Rap on Trial
Race, Lyrics, and Guilt in America
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Rap on Trial
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Narrated by:
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JD Jackson
About this listen
A groundbreaking exposé about the alarming use of rap lyrics as criminal evidence to convict and incarcerate young men of color
Should Johnny Cash have been charged with murder after he sang, “I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die”? Few would seriously subscribe to this notion of justice. Yet in 2001, a rapper named Mac whose music had gained national recognition was convicted of manslaughter after the prosecutor quoted liberally from his album Shell Shocked. Mac was sentenced to 30 years in prison, where he remains. And his case is just one of many nationwide.
Over the last three decades, as rap became increasingly popular, prosecutors saw an opportunity: they could present the sometimes violent, crime-laden lyrics of amateur rappers as confessions to crimes, threats of violence, evidence of gang affiliation, or revelations of criminal motive - and judges and juries would go along with it. Detectives have reopened cold cases on account of rap lyrics and videos alone, and prosecutors have secured convictions by presenting such lyrics and videos of rappers as autobiography. Now, an alarming number of aspiring rappers are imprisoned. No other form of creative expression is treated this way in the courts.
Rap on Trial places this disturbing practice in the context of hip-hop history and exposes what’s at stake. It’s a gripping, timely exploration at the crossroads of contemporary hip hop and mass incarceration.
©2019 Erik Nielson and Andrea L. Dennis; Foreword 2019 by Michael Render (P)2020 Audible, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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A Book Every Young White Male Should Read
- By danielwead on 08-04-17
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Presumed Guilty
- How the Supreme Court Empowered the Police and Subverted Civil Rights
- By: Erwin Chemerinsky
- Narrated by: Perry Daniels
- Length: 11 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 33
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 31
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 31
Presumed Guilty reveals how the Supreme Court allows the perpetuation of racist policing by presuming that suspects, especially people of color, are guilty.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Required Reading
- By Robert Bragaw on 02-26-23
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Outrage
- The Five Reasons Why O.J. Simpson Got Away with Murder
- By: Vincent Bugliosi
- Narrated by: Joseph Campanella
- Length: 5 hrs and 7 mins
- Abridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 391
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 302
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 301
What went wrong in the O.J. Simpson double-murder trial? Former prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi dares to lay bare the bungling he perceived in the case. Incriminating evidence was never presented and lapses in strategy left prosecutors Marcia Clark and Christopher Darden at a disadvantage. These are just a few of the fatal errors that led to a victory for the defense.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Rip-off
- By Andrew Kelly on 05-21-19
By: Vincent Bugliosi
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Nigger
- The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word - with a New Introduction by the Author
- By: Randall Kennedy
- Narrated by: Langston Darby
- Length: 5 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 35
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 31
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 31
Nigger: it is arguably the most consequential social insult in American history, though, at the same time, a word that reminds us of “the ironies and dilemmas, tragedies and glories of the American experience.” In this tour de force, distinguished Harvard Law School professor Randall Kennedy - author of the highly acclaimed Race, Crime, and the Law - “put[s] a tracer on nigger”, to identify how it has been used and by whom, while analyzing the controversies to which it has given rise.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Why we have the thesaurus…
- By John H on 07-12-23
By: Randall Kennedy
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Let the Lord Sort Them
- The Rise and Fall of the Death Penalty
- By: Maurice Chammah
- Narrated by: Kevin R. Free
- Length: 11 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 57
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 49
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 50
In 1972, the United States Supreme Court made a surprising ruling: The country’s death penalty system violated the Constitution. The backlash was swift, especially in Texas, where executions were considered part of the cultural fabric, and a dark history of lynching was masked by gauzy visions of a tough-on-crime frontier. When executions resumed, Texas quickly became the nationwide leader in carrying out the punishment.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Very Slanted
- By appreciative reader on 02-07-21
By: Maurice Chammah
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On the Courthouse Lawn
- Revised Edition
- By: Sherrilyn Ifill, Bryan Stevenson - foreword
- Narrated by: LisaGay Hamilton
- Length: 8 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 25
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 21
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Story5 out of 5 stars 21
Nearly 5,000 black Americans were lynched between 1890 and 1960. Over 40 years later, Sherrilyn Ifill examines the numerous ways that this racial trauma still resounds across the United States. While the lynchings and their immediate aftermath were devastating, the little-known contemporary consequences, such as the marginalization of political and economic development for black Americans, are equally pernicious. A landmark book, On the Courthouse Lawn is a much-needed and urgent road map for communities finally confronting lynching's long shadow.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Born in Salisbury
- By rondcorbinAmazon Customer on 01-07-20
By: Sherrilyn Ifill, and others
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To Protect and Serve
- How to Fix America's Police
- By: Norm Stamper
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 10 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 54
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 46
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Story4 out of 5 stars 47
American policing is in crisis. The last decade witnessed a vast increase in police aggression, misconduct, and militarization, along with a corresponding reduction in transparency and accountability. Nowhere is this more noticeable and painful than in African American and other ethnic minority communities. Racism - from raw, individualized versions to insidious systemic examples - appears to be on the rise in our police departments.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Truth mixed with liberal rhetoric
- By Eric G. on 11-19-16
By: Norm Stamper
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Locking Up Our Own
- Crime and Punishment in Black America
- By: James Forman Jr.
