Legal Writing, the Remix: Plagiarism and Hip Hop Ethics - Kim D. Chanbonpin

• Citation: Vol. 63 No. 2
• Publication year: 2012

Legal Writing, the Remix: Plagiarism and Hip Hop Ethics

by Kim D. Chanbonpin*

I. Prelude

I begin this Article with a necessary caveat. Although I place hip hop music and culture at the center of my discussion about plagiarism and legal writing pedagogy, and my aim here is to uncover ways in which hip hop can be used as a teaching tool, I cannot claim to be a hip hop head.¹ A hip hop "head" is a devotee of the music, an acolyte of its discourse, and, oftentimes, an evangelist spreading the messages contained therein.² One head, the MC³ (or emcee) KRS-One,⁴ uses religious

* Assistant Professor of Law, The John Marshall Law School (Chicago). University of California, Berkeley (B.A., 1999); University of Hawaii (J.D., 2003); Georgetown University Law Center (LL.M., 2006). Member, State Bar of California.

In September 2009, Stetson University College of Law hosted the Southeast Regional Legal Writing Conference, "Remixing the Classics." The conference theme provided part of the inspiration for this Article, and a farewell mixtape from my 2007 Legal Writing and Research class from the Loyola University New Orleans College of Law furnished the rest. Linda L. Berger, Twinette L. Johnson, and Debra M. Schneider offered critique and encouragement after reading an early draft of this Article. Additional credit goes to Daryl (DJ D-Reel) Dellera, Ismail Nasr, Goldie (DJ Goldick) Gareza, Ted Pickett, Nicholas Espiritu, Robert Jonathan (DJ PantyROBber) del Rosario, Joey Bernal, Warren (Focus 1) Fu, Darryl (Blue Boy) Durham-true hip-hop heads-for suggesting many of the examples cited in this Article. Jeffrey A. Arnold, Anne Schmidt, and Anthony Wilson supplied helpful research assistance and support. Finally, Rhodora V. Derpo schooled me in Knowledge of Self thirteen years ago-a continuing lesson for which I will always be grateful.

1. But I am certainly a self-identified fan and enthusiast. Cf. Marc Lamont Hill, Beats, Rhymes, and Classroom Life: Hip-Hop Pedagogy and the Politics of Identity 32-33 (2009) (describing the way high-school-aged hip hop fans asserted themselves as experts on "real"-as opposed to commercial or mainstream-hip hop).

2. A hip hop head is "not someone who [merely] listens and copies the music, lingo, fashion, and dance. It is someone who knows and appreciates its history, going back to the Negro spirituals of the plantation." Yvonne Bynoe, Getting Real about Global Hip Hop, 3

discourse to describe hip hop culture, naming his community organization, The Temple of Hip Hop.⁵ In this sense, I count myself as one of the faithful, but if hip hop is a temple, I confess that I am not a regular attendee. As a result, the cases that I cite below are drawn from a well of limited knowledge. I encourage readers who are dissatisfied with these limits to "dig in the crates" to summon their own favorite examples.

II. Introduction

In this Article, I focus on hip hop music⁶ and culture as an access point to teach first-year law students about the academic and professional pitfalls of plagiarism. Hip hop provides a good model for comparison because most entering students are immersed in a popular culture that is saturated with allusions to hip hop.⁷ As a point of reference for incoming law students, hip hop possesses a valuable currency as it represents something real, experienced, and relatable.

Significant parallels exist between the cultures of United States legal writing and hip hop, although attempting direct analogies would be absurd. chief among these similarities is the reliance of both cultures on an archive of knowledge, borrowing from which authors or artists build credibility and authority. Whether it is from case law or musical recordings, the necessary dependence on a finite store of information means that the past work of others will be frequently incorporated into new work. The ethical and professional danger inherent in this type of production is that one who borrows too freely from the past may be merely copying instead of interpreting or innovating. In the academic

Geo. J. Int'l Aff. 77, 78 (2002) (quoting music journalist, Kevin Powell).

3. "MC" stands for "mic controller" or "master of ceremonies." For Rakim, "MC means move the crowd." Eric B. & Rakim, Eric B. is President, on Paid in Full (4th & B'Way/Island 1987), lyrics available at http://www.ohhla.com/anonymous/rakim/paid/eb ispres.rkm.txt.

4. KRS-One's name means "Knowledge Reigns Supreme Over Nearly Everyone." Encyclopedia of the African Diaspora: Origins, Experiences, and Cultures 611 (Carol Boyce Davies ed., ABC-CLIO 2008).

5. Emmett George Price, Hip Hop Culture 223-24 (ABC-CLIO 2006); see also KRS-One, The Gospel of Hip-Hop: The First Instrument (2009).

6. All lyrics have been verified by the Author using The Original Hip-Hop Lyrics Archive, http://www.ohhla.com (last visited Oct. 25, 2011). For further details on any lyrics referenced in this Article, see http://www.ohhla.com.

