Rap Artist Is Jailed Over Anti-Police Lyrics
By Steve Hochman
March 04, 1998
In what is believed to be an unprecedented legal action, a Sacramento rapper was jailed Tuesday because of violent, anti-police lyrics in an album that is due to be released next week.
Gangsta rapper Shawn Thomas, who performs under the name C-BO, was arrested on charges that the new album, "Til My Casket Drops," violates parole conditions that he had agreed to last year requiring him not to record lyrics that "promote the gang lifestyle [or are] anti-law enforcement."
Despite the prohibition by state parole officials, the album--to be released by a small Sacramento record label--is full of graphic, weapons-loaded accounts of gang adventures and often presents a highly negative view of law enforcement and the judicial system.
Tip Kindel, spokesman for the Department of Corrections, said Thomas agreed to his parole conditions--including the gangsta rap ban--before his release from Soledad State Prison in July.
In an interview with The Times on Feb. 19, Thomas said he signed the agreement because he felt that it would be overturned on appeal.
"I don't see how they can take my freedom of speech," the rapper said. "If I lived that lifestyle, that would be something [that could be a problem]. But I don't live that lifestyle anymore."
The rapper was paroled after serving 15 months on a conviction for illegal use of a firearm stemming from a 1996 incident in which a weapon discharged by him during a confrontation with rival gang members resulted in the death of one man.
Thomas' lawyers said they were surprised by his arrest because they had been led to believe by parole authorities that he would not be incarcerated before a hearing on whether the album's content violated the parole conditions. He plans to appeal the arrest to the state Board of Prison Terms.
In one song, Thomas suggests that a Sacramento County Sheriff's Department spokesman be shot and in another lashes out at Gov. Pete Wilson for his support of the three-strikes law.
Thomas raps in "Deadly Game": "You better swing, batter, batter swing/'Cause once you get your third felony,/Yeah, 50 years you gotta bring/It's a deadly game of baseball/So when they try to pull you over, shoot 'em in the face, ya'll."
Kindel said Tuesday that Thomas was arrested on charges of three violations of his parole conditions directly pertaining to his lyrics: promoting gang lifestyle and criminal behavior against law enforcement, promoting violence against public officials, and threatening public officials.