- Narrated by: Kevin R. Free
- Length: 8 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 568
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 500
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 496
Today, Americans are debating our criminal justice system with new urgency. Mass incarceration and aggressive police tactics - and their impact on people of color - are feeding outrage and a consensus that something must be done. But what if we only know half the story? In Locking Up Our Own, the Yale legal scholar and former public defender James Forman Jr. weighs the tragic role that some African Americans themselves played in escalating the war on crime.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Outstanding Book
- By Andrew on 12-13-17
By: James Forman Jr.
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They're Lying
- The Media, the Left, and the Death of George Floyd
- By: Liz Collin
- Narrated by: Liz Collin
- Length: 5 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 128
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 121
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Story5 out of 5 stars 121
Award-winning investigative journalist Liz Collin sets the record straight. She uncovers what really happened on a street in Minneapolis that set off the riots, the demands to defund the police, and the skyrocketing crime across the country. Based on conversations with those who were there—including Derek Chauvin, Thomas Lane, and other Minneapolis police officers who’ve never spoken out before—Liz exposes how the media and the Left manipulated the facts to dupe and divide America.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The truth exposed!
- By Amazon Customer on 02-24-23
By: Liz Collin
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Fight of the Century
- Writers Reflect on 100 Years of Landmark ACLU Cases
- By: Michael Chabon - editor, Ayelet Waldman - editor
- Narrated by: an all-star cast
- Length: 11 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 51
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 42
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 42
In collaboration with the ACLU, authors Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman have curated an anthology of essays about landmark cases in the organization’s 100-year history. Fight of the Century takes you inside the trials and the stories that have shaped modern life. Some of the most prominent cases that the ACLU has been involved in - Brown v. Board of Education, Roe v. Wade, Miranda v. Arizona - need little introduction. Others you may never even have heard of, yet their outcomes quietly defined the world we live in now.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Outstanding
- By Nancy B on 10-06-20
By: Michael Chabon - editor, and others
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Unwarranted
- Policing Without Permission
- By: Barry Friedman
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 13 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 32
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 30
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Story5 out of 5 stars 29
In June 2013, documents leaked by Edward Snowden sparked widespread debate about secret government surveillance of Americans. Just over a year later, the shooting of Michael Brown, a black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri, set off protests and triggered concern about militarization and discriminatory policing. In Unwarranted, Barry Friedman argues that these two seemingly disparate events are connected - and that the problem is not so much the policing agencies as it is the rest of us.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Insightful book
- By laserpro on 03-02-17
By: Barry Friedman
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The Nonsense Factory
- The Making and Breaking of the American Legal System
- By: Bruce Cannon Gibney
- Narrated by: Matt Kugler
- Length: 17 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 43
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 37
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 36
Our trial courts conduct hardly any trials, our correctional systems do not correct, and the rise of mandated arbitration has ushered in a shadowy system of privatized "justice". Meanwhile, our legislators can't even follow their own rules for making rules while the rule of law mutates into a perpetual state of emergency. The legal system is becoming an incomprehensible farce. How did this happen? In The Nonsense Factory, Bruce Cannon Gibney shows that over the past 70 years, the legal system has dangerously confused quantity with quality and might with legitimacy.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Ruined by obvious bias
- By M. E. Blackman on 10-07-19
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Illusion of Justice
- Inside Making a Murderer and America's Broken System
- By: Jerome F. Buting
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 10 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 193
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 181
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 181
Not since The Thin Blue Line has there been a true-crime saga as engrossing as Making a Murderer. Captivating audiences across demographic lines, it made Steven Avery a household name and thrust defense attorney Jerome F. Buting - and his fight against America's dysfunctional criminal justice system - into the spotlight. In Illusion of Justice, Buting uses the Avery case as a springboard to examine the shaky integrity of our law enforcement and legal systems, which he has witnessed firsthand for nearly four decades.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Tells it like it is . . .
