Killer Mike Co-Writes Op-Ed About Rap Song First Amendment Supreme Court Case

Photo via Killer Mike’s Instagram

Killer Mike has co-written an op-ed piece titled “Free speech — unless it’s rap?” for CNN with Erik Nielson, an assistant professor at the University of Richmond. The article discusses Bell v. Itawamba County School Board, a case the Supreme Court is considering whether to hear. At the center of the dispute is Taylor Bell, who was a high school senior in Mississippi when he got suspended for recording a rap song that accused two coaches of sexual misconduct. Bell’s First Amendment challenge to the suspension previously made it all the way to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which rejected his arguments, citing the song’s “incredibly profane and vulgar” lyrics.

Killer Mike and Nielson write: “If your child attended a school where male athletic coaches were accused of sexually harassing female students, would you want school administrators to investigate the allegations or punish the young man who made them public?”

The two argue that the case raises “serious questions about students’ First Amendment protections as well as broader questions about the role of race in determining when those protections apply.”

They note that Bell’s song, which names the coaches and includes such lyrics as “fucking with the wrong one gon’ get a pistol down your mouth (Boww!),” is part of a “long tradition of social protest in rap music” and shares its “profane and violent rhetoric” with much of the genre.

Mike and Nielson argue that fans don’t assume that Ice Cube, Eminem, Nas, or Jay Z — or, for that matter, Quentin Tarantino, Stephen King, or Johnny Cash — actually commit the violence portrayed in their work But amateur rappers rarely receive a similar benefit of the doubt in the criminal justice system, according to the op-ed.

Read the entire piece at CNN.

Killer Mike and Nielson were among figures signing an amicus brief in December urging the Supreme Court to hear Bell’s case. Others joining the brief included T.I. and Big Boi. Previously, Killer Mike and Nielson teamed up on a 2014 op-ed about another rap-related Supreme Court case. 

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