SpearIt on Muslim Hip Hop in the Age of Mass Incarceration

SpearIt, Texas Southern University School of Law, has published Sonic Jihad — Muslim Hip Hop in the Age of Mass Incarceration at 11 Florida International Law Review 201 (2015). Here is the abstract.

This essay examines hip hop music as a form of legal criticism. It focuses on the music as critical resistance and “new terrain” for understanding the law, and more specifically, focuses on what prisons mean to Muslim hip hop artists. Losing friends, family, and loved ones to the proverbial belly of the beast has inspired criticism of criminal justice from the earliest days of hip hop culture. In the music, prisons are known by a host of names like “pen,” “bing,” and “clink,” terms that are invoked throughout the lyrics. The most extreme expressions offer violent fantasies of revolution and revenge, painted within a cosmic worldview that likens present conditions to the slave system that first brought African Muslims to America as slaves. The discursive war challenges the notion that the most radical voices in Muslim America are to be found in mosques or other Muslim gatherings. Such a position must contend with this sonic jihad and its aural assault against prisons. These artists arguably represent the most radical Islamic discourse in America today that undoubtedly ranks Muslim rappers among the most cutting-edge critics of mass incarceration.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

Hip Hop and the Law

Hip Hop and the Law (Pamela Bridgewater, andré douglas pond cummings, and Donald F. Tibbs, eds., Carolina Academic Press, 2015) is now available. Here is a description of the contents from the publisher's website.

What is important to understanding American law? What is important to understanding hip hop? Wide swaths of renowned academics, practitioners, commentators, and performance artists have answered these two questions independently. And although understanding both depends upon the same intellectual enterprise, textual analysis of narrative storytelling, somehow their intersection has escaped critical reflection. Hip Hop and the Law merges the two cultural giants of law and rap music and demonstrates their relationship at the convergence of Legal Consciousness, Politics, Hip Hop Studies, and American Law. No matter what your role or level of experience with law or hip hop, this book is a sound resource for learning, discussing, and teaching the nuances of their relationship. Topics include Critical Race Theory, Crime and Justice, Mass Incarceration, Gender, and American Law: including Corporate Law, Intellectual Property, Constitutional Law, and Real Property Law.

Evaluating and Appreciating Critical Race Theory and Hip-Hop: The Contributions of Richard Delgado and Ice Cube

andre douglas pond cummings, Indiana Tech Law School, is publishing Richard Delgado and Ice Cube: Brothers in Arms in volume 33 of Law and Inequality: A Journal of Theory and Practice (2015). Here is the abstract.

Critical Race Theory as a movement is best understood through the lens of founding voice Richard Delgado. Delgado’s prolific and fearless writings have inspired thousands and launched theories that have literally changed the course of race law in the United States. In fact, two explosive movements were born in the United States in the 1970s. While the founding of both movements was humble and lightly noticed, both grew to become global phenomena that have profoundly changed the world. Founded by prescient agitators, these two movements were borne of disaffect, disappointment, and near desperation — a desperate need to give voice to oppressed and dispossessed peoples. America in the 1970s bore witness to the founding of two furious movements: Critical Race Theory and hip-hop.

Critical Race Theory (CRT) was founded as a response to what had been deemed a sputtering civil rights agenda in the U.S. Driven primarily by law professors of color, it targeted the law by exposing the racial inequities supported by U.S. law and policy. Hip-hop, on the other hand, was founded by emerging artists, musicians, and agitators in the South Bronx neighborhoods of New York City, primarily driven by young African American disaffected youth, as a response to a faltering music industry and abject poverty. While these two movements, Critical Race Theory and hip-hop, seem significantly separated by presentation, content, and point of origin, they share startling similarities. Among the many similarities between Critical Race Theory and hip-hop, the closest link is the use of narrative in response to racism and injustice in a post-civil rights era. Further, Critical Race Theory and hip-hop share a fundamental desire to give voice to a discontent brewed by silence, and a dedication to the continuing struggle for race equality in the United States. Both Critical Race Theory and hip-hop strive toward their mutual goals of radical realignment and societal recognition and change of race and law in America.

