Brian Steel is putting prosecutors on notice over a courtroom practice that has followed hip hop artists for decades: turning their music into evidence of criminal intent.
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During the October 6 episode of T.I.’s “expediTIously,” Steel argued that rap lyrics are too often treated as literal statements while violent or disturbing expression in other creative fields receives more room to be understood as art.“The prosecutors don’t take William Shakespeare’s words as reality,” Steel said. “The prosecutors don’t take Stephen King. The prosecutors don’t use opera or country music or hard rock and roll, but they use rap. It’s discrimination.”
Steel also pushed the argument beyond music, saying other forms of personal expression should not automatically be treated as proof of wrongdoing.
“People have a right to say what they want in their lyrics and people have the right to walk around with tattoos on their face if that’s what they want,” Steel added.
Steel’s position on rap lyrics is hardly theoretical. One of the most visible battles over the issue played out during Young Thug’s YSL racketeering case in Fulton County. Judge Ural Glanville ruled in November 2023 that prosecutors could conditionally introduce 17 sets of lyrics if they established connections between those lyrics and alleged crimes. Defense attorneys argued the material was protected artistic expression and risked unfairly prejudicing jurors.
Steel made the issue a central part of Young Thug’s defense. The Associated Press reported that Young Thug eventually entered guilty and no contest pleas in October 2024 after more than two years in custody. He received a sentence that allowed him to leave custody under extensive probation conditions.
The debate followed Steel into another major case this year. Before Lil Durk’s federal murder for hire trial, Judge Michael Fitzgerald ruled prosecutors could use portions of some songs while restricting other lyric and music video evidence. Some of Durk’s lyrics were admitted, including material from “Pissed Me Off.”
Despite prosecutors introducing rap lyrics, a Los Angeles federal jury acquitted Durk of all charges considered in that trial on September 11. Steel was part of Durk’s defense team and attacked the credibility of cooperating witnesses during closing arguments. Durk still faces a separate racketeering case, which Billboard reported has been postponed until 2027.
Long before YSL and Durk, Boosie found his music inside a Louisiana courtroom. The Los Angeles Times reported that prosecutors introduced recordings during his 2012 first-degree murder trial and argued that the material helped show his alleged intent. A judge had previously allowed limited use of specific language from his music. The strategy did not produce a conviction. Jurors acquitted Boosie of murder after roughly an hour of deliberations.
The case of New Orleans rapper Mac Phipps remains another major example. A Miami Herald investigation based on court records found that prosecutors referenced Phipps’ lyrics and artistic persona during his 2001 murder trial, at times combining language from separate songs. Phipps was ultimately convicted of manslaughter and received a 30-year sentence. He was paroled in 2021 after spending more than two decades incarcerated.
Tay K’s “The Race” also became courtroom evidence, although it entered after jurors had already found him guilty of murder. According to CBS Texas, prosecutors played the music video during the 2019 sentencing phase, handed jurors printed copies of the lyrics, and then played the video again. The song had become a hit after Tay K fled house arrest, making its presentation to jurors one of the clearest examples of an artist’s public image and music being brought directly into sentencing proceedings.
The legal system has also shown that there are limits. In the 2014 case involving Vonte Skinner, the New Jersey Supreme Court upheld the reversal of an attempted murder conviction after prosecutors presented extensive violent rap lyrics that had little connection to the charged shooting. The court concluded that their prejudicial effect greatly outweighed their value in proving motive or intent.
Some lawmakers have responded to those concerns. California’s Legislature enacted Evidence Code Section 352.2, which requires judges considering creative expression to account for the danger of prejudice and recognizes that artistic material generally has minimal value as a literal narrative unless it closely connects to the alleged crime or contains details that were not publicly known.
Steel’s latest comments land in a legal debate that is no longer hypothetical for hip hop. Rap lyrics have helped prosecutors build narratives in courtrooms involving Young Thug, Lil Durk, Boosie, Mac Phipps, Tay K, and numerous lesser-known defendants. The unresolved question is whether those words are revealing evidence in a specific case or whether prosecutors are asking juries to treat Black artistic expression as autobiography in ways other creative forms rarely face.
