This Rap Song Helped Sentence a 17-Year-Old to Prison for Life
The New York Times, March 30, 2022: This Rap Song Helped Sentence a 17-Year-Old to Prison for Life
“Tommy Munsdwell Canady was in middle school when he wrote his first rap lyrics. He started out freestyling for friends and family, and after two of his cousins were fatally shot, he found solace in making music. ‘Before I knew it, my pain started influencing all my songs,’ he told me in a letter. By his 15th birthday, Mr. Canady was recording and sharing his music online. His tracks had a homemade sound: a pulsing beat mixed with vocals, the words hard to make out through ambient static. That summer, in 2014, Mr. Canady released a song on SoundCloud, ‘I’m Out Here,’ that would change his life.
“On Aug. 6, 2014, about a week after Mr. Canady released ‘I’m Out Here,’ a SWAT team stormed his home with a ‘no knock’ search warrant. Lennie Farrington, Mr. Canady’s great-grandmother and legal guardian, was up early washing her clothes in the kitchen sink when the police broke through her front door. Mr. Canady was asleep. ‘They rushed in my room with assault rifles telling me to put my hands up,’ he recalled. ‘I was in the mind state of This is a big misunderstanding.’ He was charged with first-degree intentional homicide and armed robbery.”
Additional reading:
Type Investigations, March 30, 2022: The Backstory: Jaeah Lee, Reporting on Rap Lyrics in the Courtroom
Rap on Trial: Race, Lyrics, and Guilt in America by Erik Nielson and Andrea Dennis on bookshop.org
