{"id":412,"date":"2012-05-10T20:35:07","date_gmt":"2012-05-11T01:35:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/enielson\/?p=412"},"modified":"2013-12-27T13:23:56","modified_gmt":"2013-12-27T18:23:56","slug":"rap-on-trial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/enielson\/2012\/05\/10\/rap-on-trial\/","title":{"rendered":"A trial that rap lyrics (and Boosie) might actually win"},"content":{"rendered":"

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It looks like prosecutors in the Lil Boosie trial are going to have a tough time getting a conviction. \u00a0Without 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. \u00a0The problem is that Marlo Mike has since recanted, insisting that his confession was essentially coerced. \u00a0Based on the\u00a0coverage<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0I’ve read of the case, Louding’s explanation does at least seem plausible.<\/p>\n

And so without any real evidence, prosecutors have decided to introduce the lyrics to the songs “187” and “Body Bag.” \u00a0Their 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. \u00a0That sounds a lot more like it. \u00a0I suppose it’s possible that a rapper could<\/em>\u00a0use 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.<\/p>\n

Perhaps that’s why Kenneth M. Willis, a Louisiana attorney,<\/em>\u00a0told<\/a> the Los Angeles Times<\/em>, “Right now, rap\u00a0is on trial, Boosie’s rap music is on trial, and to me, it looks like a long shot that he’ll be convicted.” \u00a0Apparently the defense team agrees–they just rested<\/span><\/a><\/span> their case without calling a single witness. \u00a0Closing arguments are scheduled for tomorrow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It looks like prosecutors in the Lil Boosie trial are going to have a tough time getting a conviction. \u00a0Without 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 … Continue reading A trial that rap lyrics (and Boosie) might actually win<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1656,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/enielson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/enielson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/enielson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/enielson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1656"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/enielson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=412"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/enielson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/enielson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/enielson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/enielson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}