One of the most important voices in the nascent days of the CRT movement was founding voice Richard Delgado, who along with Derrick Bell, introduced the world to CRT. Delgado published the explosive articles "The Imperial Scholar" and "A Plea for Narrative." Delgado’s early CRT publications represented an effort to educate and enlighten the civil-rights generation, emerging scholars of color, and the rest of the legal world to the inequities and discrimination inherent in a legal system that systematically disadvantages minority citizens in the U.S. Delgado’s voice was so important during the founding of CRT that he is revered today as a true pioneer in race jurisprudence in the United States.

Similarly, no early hip-hop voice seized the attention of both fans and critics alike the way that Ice Cube and N.W.A. did when “Straight Outta Compton” shocked the nation at its release. When Ice Cube, Eazy-E, Dr. Dre, MC Ren, and DJ Yella (as N.W.A.) released "Straight Outta Compton," the album dropped profoundly on the consciences of inner-city youth, the nation, and eventually, the globe. Never before had such an intensely angry, ferocious, rebellious record been released and embraced by the consuming public. Cuts like "Fuck tha Police," "Gangsta Gangsta," and "Straight Outta Compton" resonated with inner-city youth.

Both Ice Cube and Richard Delgado furiously challenged convention and status quo America.

Rap in Court

Charis E. Kubrin, University of California, Irvine, and Erik Nielson, University of Richmond, are publishing Rap on Trial in Race and Justice. Here is the abstract.

In criminal proceedings across the U.S., rap music lyrics are being introduced as evidence of a defendant’s guilt. In this essay we draw attention to this disturbing practice, what we call “rap on trial,” and explore its context, describe its elements and contours, and consider its broader significance. We first offer historical context, demonstrating that although the widespread use of rap lyrics in criminal trials may be a relatively recent phenomenon, it resides within a long tradition of antagonism between the legal establishment and hip hop culture, one that can be traced back to hip hop’s earliest roots. We then offer examples of recent cases in which rap music has been used as evidence in trials against amateur rappers, almost all of whom are young men of color, in order to illustrate the specific ways that prosecutors present the music to judges and juries, as well as to highlight the devastating effects it can have on defendants. In the final section, we consider the elements of rap music that leave it vulnerable to judicial abuse, as well as the artistic, racial, and legal ramifications of using this particular genre of music to put people in jail. We conclude with recommendations for further research in this area, pointing out specific areas where scholarship would most effectively expose what it means to put rap on trial.

Download the article from SSRN at the link. 

Hip Hop Norms

Jan M. Smits, Maastrict University Faculty of Law, Maastricht European Private Law Institute, University of Helsinki, Center of Excellence in Foundations of European Law and Polity, Andrei Ernst, Steven Iseger, and Nida Riaz, have published If You Shoot My Dog, I Ma Kill Yo’ Cat: An Enquiry into the Principles of Hip-Hop Law. Here is the abstract.

This article investigates how the law is perceived in hip-hop music. Lawyers solve concrete legal problems on basis of certain presuppositions about morality, legality and justice that are not always shared by non-lawyers. This is why a thriving part of academic scholarship deals with what we can learn about laymen’s perceptions of law from studying novels (law and literature) or other types of popular culture. This article offers an inventory and analysis of how the law is perceived in a representative sample of hip-hop lyrics from 5 US artists (Eminem, 50 Cent, Dr. Dre, Ludacris and Jay-Z) and 6 UK artists (Ms Dynamite, Dizzee Rascal, Plan B, Tinie Tempah, Professor Green and N-Dubz). After a methodological part, the article identifies four principles of hip-hop law. First, criminal justice is based on the age-old adage of an eye for an eye, reflecting the desire to retaliate proportionately. Second, self-justice and self-government reign supreme in a hip-hop version of the law: instead of waiting for a presumably inaccurate community response, it is allowed to take the law into one’s own hands. Third, there is an overriding obligation to respect others within the hip-hop community: any form of ‘dissing’ will be severely punished. Finally, the law is seen as an instrument to be used to one’s advantage where possible, and to be ignored if not useful. All four principles can be related to a view of the law as a way to survive in the urban jungle.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

Ghyslaine is shocked, shocked! at the title of this piece.