Rap is a foreign language, rules rueful judge


A HIGH COURT judge as good as admitted yesterday that the wilder shores of the English language were utterly beyond his comprehension.
Faced with making a reasoned judgment on the true meaning of the phrase “shizzle my nizzle”, Mr Justice Lewison was forced to conclude that the lyrics of rap records were, for all practical purposes, a foreign language. He dismissed the case.

In a hearing that may have some resonance on the streets of Brixton but which will produce only mystification in Bournemouth, Buxton and Berwick, Andrew Alcee, a writer of garage music, claimed that his original composition had been mixed on a record with rap lyrics containing references to violence and drugs, an act which amounted to derogatory treatment of his copyright and caused damage to his honour and reputation.

Mr Justice Lewison was resting last night after such a testing trial, and reflecting on the fact that he had been plunged into far deeper waters than most of his colleagues on the bench who have in the past been accused of being out of touch with the mainstream of real life.

His puzzlement at rap and garage will be seen as a minor misdemeanour when compared with Mr Justice Harman (1990) who thought Gazza was an opera, Judge Francis Aglionby (1999) who had to ask what a Teletubby was, and Mr Justice Popplewell (1998) who failed to grasp the underlying meaning of Linford Christie’s lunchbox.

Saddest of all, however, was Judge Robin McEwan (1998) who had to ask who Noel Gallagher and the pop band Oasis were, and went on to confess with true judicial pathos: “All my favourite pop stars are dead.”