US rappers Big Boi, TI and Killer Mike have backed a court case they are hoping will land in the US supreme court as part of a broader effort to curb the criminalization of rap music.  Taylor Bell, who performs under the name T-Bizzle, was suspended from his Mississippi high school in January 2011 after writing a song about female students’ claims that they had been harassed by two school coaches.  Itawamba school officials interpreted the lyrics as a literal threat after Bell posted the song, PSK da Truth, on Facebook and YouTube, with him rapping lyrics such as: “Looking down girls’ shirts / Drool running down your mouth / You fucking with the wrong one / Going to get a pistol down your mouth.”  Erik Nielson, an assistant professor at the University of Richmond who studies hip-hop, said that while it’s largely accepted that Bob Marley never actually shot a sheriff and that Johnny Cash didn’t shoot a man in Reno, hip-hop artists are increasingly seeing the content of their music used against them in court.  Along with Run the Jewels’s Killer Mike and two other hip-hop scholars, Nielson drafted an amicus brief on the case, which was filed in the supreme court on Monday.  “By taking Bell’s song lyrics literally rather than as forms of artistic expression, both the school and the fifth circuit essentially delegitimized rap as an art form that is entitled to full protection under the constitution,” the brief said.  The US fifth circuit court of appeals rejected Bell’s first amendment challenge against the Itawamba school board, provoking his lawyers to file the case with the supreme court last month. The nation’s highest court agrees to hear about 100 of the more than 7,000 cases it is asked to review each year.  Nielson said rap music is increasingly being used as evidence in trials, a trend reflective of systemic racial oppression in the US.  “The defendants in these cases are almost exclusively young men of color and this attack on black speech is not at all new to our country,” Nielson said. “It is the latest example of a long tradition of fearing, censoring and frequently punishing black speech and black art and so there is no question that what is happening here is largely based on race.”  Big Boi and TI are listed as additional friends of the court alongside artists Pharoahe Monch, Boots Riley, Toni Blackman, Jasiri X and Favianna Rodriguez.  Nielson has worked with Killer Mike on the issue of criminalization of rap music “for a year or two”, so it was fitting that the rapper would want to be involved in the case, he said. Killer Mike then reached out to Big Boi and TI about co-signing the brief.  Interpreting rap lyrics as autobiographical reinforces existing stereotypes about young black men’s “inherent criminality”, Nielson said.  Bell and his mother, Dora Bell, sued the school district in February 2011 after Bell was charged with harassment and intimidation. Along with the suspension, Bell was sent to another school. He and his mother are hoping to get his record cleared, and said they only sued for $1 because the case is not about money.  The school has not denied the claims Bell made in his songs, and four female students have submitted sworn affidavits about the alleged harassment. The school district’s lawyers did not respond to the Guardian’s request for comment.  Bell is now 22 years old and pursuing a career in the music industry. Upon hearing that his case was getting support from luminaries like Big Boi and Killer Mike, Bell told the New York Times: “It makes me feel like a kid in a candy store.”
Killer Mike, Big Boi and TI among rappers who argue 2011 charges against high school student for alleged threat in song criminalizes genre and black people