Abstract
Rap on Trial, the treatment of rap music as evidence in the American criminal legal process, is well-documented and increasingly scrutinised. Research has shown that – with little restraint – police, prosecutors, probation officers and judges use rap lyrics to investigate, prosecute and punish individuals. Less noticed is that a similar phenomenon is occurring in the American K–12 educational system, which disciplines school-age youth who participate in rap culture and sometimes refers them to the juvenile or criminal legal systems for additional punishment. This article describes and analyses a small set of identified cases of this scenario, demonstrating that rap music is used to funnel youth, including vulnerable Black and Brown youth, into what has been coined the school-to-prison pipeline and exposing the extreme dissonance between hip hop and the educational system.
Repository Citation
Andrea L. Dennis,
Schoolhouse Rap
, 41 Popular Music 511
(2022),
Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.uga.edu/fac_artchop/1480
Included in
African American Studies Commons, Criminology and Criminal Justice Commons, Ethnomusicology Commons
Originally published in Popular Music (Cambridge University Press) on November 9, 2022.