Travis Scott Tells Supreme Court Use Of Rap Lyrics In Death Sentence Case Was Unconstitutional

Travis Scott is telling the Supreme Court that the use of a Black man’s rap lyrics in a Texas death row sentencing is unconstitutional. On Monday (Mar. 9), Scott’s legal team (including Jay-Z’s longtime attorney Alex Spiro) filed an amicus brief to the highest court in the land in support of James Garfield Broadnax, convicted in 2009 of killing two men in the Garland area and later sentenced to death. The Texas-born Utopia artist highlighted the nearly all-white jury in the man’s case. “The manner in which prosecutors presented rap lyrics written by petitioner James Garfield Broadnax, a Black man, to an almost all-white jury during his capital sentencing hearing presents an ideal vehicle for addressing this issue because the prosecutors’ conduct here was particularly egregious,” Scott’s brief reads. “The prosecutors argued Mr. Broadnax was likely to be dangerous in the future simply because he engaged in ‘gangster rap.’ Such an argument functionally operates as a categorical and straightforwardly unconstitutional content-based penalty on rap music as a form of expression.” Scott’s Supreme Court brief goes on to include a reminder that rap lyrics, “historically associated with minority artists,” are protected by the First Amendment. New York City Police Department’s so-called “hip-hop police,” with the department’s unit provided as an example of the many ways rap artists have faced First Amendment infringements over the years.

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