Expert Witnesses
Dr. Erik Nielson | Contact
Erik Nielson is professor and chair of the Department of Liberal Arts at the University of Richmond, where he teaches courses on African American literature and hip hop culture. A co-author of Rap on Trial: Race, Lyrics, and Guilt in America, he has been described as the “go-to national consultant” in cases involving rap lyrics as evidence. Over the past decade, he has served as an expert or consultant in over 100 cases, testifying in more than a dozen at the state and federal levels. He was also lead author of three amicus briefs for the U.S. Supreme Court, which were co-signed by artists such as TI, Big Boi, Killer Mike, Chance the Rapper, and Yo Gotti.
Dr. Loren Kajikawa | Contact
Loren Kajikawa is chair of the music program at The George Washington University’s Corcoran School of the Arts & Design. His main area of research and teaching is American music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, with special attention to the dynamics of race and politics. Kajikawa’s writings have appeared in American Music, Black Music Research Journal, ECHO: a music-centered journal, Journal of the Society for American Music, and Popular Music and Society, among others. His book Sounding Race in Rap Songs (University of California Press, 2015) explores the relationship between rap music’s backing tracks and racial representation. In addition to his publications, Kajikawa is a former Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the Society for American Music (Vol. 12-13) and he currently serves as co-editor of “Tracking Pop,” the University of Michigan Press’s series of books about popular music.
Dr. Jooyoung Lee | Contact
Jooyoung Lee is an Associate Professor of Sociology and faculty member at the Centre for the Study of the United States, which is housed in the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto. He is also Senior Fellow in the Yale University Urban Ethnography Project.
He researches and writes about gun violence, health disparities, Hip Hop, and true crime. He is the author of Blowin' Up: Rap Dreams in South Central (2016, University of Chicago Press), which won the 2018 Charles Horton Cooley Award for Best Book from the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction.
Charlie Braxton | Contact
Charlie Braxton is a poet, playwright, and music journalist who has written cover stories about hip hop for a variety of publications, including Vibe, XXL, The Source, and Rap Pages. He is co-author of the 2011 book Gangsta Gumbo, a history of southern hip hop.
Dr. Adam Dunbar | Contact
Adam Dunbar is an assistant professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at the University of Nevada, Reno. He earned his B.A. in psychology and sociology from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in criminology, law and society from the University of California at Irvine. He researches the intersection of race and the criminal justice system, focusing specifically on how attitudes about race, culture, and crime can help explain racial disparities in policing and punishment.
He has conducted multiple peer-reviewed studies intended to measure the prejudicial impact of rap music and as a result has become the nation’s foremost authority on that subject.
Dr. Justin Burton | Contact
Justin Burton is Associate Professor of Music at Rider University, where he teaches in the Music Production program. Burton's research revolves around matters of gender, race, and class in hip hop, dance, and pop music, and his book Posthuman Rap engages the ways rappers use transgressive tropes to liberatory ends. Burton is co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Hip Hop Music and has also published in venues that include Journal of Popular Music Studies, Journal of Popular Culture, Journal of the Society for American Music, Shima, Journal of Interdisciplinary Voice Studies, and Sounding Out!. Burton has served on the editorial board of the Journal of the Society for American Music and is currently co-editor of the media reviews section of the Global Hip Hop Studies journal.
Dr. Lakeyta Bonnette-Bailey | Contact
Dr. Lakeyta Bonnette-Bailey is a Professor of Africana Studies at Georgia State University and the Co-Director for the Center for the Advancement of Students and Alumni (CASA). Her current research examines the relationship between political rap music and racial attitudes in a book (with Adolphus Belk, Jr.) tentatively titled, Check the Rhyme: Political Rap Music and Racial Attitudes (New York University Press). In addition, she recently published a co-edited volume with Jonathan Gayles entitled Black Popular Culture and Social Justice: Beyond the Culture (Routledge Press 2023). Dr. Bonnette-Bailey has also published a co-edited volume with Adolphus Belk, Jr. entitled For the Culture: Hip-Hop and Social Justice (University of Michigan Press, 2022) examining the relationships between Hip-Hop culture and social justice. Additionally, Dr. Bonnette-Bailey published (2015) a book with the University of Pennsylvania Press entitled, Pulse of the People: Rap Music and Black Political Attitudes.
