Chapter 5 is cast as a dialogue in which one speaker poses the question “Is Juice WRLD a rapper?” In their search for an answer, the two touch on issues of singing versus rapping, sampling and intellectual property, racial biases, drug abuse, and the internet’s role in breaking new artists. In short, the question I seek to answer in this chapter is “what happens when we call someone a rapper?” The answers to the question have important ramifications that manifest in the next chapter.
Chapter 6 looks at the practice of rap on trial. This is perhaps the most nefarious way in which white people use rap music. Over the last few decades, there have been hundreds of cases in which rap lyrics have been used as evidence against young people of color. As laid out in the previous chapter, calling someone a rapper activates a network of negative biases, both conscious and unconscious, and in some instances, the media labels people who may have written a few rhymes as “rappers” in a deliberate effort to activate those biases. The use of lyrics in trials often appears to be successful—hence the increasing frequency of cases—and has quite a few chilling consequences that I will consider at the end of the chapter.