Meek Mill, 21 Savage, Yo Gotti, Fat Joe, Chance The Rapper and Killer Mike alongside music-industry leaders and scholars, urged the Supreme Court in a legal brief filed on Wednesday (March 6) to consider violent rap lyrics as speech protected under the First Amendment.

This group of prominent rappers joined together to ask the court take on a case involving rapper Jamal Knox, who is appealing the two-year prison sentence he received over threats to police officers in his rap lyrics.

In 2012, Knox and Rashee Beasley, whose stage names are Mayhem Mal and Soulja Beaz, recorded a song loosely based on the N.W.A. hit, “F— tha Police.” But in their version, they mentioned the names of two Pittsburgh police officers who had previously arrested them, while giving graphic descriptions of violent acts against the officers.

“This first verse is for Officer Zeltner and all you fed force bitches / And Mr. Kosko, you can suck my d— you keep on knocking my riches,” Knox raps on the first verse. “Jam this rusty knife all up in his guts and chop his feet/ Your shift over at three and I’m gonna f— up where you sleep,” he continues.

The police officers that were named had testified that they felt “nervous” after they heard the song and found the lyrics “very upsetting.” One of the officers even said that the song was the reason he left the Pittsburgh police force.

Knox was eventually convicted and sentenced to two years in prison for “terroristic threats and witness intimidation” relating to the song’s lyrics. However, the legal brief, said the lyrics were “a work of poetry” and not a threat.

“It is not intended to be taken literally, something that a reasonable listener with even a casual knowledge of rap would understand,” stated the brief.

The rappers also gave the Supreme Court a little history lesson on hip-hop music, beginning in the Bronx in the 1970s, where hip-hop music was created “to end gang violence by providing an outlet that transformed the competitiveness and territoriality of gang life into something artistic and productive.”

The rappers stated in the brief that the nature of rap music is to use “exaggeration, hyperbole, and offensive language as literary devices.”

“Like all poets, rappers use figurative language, relying on a full range of literary devices such as simile and metaphor,” the brief stated. “Rappers also, in the tradition of African American vernacular, invent new words, invert the meaning of others, and lace their lyrics with dense slang and coded references that defy easy interpretation, especially among listeners unfamiliar with the genre.”

The rappers argued that Knox along with his lyrics were not out of the ordinary in a genre that is know for reflecting and critiquing the violence lived by its creators.

“Across the country, countless young people – often those of color – have found a voice in rap music, too. For some it also has offered a legitimate career path, one leading away from the violence and despair so frequently chronicled in rap lyrics,” the rappers wrote.”If we criminalize those lyrics, we risk silencing many Americans already struggling to be heard.”