Has Obama made hip-hop rethink masculinity?  This is the question raised in a recent Washington Post blog article.  Noting that well-known rappers like Jay Z, T.I., and Ice Cube have recently supported Obama’s endorsement of gay marriage, the author asks whether hip hop is ever-so-slowly moving toward a “post-homophobic”era.  Mark Anthony Neal, well-known scholar of African American culture, thinks Obama has indeed helped signal a shift, while equally well-known rap aficionado, Bakari Kitwana, argues that “Hip-hop culture doesn’t take its social cues from Obama,” saying instead that it’s these artists’ growing maturity–and their lack of vulnerability to industry opinion now that they’re established–that is causing a shift.

I actually think both are right, though it’s probably beside the point to ask whether Obama is the cause of this shift.  The point is that the shift is occurring.  And it was an easy one to predict.  As public attitudes toward gay marriage change dramatically, including among African Americans, it’s only logical that rappers’ publicly-expressed attitudes will too–especially if they’re business savvy.  Rappers, like all entertainers, do take their social cues from the public.

It’s also an increasingly tough sell for rappers to talk about discrimination and then go on to deride homosexuality.  Ice Cube gets it right when he points this out: “I’ve had people in my family, myself and a lot of my ancestors have been victims of discrimination. So I don’t want to discriminate on nobody.” And so whether Obama is responsible, in part, for this shift, is tough to determine.  What’s way more important is that, while far from a “post-homophobic” era, rap is slowly moving out of the dark ages on this issue.

Now if we can just curb the bitches, money, and cocaine rhetoric, we might find ourselves on the cusp of a new era of rap lyrics.  How many true rap fans wouldn’t love another golden age?

It took jurors all of one hour to find Lil Boosie not guilty of first degree murder–in a unanimous decision.  He still has to finish his 8-year sentence on drug charges, but that sentence must seem fairly insignificant compared to life in prison.

Given the lack of evidence, it’s surprising that the prosecution would bring the case at all. And although the outcome appears to be a just one, it’s worth noting that the practice of using rappers’ lyrics against them continues with approval from the court system.  It might not have proved successful here, but it has in the past, and no doubt it will again in the future.  That’s an ongoing miscarriage of justice that might not affect Boosie, but who knows which rapper is next.  So a big win for Boosie, but another loss for the First Amendment…

It looks like prosecutors in the Lil Boosie trial are going to have a tough time getting a conviction.  Without any DNA evidence or witnesses that can tie Boosie to the murder of Terry Boyd on October 21, 2009, they are instead resting their case on the confession of Michael “Marlo Mike” Louding that he was paid by Boosie to commit the murder.  The problem is that Marlo Mike has since recanted, insisting that his confession was essentially coerced.  Based on the coverage I’ve read of the case, Louding’s explanation does at least seem plausible.

And so without any real evidence, prosecutors have decided to introduce the lyrics to the songs “187” and “Body Bag.”  Their approach here is interesting–they brought in a forensics expert to testify that Boosie actually recorded lines for the songs just before and after the murder was taking place, which I guess is supposed to show that Boosie was sitting in the studio, writing and recording his lyrics in real time as he learned of events related to the murder. That’s a pretty unlikely scenario, and in fact Boosie’s lawyers have claimed that some of those lyrics were recorded long before the night of the murder and that Boosie was simply reusing (or “resampling”) them.  That sounds a lot more like it.  I suppose it’s possible that a rapper could use studio time to take visits or phone calls that would, in the moment, be turned into lyrics that would, the next moment, get recorded, but that’s a pretty interesting compositional process.

Perhaps that’s why Kenneth M. Willis, a Louisiana attorney, told the Los Angeles Times, “Right now, rap is on trial, Boosie’s rap music is on trial, and to me, it looks like a long shot that he’ll be convicted.”  Apparently the defense team agrees–they just rested their case without calling a single witness.  Closing arguments are scheduled for tomorrow.