A new hearing for rap

A collaboration between JUSTICE, United Borders, Professor Naomi Waltham-Smith (Oxford), Dr Yusef Bakkali (De Monfort), Dr Lambros Fatsis (City St Georges), and Adèle Oliver, with project partners Clifford Chance and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS)

Supported by an AHRC Locally Unlocking Cultural Through Inclusive Access (LUCIA) grant (2026–27), with seed funding from Oxford Policy Engagement Network (OPEN) (2024–25)

Advisory Board Members: Keir Monteith KC, Dr Abenaa Owusu-Bempah, Luke Billingham, Richard Roach

The background

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.

The network and its goals

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 group  exercises in legal analysis 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. The project incorporates clear paths towards positive change in legal practice and policy via training for legal professionals and working closely 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.

The significance

This project comes at a crucial time. The misuse of rap music in criminal prosecutions has garnered increasing scholarly and public scrutiny, including the important work of an earlier AHRC-funded project, “Prosecuting Rap.”  In 2024–25, the “Manchester 10” case made headlines: the conviction of Ademola Adedeji was quashed on grounds of misidentification after a video showing a young Black boy with rap music in the background was submitted as a crucial piece of evidence. Yet the Court of Appeal judgment did not address concerns about the admissibility of rap that were raised in JUSTICE’s third-party intervention—meaning that there is still much work to address concerns that creative expression is being misused to secure criminal prosecutions. Art Not Evidence and JUSTICE drafted an amendment to the Victims and Court Bill, tabled by Baroness Shami Chakrabarti and Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon seeking to make creative expression subject to more rigorous admissibility criteria. While the amendment was not adopted, the Government has now recognized concerns about the potential for misinterpretation and for material with limited probative value to be used in a way that is significantly prejudicial, in particular drill and other rap music “which in some cases may not prove anything very much, save what is known as the forbidden reasoning of negative stereotyping of young Black men.” At the bill’s third reading, Baroness Levitt also announced that the CPS is now formally committing to issuing legal guidance and will convene a national scrutiny panel, involving third-sector representatives, legal professionals, and academic experts, to examine the use of drill and rap music in prosecutions and assist the CPS in refining its approach. This project hopes to add to all the valuable existing work in this area by bringing a distinctive focus on the value of musical knowledge and aesthetic appreciation for transforming attitudes and practice within the justice system.