Since the 1990s, police and prosecutors have used lyrics to build criminal cases against rap artists. It's a practice that blurs the distinction between entertainment and criminal confession.

For decades, conflict has been a part of hip-hop culture. The ongoing diss-track battle between Kendrick Lamar and Drake proves how much digital space has transformed rap beefs into an industry.

The Restoring Artists Protection Act, the RAP Act, is a proposal to limit the use of lyrics in federal criminal proceedings, lyrics from songs like this one called "Anybody" by Young Thug and ...

If women’s rap had been confined by the commercial impulse to treat it as a sideshow, then this new wave of artists presents a kind of revenge for the years of trash talk and diminishment — a ...

After three drill rap artists were shot — two of them fatally — in New York City since the beginning of the year, Mayor Eric Adams has called for social media to ban the genre's often-violent ...

Rap music is increasingly showing up as evidence in criminal trials. I have been reporting on the use of rap lyrics in criminal investigations and trials for more than two years, building a ...

The Restoring Artistic Protection Act (RAP Act) seeks to protect artists from the the use of their lyrics against them as evidence in court.

From DJ Kool Herc and The Last Poets to Prophets of Da City and Mode 9, here’s how African history has influenced hip-hop – and vice-versa – 50 years after the genre was born.