My Name Is Ronell And I’m Here To Say “Write What You Know” Can Potentially Put You Away

Overly autobiographical art is not only lazy but often stupidly self-incriminating as well:

The Staten Island gang-banger who allegedly executed two undercover cops during a botched gun deal gloated about the brutal shootings in rap lyrics he later wrote, prosecutors said yesterday.

“You better have that vast and dat Golock / Leave 45 slogs in da back of ya head cause I’m getting dat bread / ain’t goin stop to Im dead,” wrote Ronell Wilson, 24, (in his own spelling) after he allegedly shot undercover detectives James Nemorin and Rodney Andrews with a .44-caliber handgun during an attempted robbery.

Arresting officer Joseph Butta testified yesterday that Wilson had the sick, barely intelligible lyrics in his pants pocket when cops arrested him.

Meanwhile, the Times takes a closer look at the artist on trial:

Prosecutors are making similar arguments across the country this year, in courtrooms in Albany, Oroville, Calif., College Station, Tex., and Gretna, La. Set to drumbeats or scrawled in notebooks, the rhymes of minor stars, aspiring producers and rank amateurs are being accepted as evidence of criminal acts, intent and mind-set.

Defense lawyers usually argue that the lyrics are boastful fantasies, common to the point of irrelevance. Mr. Wilson’s lawyers have indicated that they plan to call a scholar named Yasser Arafat Payne, described in court documents as a rap expert, to make a similar argument.