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If a person breaks the law and goes to prison, can the government stop them from publishing fictional accounts about their experiences — or anything else for that matter — after their release?

Given the First Amendment’s disdain for censorship, it’s hard to imagine how.

Yet that’s what federal officials demanded when the rapper B.G., whose legal name is Christopher Dorsey, was freed on supervised release after serving 11 years in prison for convictions on gun charges and obstruction of justice. 

The government’s reason? They claim Dorsey’s song lyrics are “inconsistent with the goals of rehabilitation” because they allegedly glorify violence and other illegal activities. But in America, rehabilitation should never mean reprogramming artists and their expression. 

Song lyrics, like any artistic expression, receive substantial First Amendment protection. They’re not confessions, and they’re not predictions of an artist’s future acts. Bob Marley didn’t shoot a sheriff — nor did Johnny Cash shoot a man in Reno “just to watch him die.” 

We’re entitled to a government that respects artistic expression and the First Amendment — not one that seeks control over it like something out of Philip K. Dick’s dystopian mind.

Dorsey’s attorneys understood this, arguing the government’s view amounts to “an unconstitutional prior restraint of free speech,” requiring state approval before Dorsey can express himself. A federal district judge in Louisiana agreed that outright prohibiting Dorsey from “glorifying” criminal activity in his lyrics as a condition of his parole would be constitutionally suspect. 

But just as constitutionally suspect is what the judge did , requiring Dorsey to submit all of his lyrics to the U.S. Probation Office before he records or performs them. If federal officials don’t like what they see, they may ask the judge to stop him from recording or performing certain songs — or else be in violation of his parole.

This despite the fact that, according to Dorsey’s attorneys, he “now lives a completely law-abiding life in a suburban neighborhood” thousands of miles from where he committed his crimes over a decade ago. 

So to Speak podcast: ‘Rap on Trial’

News

Rap lyrics are routinely used as evidence by police and prosecutors to justify arresting and charging suspects for all manner of alleged crimes.

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This is just the latest example of the government using rap lyrics to stifle and even criminalize artistic expression. ��֭����’s Nico Perrino discussed the problem with Professors Erik Nielson and Andrea Dennis, authors of “.” According to their research, between 2009 and 2019 prosecutors in more than 500 criminal cases have used artists’ rap lyrics as evidence against them. But as Nielson noted on the podcast: “I haven’t found any cases where people are just rapping word-for-word actual crimes that they committed.”

But there is some good news. In 2022, California enacted a law that restricts the use of lyrics and other forms of “creative expression” as evidence in state criminal proceedings. And just last year, FIREurged Congress to pass the Restoring Artistic Protection Act, or “RAP Act,” which would limit the use of lyrics and other artistic expression in court against artists by setting the legal criteria for their admission as evidence.

The federal government tramples on our First Amendment rights to creative expression when it interprets entirely fictional lyrics as evidence that an artist will commit those crimes in the future or that they have done so in the past. We’re entitled to a government that respects artistic expression and the First Amendment — not one that seeks control over it like something out of Philip K. Dick’s dystopian mind.