SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill into law on Friday that limits the use of rap lyrics in criminal court cases in California. The law requires "a court, in a criminal proceeding ...

SALEM — Should music, specifically rap lyrics, be considered evidence in a court of law? This is a question jurors nationally and in the Salem Superior Court are grappling with. Unique evidence in the ...

Over the past few months, rap fans have placed more and more scrutiny on prosecutors who use rap lyrics as evidence in criminal trials against hip-hop artists. While “hip-hop cops” have long been ...

Hip-hop, like any art form, is a means of creative expression. And while rap music is often semi-autobiographical, when Kanye West recorded in 2018, “I thought about killing you / Premeditated murder, ...

On May 17, New York State Senate approved a bill that would limit prosecutors’ use of song lyrics or other forms of “creative expression” as evidence in criminal cases. If passed, prosecutors would ...

NEW ORLEANS (WVUE) - Johnny Cash never shot a man in Reno just to watch him die, but those lyrics could have come back to haunt him had he spoken from experience. In an effort to protect such creative ...

A recently proposed New York state bill to prohibit rap lyrics from being used in criminal trials has support from some of the biggest names in the music business, including Jay-Z, Big Sean, Fat Joe, ...

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Rap snitches, telling all their business, won't have to sit in court and be their own star witness. At least not in New York state. The Rap Music on Trial bill, sponsored by state Sen. Brad ...

“The way that prosecutors are using these lyrics is really to strip them of any artistic value, to deny them the status of art at all, and treat them as literal confessions,” said Erik Nielson, a ...

Reps. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) and Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) on Wednesday introduced the Restoring Artistic Protection (RAP) Act to limit the use of lyrics and “artistic expression” as evidence in criminal ...