In November 2019, I had the opportunity to serve as an expert witness in a criminal trial in Lubbock, TX. The defendant, Treshon Stokes, is a local rapper who performs as Parkway Tee. Stokes and five of his friends were arrested in April 2016 when the police raided a house that they believed was a trap house. Stokes was charged with possession with intent to deliver, and the prosecution intended to use his lyrics as evidence against him. I was contacted by a former student who now works in a law office, and I accepted, eager for the opportunity to use my knowledge to help someone.
I have taught rap classes for about ten years, first in the Honors College at Texas Tech University, then at the University of Washington (I’ve taught on all three campuses: the main campus in Seattle, and satellite campuses in Tacoma and Bothell). My background is in music theory and in the course of my teaching, my study and teaching have broadened to include not only music, poetry, and history, but also issues of race, gender, politics, and religion. My textbook, Listening to Rap (Routledge, 2018) evolved out of my teaching, and includes a section on “rap on trial” in the final chapter.
Prosecutors have used rap lyrics in criminal trials since the early 1990s. Since then, there have been more than 500 cases around the country in which lyrics have been used as evidence. Nielson and Dennis identify three ways that lyrics are commonly used against defendants: 1) as a diary or confession; 2) as motive or intent; 3) as direct threats to another person.[1] In nearly all of these cases, the defendant is a young man of color. He is likely not well-known as a rapper outside of his local area, and he may not even be a “rapper” per se, but rather someone who took the opportunity to put his thoughts down in poetic form. Labeling a young person as a “rapper” is often a tactic that the media uses to vilify young people of color: The New York Times described Michael Brown as: “no angel, with public records and interviews with friends and family revealing both problems and promise in his young life. [. . . ] He had taken to rapping in recent months, producing lyrics that were by turns contemplative and vulgar. He got into at least one scuffle with a neighbor.”[2] The author seems to imply that writing raps was bound up with the problems he was dealing with.
My experience as an expert witness was transformative. It challenged me to put everything I knew in theory into practice, and the stakes here were far higher than any final paper or course grade. Unlike the glacial pace at which academia tends to move, details and dates changed quickly, and I had to adapt. Unlike teaching or giving a conference presentation, where the audience was generally collegial and inquisitive, my interlocutors were attorneys and law enforcement officials intent on characterizing Mr. Stokes as a danger to society. I was responsible for convincing the jury that the police--people that we are trained to trust from a young age--were wrong.
Upon my return from Texas, I decided that the rap classes that I had scheduled for summer quarter would focus on the use of rap lyrics in trials. The defense I prepared focused on four main topics: the history of rap music, analysis of lyrics, the inner workings of the music industry, and how lyrics can influence juries. My experience led me to explore other ways in which hip hop might intersect with the criminal justice system, and I have begun thinking about what a hip hop-based pre-booking diversion program might look like. Given that many of my students in Tacoma have been social work and criminal justice majors, I decided to include some material in this vein in the course. In this paper, I will outline the class I developed in order to provide a blueprint for others who may wish to address this emerging topic in their own teaching.
General pedagogical considerations
As I white cis-gender male who grew up in predominantly white suburban Pennsylvania, and had the resources to earn a Ph.D. and earn academic positions, I recognize that I benefit from a number of privileges, and that in many ways, I am an outsider to hip hop culture. I credit hip hop with introducing me to anti-racism, and I have endeavored to make my classrooms anti-racist spaces. This means not only incorporating anti-racist subject matter in my classes, but also finding ways to minimize or eliminate the barriers that academia has erected that uphold white supremacy and hinder the progress of BIPOC. These classes were proposed and on the schedule well before the coronavirus forced a shift to online learning, and before the protests in the wake of George Floyd’s death by police sparked a national conversation on race and policing. These two events made both the “how” and “why” of teaching this material even more critical.
I designed the class to be asynchronous and delivered through Canvas, our campus’ LMS. I included fourteen modules, and students were allowed to choose which ones they wanted to complete--a kind of “choose-your-own adventure.” There were no hard-and-fast due dates for assignments: students were allowed and encouraged to work at their own pace. Point values for each assignment varied, with most being worth 50 or 100 points, and depended on the length and complexity of the assignment. I also assigned a midterm and final reflection (more on this below), which were required of everyone, and which were the only assignments that had firm due dates. I gave two grades on assignments: either full credit, or revise and resubmit based on feedback that I offered. To succeed in the course (that is, to earn a 4.0), students had to accumulate 1000 points by the end of the quarter. The midterm and final responses were worth 100 points each; students were able to accumulate the other 800 points through any combination of the other modules.
The first module (which I labeled “module 0” and required everyone to acknowledge that they read) included a brief overview of anti-racism, with a list of recommended readings for those who may be new to the idea.[3] I also proposed a set of community agreements for the students to discuss and approve, since I wanted to ensure a safe space for discussion for both students of color and for those who may be new to anti-racist work. (I recognize that this isn’t quite how community agreements work, but in the interest of time--summer quarter is only nine weeks long--and given the online environment, I thought this would be an expedient compromise.)
The nature of the class lends itself to role-playing, and I think in an in-person class, I would capitalize on this aspect even more. Most assignments asked students to play the role of judge, prosecutor, juror, expert witness, or defense. In many ways, the legal system relies on binary oppositions (yes or no; guilty or innocent; admissible or inadmissible), and I incorporated that into the assignments. For example, one assignment asked students to imagine they were a judge, to read an amicus brief, determine if lyrics were admissible or inadmissible, then write about how the brief influenced their decision. In a face-to-face classroom, I can imagine robust debates and perhaps mock trials that would enable the students to demonstrate their knowledge and test their creative thinking skills.

[1] Erik Nielson and Andrea Dennis, Rap on Trial: Race, Lyrics, and Guilt in America. New York: The New Press, 2019. 12-16.
[2] John Eligon, “Michael Brown Spent Last Weeks Grappling with Problems and Promise,” The New York Times, 24 August 2014.
[3] The recommended readings included Ijeoma Oluo’s So You Want to Talk About Race? (New York: Basic Books, 2018); Ibram X. Kendi’s How to be an Anti-Racist (New York: Penguin Random House, 2019); Crystal Fleming’s How to be Less Stupid About Race (New York: Penguin Random House, 2018); Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility (New York: Beacon Press, 2018); Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow (New York: The New Press, 2010); and Layla Saad’s Me and White Supremacy (Ashland [OR], Blackstone, 2020).