- By Regan Williams on 11-26-17
By: Jerome F. Buting
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Allow Me to Retort
- A Black Guy's Guide to the Constitution
- By: Elie Mystal
- Narrated by: Elie Mystal
- Length: 8 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 2,224
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 1,971
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Story5 out of 5 stars 1,951
This is an easily digestible argument about what rights we have, what rights Republicans are trying to take away, and how to stop them. Mystal explains how to protect the rights of women and people of color instead of cowering to the absolutism of gun owners and bigots. He explains the legal way to stop everything from police brutality to political gerrymandering, just by changing a few judges and justices. He strips out all of the fancy jargon conservatives like to hide behind and lays bare the truth of their project to keep America forever tethered to its slaveholding past.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Informative and Entertaining
- By Kindle Customer on 03-06-22
By: Elie Mystal
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Freedom for the Thought That We Hate
- A Biography of the First Amendment
- By: Anthony Lewis
- Narrated by: Stow Lovejoy
- Length: 5 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 142
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 54
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 56
More than any other people on earth, Americans are free to say and write what they think. The reason for this extraordinary freedom is not a superior culture of tolerance, but just 14 words in our most fundamental legal document: the free expression clauses of the First Amendment to the Constitution.
Anthony Lewis tells us how these rights were created, revealing a story of hard choices, heroic (and some less heroic) judges, and fascinating and eccentric defendants who forced the legal system to come face-to-face with one of America's great founding ideas.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Freedom of Expression: 163 years of Solitude
- By Dudley H. Williams on 12-21-11
By: Anthony Lewis
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By Hands Now Known
- Jim Crow's Legal Executioners
- By: Margaret A. Burnham
- Narrated by: Diana Blue
- Length: 10 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 42
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 37
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Story5 out of 5 stars 37
Margaret A. Burnham challenges our understanding of the Jim Crow era by exploring the relationship between formal law and background legal norms in harrowing cases between 1920 and 1960. From rendition, the legal process by which states make claims to other states for the return of their citizens, to battles over state and federal jurisdiction and the outsize role of local sheriffs in enforcing racial hierarchy, Burnham maps the criminal legal system of the mid-twentieth-century South, and traces the line from slavery to the legal structures of this period—and through to today.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Heartbreaking
- By sharon on 11-24-22
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The Law of Superheroes
- By: James Daily J.D., Ryan Davidson J.D.
- Narrated by: Eric G. Dove
- Length: 7 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 59
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 51
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Story4 out of 5 stars 50
Could Superman sue if someone exposed his identity as Clark Kent? Is a life sentence for an immortal like Apocalypse "cruel and unusual punishment"? Is X-ray vision a violation of search and seizure laws? Is the Joker legally insane? And who foots the bill when a hero destroys a skyscraper or two while defending Metropolis? Fear not, gentle listener! The answers to these questions and a multitude more are contained inside this audiobook.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Legal Pedantry Has Never Been This Much Fun
- By Troy on 07-31-14
By: James Daily J.D., and others
What listeners say about Rap on Trial
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Reginald Brooks
- 03-21-24
Hidden in plain sight.
I liked how the author explained how the justice system uses so called experts with little understanding of the Musical genre to find defendants guilty and help send him away for a long time. Far to many innocent people have had their lives ruined because of lyrics, and no actual proof of any crimes. Just bias prejudice.
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