You're listening to Comedy Central right now. In Atlanta, the rapper Young Thug is on trial for gang activities, and it is not without controversy. Atlanta rappers Gunna and Young Thug responsible for dozens of chart topping hits. They find themselves at the center of a controversial debate in court. Should rapper lyrics be used as evidence in the courtroom? The rappers lyrics one piece of evidence prosecutors are using
in the indictment bad hair something doing. The prosecution citing lyrics like that in the indictment as proof of criminal conspiracy. The district attorney believes he is the ringleader of the Y s O Gang and his lyrics are fair game. I think if you decide to admit your crimes over a beat, I'm gonna use it. That sounds like every mama I've ever seen in my life. F Y young people, when your name is Young Thug, are gonna You're gonna go to jail, your mumble rapper. But they heard them
clearly on that wire tap. I know that the issue is should prosecutors use rap lyrics in criminal trials? That's what I want to talk about tonight in our segment long story short well, since the nineties, prosecutors have used lyrics as evidence against indefendants in more than over five hundred trials. But don't get me wrong. If you rap about something you did do well, that's a confession. If you wrap about something you didn't do that is artistic expression.
And here are just a few examples of ways rappers lyrics get used in court. A rapper named Terence Hatch, known as Little Boosey, was trying for first degree murder. Prosecutors argued that a few cryptic words of one rap song were in fact a confession. Rapper McKinley Phipps was sentenced to thirty years in prison for manslaughter. Prosecutors presented Splice to gather lyrics from two different songs as evidence
at his trial. Police say Antoine Stewart, a rapper who goes by the name Twain Gotti, made a big mistake when he recorded the song right out. Police believe Stewart braggs through his lyrics about how he killed Brian Dean and Christopher Horton. Listen, some of the details match. The shooting happened on a porch. No witnesses immediately came forward, but others don't. The time of day is wrong, there wasn't a stabbing, the caliber of the gun is wrong,
and there's only one victim mentioned, not two. Based largely on that rap and on the accounts of two witnesses given years after the shooting, the rapper was arrested and charged with double murder. Okay, they got the gun wrong, they got the stabbing wrong, they got the number of victims wrong. The only thing they got right was the porch. And every black person I know got a goddamn porch. I mean, and by the way, not everything black people saying songs. It is true. Like Bob Marley, he didn't
actually shoot the sheriff. He just wanted you to think he did. Say y'all wouldn't put him. That's it, Sir, mix a lot. He don't like big butts, nobby, more of a bool God, trust me. And I'm a comedian. I never in my life seeing a rabbi and the priest walking to a damn bar. I've never seen that. Art is an expression. They use this to reflect black life in America, and now they're being punished for it. But some prosecutors say too bad. David Lebon is a
former gang prosecutor. He's now the CEO of the Association of Prosecuting Attorneys. I would say, you can't have it both ways. Cannot say that I'm rapping about stuff because this is what I live in and this is what I see every day, and then come into court and say everything that I said in that rap is is completely untrue. You can have it both ways. It's called fiction, and they they have a whole section in Barns and Nobles. Read a book, bitch. I don't even think that prosecutors
think their lyrics are confession. They just do it because it works, and it works because juries are made of people, and people are kind of racist. As a matter of fact. In a recent study, people were given identical lyrics and told that they either came from country artists, or rap artists or heavy metal artists, and surprise, surprise, people were more likely to think that rap lyrics were written by
a criminal. Clearly, rap is just code for black persons, country is cod for white person and heavy metalists for who knows. I don't know what that is. But there's violence in almost every art form, but the one with young black rappers is the only one that gets treated this way, and this isn't even hypothetical. There was a white woman on trial for murdering her husband and she had written an essay called how to Murder Your Husband?
And guess what the judge he wouldn't allow the essay to be read in because he said they could prejudice the jury. She she lucky Dr Dre didn't write the foreward, and I agree with that it does prejudice the jury. The worst part about all of this is that rappers have to listen to their lyrics get butchered and coort by people with no flow at all. Hey, this is that slime ship, Hey y and cell ship Hey killing twelve Ship murder gang bitch y and cell until We're
dead and Pale. I never killed anybody, but I got something to do with that body ready for war like I'm Russia slime ball Like yeah, yeah, y'ah, why would I? Lion got mob tied and y'all thought Nick Cannon couldn't rap. So Look, they're a whole lot of problems with the justice system in America, but this is an easy thing. Long story short, just stop using lyrics in chord YEA that right, but don't use it against me. I was
just kidding around. Explore more shows from the Daily Show podcast universe by searching the Daily Show wherever you get your podcast What's the Daily Show weeknights at eleven tenth Central on Comedy Central, and stream full episodes anytime on Fairmount Plus. This has been a Comedy Central podcast