Slate is charmed that rap, the whole genre apparently, will be judged in the Supreme Court this December. The case, one in which a man who had been left by his wife proceeded to post increasingly darker fantasies about killing his wife on Facebook, until she received a protective order which he then violated by posting additional dumb, intimidating things online in the form of rap lyrics. Because of his use of lyrics, the case is turning into a referendum on whether the Court recognizes that rap is a legitimate art form. Since rap is often wrongly considered “confessional” by default and Elonis never actually dismembered or serial killed anyone (only graphically threatened to do so repeatedly, enough to concern the FBI, whom he then threatened), the concern is that the stodgy and old justices won’t understand the importance of self-proclaimed, amateur, Facebook rap lords to intimidate everyone in their friend circle with exponentially increasing expressions of instability.
The sticking point is that his threats were both “rap” (talent aside) and posted on social media, thereby an expression of his identity, arguably art, even, and for these reasons subject to free speech laws.
Is rap an art form? Fuck yes. Is it always confessional? Nope. Does Rap (capital-R) need Supreme Court recognition to have arrived? Nope. Personally this delight smacks of white nerds enjoying the transgression and irreverence of “low art” in the highest court of law in the nation, but that’s me and it’s snarky and adds more heat than fire. In all the excitement of dropping the f-word in an amicus brief, there seems to be forgotten that at its crux is a guy who was threatening to dismember and mutilate his ex to all of their friends and family, shoot up elementary schools, and threaten and harass his coworkers and FBI agents until he was fired and jailed. Scary dude, and he’s not even a real artist.
The thing is, as a country we’ve written it into our founding documents that we intend to tolerate and defend idiot speech, and will in fact wage literal and figurative wars over your right to embarrass yourself in public within reason. However, the addition of social media to our culture makes threatening speech that much easier to capture and prosecute, with the added complication of interstate laws that escalate sentencing. And indeed, our right to emotionally terrorize others online hangs in the balance. But the effect of putting the language of domestic violence above reproach unless we can verify what’s in the heart of the speaker is chilling for all the targets who don’t get thrills from their emotional abuse.
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