It was emotionally stirring to stand before the U.S. Capitol on April 27. It was Advocacy Day, the day immediately following the 2023 GRAMMYs On The Hill Awards, and members of congress and music industry leaders met at a press conference to announce the reintroduction of the Restoring Artistic Protection (RAP) Act, while also reflecting on what hip-hop means to them.
"Imagine being a young, Black teenager in New York City and watching the movie Do the Right Thing, directed by Spike Lee. The story of Radio Raheem. The story of Sal's Pizza. The story of no Black people on the wall," said Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), who along with Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA) introduced the bill on that glorious spring day.
"Now, I'm in Congress in 2020, walking around asking, 'Where the hell are all the Black people on the wall?' because of a movie like that," the congressman continued. "I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for Eric B. & Rakim, Big Daddy Kane, KRS-One, X-Clan, Public Enemy, Brand Nubian."
Rep. Bowman went on to express how Rakim's philosophy of self-knowledge provided a foundation for his thinking. But then, a moment of startling truth struck, one totally apropos to the occasion for this gathering.
"I could differentiate between N.W.A.'s music and how I should behave in society," Rep. Bowman stated. "I didn't want to go mimic what they were saying. I knew it was them expressing what was going on in their community and them sensationalizing certain things.
"That's what artists do. That's what Stephen King does. That's what George Lucas does," he added. "Pick your art, pick your director, pick your writer, pick your author — this is what they do."
The Restoring Artistic Protection Act is a bill that would limit the use of song lyrics as evidence in courtrooms nationwide; while it applies to all styles of artistic expression, it disproportionately affects artists who are people of color, particularly members of the hip-hop sphere.
While GRAMMYs On The Hill, which advocated for the bill, may have come and gone, carry the fight forward with these impactful quotations from the Advocacy Day press conference and the GRAMMYs On The Hill red carpet.
It’s a really slippery slope. If you start allowing art to be used as evidence, it’s going to change the nature of how people filter the way they think and write. It’s going to change their storytelling ability. When you’re creating, you have to be free to tell a story — to create magic, to dream. This isn’t reality TV. These aren’t documentaries. These are things that are sometimes escapism. Sometimes, they’re fantasies. They’re aspirational. There are a lot of reasons why people write songs, and we can’t have these lyricists or writers held liable for things they say in the middle of a piece of art.
— Harvey Mason jr., CEO of the Recording Academy
[The First Amendment] is the foundational stone of democracy. If you don't have freedom of expression, if you don't enable artists to create without fear of prosecution or censoring, you don't have democracy.
— Panos A. Panay, President of the Recording Academy
The government should not be able to silence artists simply because they write, draw, sing, or rap about controversial or taboo subjects.
— Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA)
As a music creator myself, I know how important it is that we safeguard artists' freedom to create at all costs and to work to eradicate the biases that come with the unconstitutional practice of using lyrics as evidence, which disproportionately affect artists of color and penalizes the creativity of Black and Brown creatives. This discriminatory practice must come to a halt, and not only for artists making rap music. Criminalizing creative works has a dangerous impact on all genres of music, on all forms of creative expression from hip-hop to jazz to classical dance to literature.
— Rico Love, Vice Chair on the Board of Trustees of the Recording Academy and Black Music Collective Chair
You know, rap music actually is folk music, because folk music is the voice of the people. And this is the voice of a community of people that must never be stifled, must never be muzzled. [It] must never be a rolling stone, a rabbit hole into more and more censorship because people are afraid that if they say something, it might be admissible in court and it might be held against them — when, actually, it falls under the First Amendment and it is their right to express themselves because they're expressing the voice of the people.
— Actress, comedian, writer, and president of SAG-AFTRA Fran Drescher
So let's not just simply think that rap artists deserve to be prosecuted based on their lyrics and nothing will happen to my music or to my graffiti or to my poetry, to my song in a different genre, or to my play or my TV show, my pilot. Let's all come together at this point and nip it in the bud while we still have a chance to do so. If we let it keep going, the monster will just get bigger and bigger.
— Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA)
I know this may come as a surprise, but sometimes, art depicts violence. Whether it's Mario Puzo's The Godfather, Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs, Bob Marley's 'I Shot the Sheriff,' Johnny Cash's 'Folsom City Blues' — it's all protected, all of it. Ice-T isn't a 'cop killer' — nor is he a cop, despite now playing one on TV.
— Joe Cohn, director of FIRE's Legislative and Policy department
Our creativity is our humanity and our art is our air. If you crush our art, you take away our air. You choke us off from breathing and participating in a democracy.
— Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY)
Hip-hop is the most significant cultural force on the planet. It grew out of the pain, the struggle, the disenfranchisement, and joy of young Black America. Hip-hop affects the voices of the unheard and the most often under attack just for our existence. We are clear that through hip-hop culture, many have broken cycles of intergenerational poverty. Therefore, we are not confused by this attack on our culture. We are clear that this is another angle to ensure that the prison-industrial complex has a steady flow of subjects to bear out the intended design. This did not lose us.
— Acclaimed rapper and co-chair of the Black Music Action Coalition Willie "Prophet" Stiggers
Hip-hop is what made me. It's who I am. If you cut me open, I bleed the culture. From my time as a teenager, from running Def Jam for more than 20 years or leading Electra 300 today, I've seen this issue across nearly four decades in the music business. And so, to paraphrase Fannie Hamer, I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired of the same damn thing.
— Kevin Liles, CEO, Chairman of the Board, Co-Founder of 300 Entertainment
We cannot stop at today. We have to continue to fight this fight every single day because our First Amendment dictates that we have the freedom to speak and express ourselves.
— Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY)
