Killer Mike is use to voicing his opinions, whether it be through rhymes with Run the Jewels, emotional onstage speeches about Ferguson, or op-eds. Most recently, the rapper co-wrote an article for USA Today about his genre's unfair treatment in the courts. Erik Neilson, an assistant professor at the University of Richmond, helped pen the op-ed, which takes issue with the recent Elonis v. U.S. case in which Anthony Elonis was sentenced to 44 months in prison after posting violent rap verses on Facebook, Pitchfork reports.
The Elonis case is set to be heard this month by the Supreme Court. Killer Mike and Neilson said that the case is just one in a long line of others where "rap lyrics have been used as evidence in criminal trials."
"But in choosing Elonis, the justices have stumbled into a national debate about the expanding prosecution of rap music, which raises major concerns about the role of art and free speech in the justice system, as well as the commonly-held view that hip-hop culture is a threat to society," the pair wrote.
They continued:
As recent research has revealed, rap lyrics have been introduced as evidence of a defendant's criminal behavior in hundreds of cases nationwide, frequently leading to convictions that are based on prosecutors' blatant mischaracterizations of the genre. Ignoring many of the elements that signal rap as form of artistic expression, such as rappers' use of stage names or their frequent use of metaphor and hyperbole, prosecutors will present rap as literal autobiography. In effect, they ask jurors to suspend the distinction between author and narrator, reality and fiction, to secure guilty verdicts.
Killer Mike spoke out against the recent decision in Ferguson where a grand jury did not indict police officer Darren Wilson for the killing of Michael Brown. The rapper wrote an op-ed for Billboard after the shooting occurred in August.
