Rapper ordered to send every new lyric he writes to the government

The practice of using rap lyrics as evidence of crime in US and UK courts has reached a new low as a court has compelled a rapper out on supervised release to send all of his lyrics to prosecutors before he says them out loud.

Rapper B.G. — whose 1999 hit brought the term “Bling Bling” into popular use — is out on supervised release after spending 12 years in prison on a gun possession charge. The original case caused outrage among court observers when US District Judge Ginger Berrigan wondered aloud if B.G.’s videos and lyrics “may have contributed to the murders of young people.”

In a motion filed in May 2024 — just three months after B.G.’s release from custody — prosecutors praised Berrigan’s bizarre rant out of the ’80s as “powerful and accurate” while seeking to ban the artist from performing while under supervised release. The filing cites B.G.’s new track “Same Gangsta” and also accuses him — an artist — of being self-employed as an artist, which apparently also violates the terms of his supervision.

US District Judge Susie Morgan denied the government’s motion to ban B.G. from performing, but — incredibly — granted an even more absurd motion from prosecutors which will require the artist to submit his lyrics to court for approval.

Prosecutors argued that B.G.’s lyrics alone “echo the conduct that led the Defendant’s imprisonment” and “are inconsistent with the goals of rehabilitation.” Prosecutors requested that B.G. “shall provide his U.S. Probation Officer with a written copy of the lyrics of every song he has written, in whole or in part, since being released the Bureau of Prisons.”

In opposition, B.G.’s lawyers argued (and the government does not seem to dispute) that he “has not engaged in any criminal activities” while under supervised release and his “music is self-expression and his lyrics do not rise to the level of illegal or criminal activity.” Sending his lyrics to the court to “monitor” his behavior, they argued, constituted an unconstitutional act of “prior restraint of free speech.”

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Morgan disagreed, and ordered B.G. to provide copies of any lyrics he writes to the government “in advance of his production or promotion of such song.”

In a statement, the American branch of the PEN advocacy organization condemned the ruling as a “slap in the face” to the basic right of free expression. Julie Trébault, managing director of Artists at Risk Connection, a program of PEN America, called Morgan’s ruling “a gross violation of artistic freedom; no artist’s creative work should be subjected to scrutiny by the law. This ruling essentially demands that rapper B.G. censor his work in order to maintain the conditions of his release, and it contributes to a dangerous pattern of speech repression that unequivocally targets Black artists.”

The May filing marked the second time in two months that prosectors claimed B.G. had violated the terms of his supervised release. Prosecutors also petitioned for B.G.’s arrest in March after performing with rapper Boosie, which the government said violated another term of his supervised release against associating with other felons. B.G. was released after his attorneys claimed the artist had received permission from his case officer at the halfway house where he was living.

B.G. was originally part of the Cash Money act “The B.G.’z” and later “Hot Boys” with Lil Wayne, Juvenile and Turk. In April 1999, he released the album Chopper City In The Ghetto, with the hit song “Bling Bling” breaking the Top 40 and introducing the term for jewelry into wide circulation.