Travis Scott Argues to Supreme Court That Rap Lyrics Shouldn’t Influence Death Penalty

Travis Scott is urging the Supreme Court to address the use of rap lyrics in legal proceedings. On Monday (Mar. 9), Scott’s legal team, including Jay-Z’s longtime attorney Alex Spiro, filed an amicus brief supporting James Garfield Broadnax. Broadnax, convicted in 2009 of killing two men near Garland, Texas, was later sentenced to death. Scott’s brief points to the nearly all-white jury in the case and argues that the prosecution’s use of rap lyrics was unconstitutional.

“The manner in which prosecutors presented rap lyrics written by petitioner James Garfield Broadnax, a Black man, to an almost all-white jury during his capital sentencing hearing presents an ideal vehicle for addressing this issue because the prosecutors’ conduct here was particularly egregious,” the brief reads. “The prosecutors argued Mr. Broadnax was likely to be dangerous in the future simply because he engaged in ‘gangster rap.’ Such an argument functionally operates as a categorical and straightforwardly unconstitutional content-based penalty on rap music as a form of expression.”

Scott’s brief emphasizes that rap lyrics, “historically associated with minority artists,” are protected under the First Amendment. It cites a 2020 Complex article by Shawn Setaro discussing the NYPD’s “hip-hop police” as an example of how rap artists have faced censorship.

Other artists, including Young Thug, T.I., and Killer Mike, as well as music scholars, have also weighed in on the case. A separate brief backed by Killer Mike points out that Broadnax’s lyrics were not considered during the determination of guilt, only during the punishment phase.

“Instead, the State used Broadnax’s artistic expression in the punishment phase to portray him as living and pursuing a ‘gangster’ lifestyle that made him a continuing criminal and violent danger to the community,” the brief notes, first reported by the New York Times.

Both briefs underline a broader concern: rap lyrics are often treated as literal autobiography by the legal system, while similar expressions in other genres, such as rock music, are rarely treated the same way. The issue gained renewed attention during Young Thug’s YSL RICO case in Georgia, when artists including Drake, Megan Thee Stallion, and Post Malone supported a petition to “Protect Black Art.”