Lil Durk’s gritty raps about Chicago’s street violence turned him into a chart-topping superstar — but the feds are now trying to use some of those lyrics to prove he orchestrated a deadly plot to kill a rival in Los Angeles.
Experts and civil libertarians say the strategy is part of an alarming trend playing out in courtrooms across the country that undermines free speech and stigmatizes one of America’s most popular art forms.
“A criminal proceeding — whether it’s about detaining someone or about their ultimate conviction — is really about something that someone has done, or a specific action they take,” said Ed Yohnka, spokesperson for the ACLU of Illinois. “It’s not about content that they’ve created.”
Erik Nielson, a professor at the University of Richmond focused on hip-hip culture and African American literature, noted prosecutors are now going after “even bigger targets using rap lyrics.”
Nielson recently served as a witness in the trial of Young Thug, or Jeffrey Williams, an iconoclastic Atlanta rapper whose lyrics often took center stage in a troubled racketeering case targeting him and his associates.
“The way that prosecutors are using these lyrics is really to strip them of any artistic value, to deny them the status of art at all, and treat them as literal confessions,” said Nielson, co-author of “Rap on Trial: Race, Lyrics, and Guilt in America.”
Weeks before a yearlong trial ended with a whimper, Young Thug took a plea deal Oct. 31 and was released on probation.
Lil Durk, real name Durk Banks, had been arrested a week earlier in Miami — the same day an indictment was unsealed charging five men in the murder-for-hire scheme against Quando Rondo, or Tyquian Bowman.
Prosecutors say the plot was hatched in retaliation for the killing of Lil Durk’s protege, fellow Chicago rapper King Von, who had been shot and killed during an altercation in Atlanta with Quando Rondo and his crew.
Lil Durk allegedly placed a bounty on Quando Rondo, then recorded a song that “sought to commercialize” the August 2022 ambush that instead killed his adversary’s cousin, Saviay’a Robinson. The song referenced a news report in which Quando Rondo was heard screaming after seeing Robinson’s dead body, the feds say.
Lil Durk has pleaded not guilty, and his high-powered legal team has slammed prosecutors for using his art to reinforce their case.
“When you see an artist’s rap lyrics quoted as ‘evidence’ against them,” the lawyers said in a statement earlier this month, “it is a glaring indication that there is no real evidence against that person.”
Before a detention hearing last week in Los Angeles, they introduced a sworn affidavit signed by a sound engineer who said the song that allegedly mocked Quando Rondo had actually been recorded months before the fatal shooting. It was accompanied by documents showing the exact time the digital recording was made.
But prosecutors also dropped a bombshell before the hearing, unsealing FBI affidavits alleging Lil Durk placed another hit in response to the gang-related killing of his brother Dontay Banks, or D Thang. An FBI agent noted Lil Durk had recorded another song celebrating that deadly shooting, which happened on Chicago’s Far South Side in January 2022.
“My brother D Thang just got killed, and I been slow since,” Durk rapped. “But we got back on they ass, I bet they know this.”
Judge Patricia Donahue ultimately ordered Lil Durk held at Los Angeles’ Metropolitan Detention Center, rejecting his lawyers’ proposal to put up a $3.3 million bond and have him placed on electronic monitoring. The rapper faces life in prison.
Still, his attorneys insisted they earned one key victory. “The allegation that the lyrics in the indictment were supposedly to celebrate and commercialize the homicide at the center of this case was shown today to be demonstrably and objectively false,” they said in a statement.
‘Dangerously sloppy’
The two men whose deaths Lil Durk allegedly sought to avenge both loomed over the recent trial surrounding the killing of Chicago rapper FBG Duck, whose real name was Carlton Weekly.
King Von placed a bounty on FBG Duck that culminated in his brazen slaying in the Gold Coast in August 2020, according to prosecutors. And the man who alerted his co-defendants to FBG Duck’s location had spoken to someone on a phone number associated with Lil Durk’s brother at the time of the shooting.
King Von and D Thang were killed in separate shootings outside of nightclubs before the case was filed in Chicago.
But Von’s music was still closely scrutinized, along with tracks by FBG Duck and some of the defendants, bringing the thunderous and menacing sounds of drill rap to the Dirksen Federal Courthouse. Six men were convicted in the shooting earlier this year.
Nielson, the hip-hop professor, warned that prosecutors can be “dangerously sloppy” with rap evidence but are rarely checked. “In many cases, they are knowingly and intentionally misrepresenting rap music in service of obtaining a conviction,” he said.
Nielson noted prosecutors in the Young Thug case often referenced lyrics he didn’t personally rap or write, including those penned by collaborator Nicki Minaj. But, he added, merely introducing rap lyrics into evidence can be prejudicial.
He said the trend could pressure rappers “to change what they say in their music in order to avoid being targeted by the authorities.” Some, including Lil Durk, are already embedding what appear to be disclaimers in their music.
“Lil Durk has lyrics about how his lyrics are fiction,” Nielson said. “Ten years ago, 15 years ago, you were never going to hear that, certainly from a Chicago drill artist.”
Yohnka, of the ACLU, said linking a crime to song lyrics “that may have been created from whole cloth” isn’t appropriate in the justice system, which he noted was designed to “assess what someone has done.”
The alleged plot
To be sure, prosecutors have identified other evidence they say directly links Durk to the murder-for-hire plot.
A superseding indictment notes Banks’ record label, Only the Family, doubled as a violent criminal enterprise whose members engaged in “murder and assault” at Lil Durk’s direction. In placing a bounty on Quando Rondo, the feds say Lil Durk offered cash and “lucrative music opportunities with OTF.”
Also charged are Kavon Grant, Deandre Wilson, Keith Jones, David Lindsey and Asa Houston.
A credit card associated with the record label was used to book flights to Los Angeles and a hotel room, despite Lil Durk allegedly insisting he didn’t want a paper trail leading to him. Lil Durk traveled there separately on a private jet “to help coordinate the murder,” according to prosecutors.
On Aug. 19, 2022, Lil Durk’s five co-defendants and an unnamed co-conspirator “used two vehicles to track, stalk, and attempt to kill [Quando Rondo] by gunfire — including with a fully automatic firearm.”
Robinson was killed in the daytime attack at a gas station.
Lil Durk’s lawyers are now vowing to fight what they describe as “false allegations.”
“The real truth is that Durk Banks is a Grammy Award winning artist, a dedicated father, and a loving husband,” they said.