Freedom of Speech

As a condition of the New Orleans rap legend’s supervised release from prison in 2023, a federal judge in Louisiana ruled that the artist born Christopher Dorsey would have to allow the government to approve his lyrics going forward. (He’d served 11 years of a 14-year sentence, having pled guilty in 2011 to two counts of being a felon in possession of a firearm and one count of conspiracy to obstruct justice.) It wasn’t the first time a rapper’s lyrics were used against him in the courtroom (see the State of Georgia v. YSL Records trial of 2023-2024), a seeming infringement upon First Amendment rights which the former Hot Boy doesn’t shy away from emphasising on his first solo album since 2009. “I want to tell them stories, but I ain’t ’bout to risk it,” B.G. rasps in his familiar drawl on the fiery title track, on which he shouts out Young Thug, urges young rappers to learn from his mistakes and stoically reaffirms, “Through it all, I hold my head up.”