The debut documentary by editor J.M. Harper (‘Jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy’) focuses on the the U.S criminal justice system’s reliance on hip-hop songs to provide evidence against defendants.

There probably isn’t a timelier Sundance premiere right now than As We Speak, an eye-opening documentary delving into the use, and misuse, of rap lyrics in criminal trials.

Structured as a road movie, with Harper following Bronx-born rapper Kemba as he conducts interviews in cities across the U.S. and then over in London, the film offers its own array of proof to show that America’s criminal justice system has been homing in on hip-hop music for quite some time. “Before they had lyrics, they had witnesses,” one Chicago-based MC points out. But now in most U.S. states, public prosecutors are using lyrics as “character evidence” to prove that defendants are living the very same lives they rap about.

Every rapper that Kemba interviews, from Killer Mike in Atlanta to a handful of Drill artists in Chicago and London, defend their art by explaining how they are simply expressing themselves, using hip-hop to describe the world they live in, and, in some cases, giving their fans what they want. Moreover, they wonder why white artists haven’t been faced with the same kind of persecution — why no one had a problem with Freddie Mercury singing “Mama, just killed a man”; or, taking things further back, why nobody seems to be bothered by the violent rhymes found in many of Shakespeare’s greatest plays.

A cheeky Tarantino-esque sequence in As We Speak recreates a scene from Romeo and Juliet as a bar fight where guns are eventually drawn, underscoring how the most famous of English-language scribes could be accused of inciting the kind of violence found in the rhymes of Tupac or Biggie. To quote the Bard, there’s the rub: The same standards don’t seem to apply to everyone, and rap artists are being singled out more than most, their songs used to prove criminal intentions when other forms of evidence are unavailable.

Powerful commentary is provided by L.A. criminal defense lawyer Alexandra Kazarian, who explains why most defendants prefer to plea bargain for lighter sentences rather than face the courtroom, where their lyrics can be turned against them to sway the jury. She then puts Kemba himself on mock trial, revealing how hip-hop songs are easily manipulated by DAs to make rap artists sound guilty, even when they’re not.  

But the issue in As We Speak is not whether rappers can also be criminals, but rather that rap music has become an instrument of legal coercion and institutional racism. Harper, who edited Netflix’s three-part Kanye West doc, lends an attentive ear to the various subjects Kemba interviews, all of whom defend their work as a means of self-expression and scoff at the fact that they could be penalized for it.

At a time when many question whether art should be separated from the artist — whether it’s the movies of Woody Allen or the songs of Michael Jackson — this revealing documentary shows how, when it comes to hip-hop, prosecutors across America have been conveniently refusing to distinguish one from the other.