As district attorneys across the country have used rap lyrics to build criminal cases against artists with growing frequency since the early 2000s, state lawmakers are looking to implement a legal ...

READ ALOUD in court, the words sounded like a confession: “Fuck the judge…this that mob life…cookin’ white brick.” Not long ago the defendant, Jeffery Williams, was rapping these lines on stage. Now ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I write about the business and law of music. Two men were convicted in federal court on Tuesday in Brooklyn of murdering Jason ...

No one believes that country music legend Johnny Cash shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die. When Cash in 1968 released “Folsom Prison Blues,” a ballad about shooting and killing a man for no ...

As the high-profile criminal trial of rapper Young Thug began this week, Black rappers who have had their lyrics used against them by prosecutors as evidence of criminal activity have renewed calls to ...

Young Thug's lyrics are used as alleged evidence in a RICO indictment. Young Thug is a burgeoning rapper known for pushing the envelope, both musically and as a fashion icon. He became an influential ...