A new hearing for rap: a network for tackling racial injustice’s impact on cultural participation

Rap music-making plays an important, if complex, role in the lives of young people in communities marginalized by race and class in deprived urban areas of the UK. While sometimes used as a medium to express hostilities between gangs, rap-making more commonly offers youth who feel disempowered by systemic exclusion an outlet for self-expression, a therapeutic response to experiences of violence, and greater self-confidence in navigating aspirations for more liveable lives, contributing to community-driven approaches to care, safety, and healing divisions. Culturally relevant music-centred mentoring—such as co-lead United Borders’ Better Understanding of Self (B.U.S.) programme—is increasingly recognized as an effective way to achieve better outcomes for young people and foster community wellbeing. However, the criminalization of rap through its use as evidence in prosecutions risks not only miscarriages of justice and perpetuating stereotypes but also undermining the value of musical participation among communities for whom musical expression represents one of the few avenues for contending with conditions of social suffering and hopelessness. Recently, drill evidence—a subgenre that traffics in stock-in-trade depictions of “road” culture, performative braggadocio, and first-person narratives of violence—increasingly plays an integral role in building a case where other evidence of gang affiliation or criminal activity is weak. The result is that cultural expression is reductively stigmatized in the courtroom and the media without recognizing the more complex picture of the relationships between music-making, street violence, and conditions of inequality and discrimination affecting inner-city communities. The influence of the urban music economy in eliciting fictionalized performances of “authenticity” and hypermasculinity also tends to be sidelined in favour of presumptions that lyrics be heard as confessions, threats, or endorsements of certain attitudes or conduct. This network builds capacity to tackle this challenge by deepening judicial and prosecutorial understanding of rap’s aesthetic and socio-cultural value to make legal safeguards more robust, thereby reducing criminalization and its adverse impacts on communities. The first strand of research, working closely with community-based organizations, youth workers, and experts by experience, uses peer research and arts-based co-creation methods to gain a richer understanding of how criminalization impacts the music-making activities of young people and the provision and efficacy of youth services. The second strand uses semi-structured interviews and group exercises to (1) gain a more detailed, analytical understanding of how judges and prosecutors hear musical evidence when assessing its relevance; and (2) explore how the evidence base developed in the first strand, along with greater knowledge of the history and aesthetics of Black musical genres, might productively enrich appreciation of rap’s creative value and inform legal reasoning. Engaging closely with the Judicial College and Crown Prosecution Service, the project incorporates clear paths towards positive change in legal practice and policy via training for legal professionals and working with the CPS as it revisits its guidance on musical evidence. The goal is to reduce discrimination in the justice system by centring community voices and culturally sensitive knowledge in these interventions, and thereby mitigate impacts of chilling effects on musical participation in communities.