison for allegedly th*reatening p*olice officers in one of his songs.
As reported in the New York Times, Jamal Knox, a Pittsburgh artist who raps under the name Mayhem Mal, was a*rrested in 2012 on g*un and d*rug ch*arges. Knox and a friend then recorded a song titled “F*uck the P*olice” that called out the a*rresting p*olice officers who were set to testify against him.
“Let’s k*ill these cops ’cause they don’t do us no good,” the rappers sang on the track.
After releasing the song on YouTube and Facebook, Knox was ch*arged with issuing t*erroristic th*reats and intimidating witnesses. He was subsequently j*ailed in 2014, but maintained he had been putting on a persona in the song.
His l*awyers are now petitioning the Supreme C*ourt to review the case, writing, “The song’s lyrics were never meant to be read as bare text on a page. Rather, the lyrics were meant to be heard, with music, melody, rhythm and emotion.”
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In the amicus curiae brief filed by K*iller Mike, 21 Savage, Chance the Rapper, Meek Mill, and others, the rappers said the c*ourt is “deeply unaware” of rap and hip-hop music, and offered the justices what they described as “a primer.”
“A person unfamiliar with what today is the nation’s most dominant musical genre or one who hears music through the auditory lens of older genres such as jazz, country or symphony may mistakenly interpret a rap song as a true th*reat of v*iolence,” they wrote.
The brief, which was also written by several scholars, even included an explanation of “diss tracks,” which are described as “recorded songs in which rappers insult, or ‘diss,’ one another.”
“In short, this is a work of poetry,” the rappers wrote. “It is told from the perspective of two invented characters in the style of rap music, which is (in)famous for its exaggerated, sometimes v*iolent rhetoric, and which uses language in a variety of complex ways. It is not intended to be taken literally, something that a reasonable listener with even a casual knowledge of rap would understand.”
R. Stanton Jones, one of Knox’s lawyers, told the New York Times that black men like Knox are “almost always targeted in these cases” compared to rappers who are white or more popular.
“While famous rappers like Eminem win Grammy Awards and make millions off the v*iolent imagery in their songs, j*udges and j*uries are routinely convinced that lesser-known rap artists are somehow living out their lyrics as rhymed autobiography,” Jones said.
“It’s an alarming trend, often with devastating consequences for the young men of color.”
K*iller Mike, whose father was a p*olice officer in Atlanta, told the Times that rap was treated differently from other music genres.
“I can tell you that the lyrics are dark and b*rutal when Johnny Cash describes sh*ooting a man in Reno just to watch him d*ie,” he said, “and when Ice Cube rapped about a drive-by sh*ooting early in his career.”