Analysis Of Rap Lyrics On Trial

Summary

The article “Rap Lyrics on Trial” written by Erik Nielson and Charis E. Kubrin was about Vonte Skinner, a man who was convicted for attempted murder for 30 years based on the evidence of rap lyrics written before the crime. The court case didn’t have sufficient evidence to convict Skinner because the witness changed their stories many times to be considered consistent, but the jury felt convinced Skinner was guilty when they heard Skinner’s lyrics: “In the hood, I am a threat / It’s written on my arm and signed in blood on my Tech” and “I’m in love with you, death”. Neilson and Kubrin argued whether rap lyrics should be presented as a piece of evidence after Skinner’s conviction is overturned. They claimed that when rap lyrics are

Throughout the article Nielson and Kubrin remain objective and not formally leaning in favor of Mr. Skinner or the courts decisions. This goes to show that the authors were maintaining a professional standpoint which boosted their credibility in this text. The authors use ethos throughout the article in order to make his statement clear that ethically one should not consider rap lyrics as evidence. They give examples such as “Nobody believes that Johnny Cash shot a man in Reno or that Bret Easton Ellis carried out the gory murders described in “American Psycho”; neither artist claimed that he was writing autobiographically,” the same applied to Mr.Skinner. Nielson and Kubrin also addressed the manner in which providing the jury with the rap lyrics is not ethically right because it allows there to be a bias against the

The logos used in the article can be used to strengthen the ethos utilized.Nielson and Kubrin throughout the entire article use logos. The use of logos helps to maintains the credibility of Nielson and Kubrin in the article with the use of statistics and direct quotations in the court case. They mentioned a statistical study which stated that people who read the hypothetical biography of an 18 year old male as well as the explicit rap lyrics that were supposedly written by him. The study indicated how those who had read the lyrics were “more likely to believe the man was capable of committing murder than those who did not”(Nielson, Kubrin, 2014). The use of specific statistics like these support the credibility of the writer as well as of the article.Kubrin and Nielson utilized logos when they stated “Last year, the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey found that in 18 cases in which various courts considered the admissibility of rap as evidence, the lyrics were allowed nearly 80 percent of the time.”(Nielson, Kubrin 2014) This quote shows logos because they are using number to logically appeal to the readers and show how the rap lyrics are being used in the court cases and use the number to support the claim that rap lyric use in the country cases are arising drastically through the years. Neilson and Kubrin also use logos when they state