7. see bakari kitwana, why white kids love hip-hop: wankstas, wiggers, Wannabes, and the New Reality of Race in America 39-44 (2005).

world, this is plagiarism.⁸ Members of the hip hop community call this "biting."⁹ In neither culture is this mode of production celebrated.

My goals for this project are two-fold. First, as a professor of legal writing, I want to ameliorate the problem ofplagiarism that I have seen growing worse each year. Second, as a scholar, I would like to contribute to the growing body of literature on hip hop and the law.¹⁰ This

8. See, e.g., RICHARD A. POSNER, THE LITTLE BOOK OF PLAGIARISM 22-23 (2007).

9. Adam Bradley, Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip Hop 212 (2009). "Biting, or co-opting another person's style or even specific lines, qualifies as a high crime in hip hop's code of ethics and aesthetics." Id. at 147; see also JOSEPH G. SCHLOSS, MAKING Beats: The Art of Sample-Based Hip Hop 108-09 (2004) (discussing hip hop's "no biting" rule and the adjudicatory process to which those accused might be subject).

10. See, e.g., SpearIt, Raza Islamica: Prisons, Hip Hop & Converting Converts, BERKELEY LARAZAL.J. (forthcoming 2011), available at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers .cfm?abstract_id=1652121; andre douglas pond cummings, A Furious Kinship: Critical Race Theory and the Hip-Hop Nation, 48 U. LOUISVILLE L. REV. 499 (2010); David Lacy, Represent: Hip Hop Culture, the NBA Dress Code and Employment Discrimination (Oct. 12, 2010) (unpublished research paper), available at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers .cfm?abstract_id=1691161; Camille A. Nelson, Lyrical Assault: Dancehall Versus the Cultural Imperialism of the North-West, 17 S. CAL. INTERDISC. L.J. 231 (2008); Akilah N. Folami, From Habermas to "Get Rich or Die Trying": Hip Hop, the Telecommunications Act of 1996, and the Black Public Sphere, 12 MICH. J. RACE & L. 235 (2007); Imani Perry, Let Me Holler at You: African-American Culture, Postmodern Feminism, and Revisiting the Law of Sexual Harassment, 8 GEO. J. GENDER & L. 111 (2007).

Law professors are regular contributors to the Hip Hop Law blog. See HlPHOPLAW.COM, http://hiphoplaw.blogspot.com/ (last visited Jan. 20, 2012). Academic conferences frequently have panels devoted to the intersection of hip hop and the law. See, e.g., Hip Hop and the Law, Panel Presentation at the Association for the Study of Law, Culture & the Humanities 13th Annual Conference, Brown University (Mar. 19, 2010); The Hip Hop Movement at the Intersection of Race, Class and Culture: Hip Hop Music's Effect on Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, Panel Presentation at the LatCrit Legal Scholarship Conference, American University Washington College of Law (Oct. 2, 2009). In 2009, West Virginia University College of Law hosted an entire conference on the topic. Rapper Talib Kweli and Professor Cornel West were keynote speakers at the event. Symposium, The Evolution of Street Knowledge: Hip Hop's Influence on Law and Culture, West Virginia College of Law (Feb. 12-13, 2009), available at http://lawmediasite.wvu.edu/mediasite/ catalog.

The two substantive areas that seem to generate the most academic literature about hip hop and the law are property and criminal law. For examples in property law, see Tonya M. Evans, Sampling, Looping, and Mashing. . . Oh My!: How Hip Hop Music is Scratching More than the Surface of Copyright Law, 21 FORDHAM INTELL. PROP. MEDIA & ENT. L.J. 843 (2011); Megan M. Carpenter, Space Age Love Song: The Mix Tape in a Digital Universe, 11 NEVADA L.J. 44 (2010); Horace E. Anderson, Jr., "Criminal Minded?": Mixtape DJs, The Piracy Paradox, and Lessons for the Recording Industry, 76 TENN. L. REV. 111 (2008); Andrea Dennis, Poetic (In)Justice? Rap Music Lyrics as Art, Life, and Criminal Evidence, 31 COLUM. J.L. & ARTS 1 (2007); Andre L. Smith, Other People's Property: Hip-Hop's Inherent Clashes with Property Laws and its Ascendance as Global Counter Culture,

7 VA. SPORTS & ENT. L.J. 59 (2007); Olufunmilayo B. Arewa, From J.C. Bach to Hip Hop:

Article marks the beginning of my attempt to theorize a hip hop ethic and develop its application to the teaching, the academic study, and perhaps eventually, the reform of the law.

In Part II, I set out by providing preliminary definitions for the terminology used in this Article. I describe the key term, "plagiarism," and identify three types of the offense that occur frequently in the legal writing classroom. In doing so, I also provide cases demonstrating that plagiarism in the academic setting is not without adverse consequences in law practice. Next, I assert that hip hop music is based in a tradition of borrowing from prior works. The custom of borrowing, as in the use of samples and the creation ofmixtapes, is not completely unrestricted, however. Hip hop maintains an internal system ofregulation, guided by the principle of "no biting."

Part III is a comparative analysis of the shared and divergent values of the legal writing and hip hop cultures. Social constructivist composition theorists...