From the ACLU, this is at Liberty.

I'm Kendall Seasmeyer, your host.

As the gang conspiracy trial of rapper Young Thug and his famed rap collective, YSL, extends past 20 days in Atlanta.

We're bringing you a conversation about the use of rap lyrics in court.

Despite a groundswell of activism and legal opposition against the admissibility of Young

Thug's lyrics, A judge ruled in November

that lyrics from both Young Thug and other YSL artists can be used by the state, against them,

as evidence pointing to the gang's existence and the members' attitudes towards the crimes they are charged with.

So today we're diving into the At Liberty Archive to discuss how the use of an artist's creative work in court

allows for implicit bias to run roughshod on rappers' lives and even put the wrong people behind bars.

When IST and his band Body Count released the song Cop Killer in 1992,

it spurred nationwide outrage.

At the time, Bill Clinton and George Bush were both running for president, and condemning

cop killer was among the handful of stances where they found common ground.

Officials and police departments called for a complete boycott of Time Warner Inc., for

refusing to halt the sales of the song.

In response, Time Warner publicly stated its unshakable commitment to stand by the freedom of

expression of their artists, arguing that, quote, cop-killer is an artist's rap on how a person in the street

feels. It's a shout of pain and protest,

raw with rage and resentment, end quote. Professor Kerry Fried of Winona State University

conducted a long study that year in an attempt to contextualize this dialogue in research.

She found that participants exhibited several implicit biases. They were more likely to find one of two songs with the same lyrical content,

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