The Court of Navarra has confirmed a 25-month prison sentence for rapper Black Marfil (Junior O.) for threatening in his songs to kill the Pamplona municipal police, with whom he had frequent clashes. The now convicted man is a reference of the so-called drill music – a subgenre of trap with harsh and violent protest lyrics – he was denounced after posting on networks the song Fuck a cripa 02 in which he repeats the phrase “Run Sinpa” sings [sin papeles] killing the son of a munipa [municipal]”, which constitutes a credible threat to the court since it constitutes “an announcement of an evil constituting a crime” without the need for “any attack on any child of a munipa” to be committed or carried out. Black Marfil joins the list of rappers who have been convicted because of the content of their songs, such as Valtònyc (José Miguel Arena) and Hasél (Pablo Rivadulla), this one for insulting the crown.
The verdict, which confirms the sentence already imposed by the Criminal Court No. 3 of Pamplona for “unconditional collective threats”, underlines that in many of the songs published by the convicted person “violence is promoted and used as a normal form”. justified. of relationships and social coexistence.” The judgment recalls that in January 2020 he published another song under the title Atraco, which “explicitly referred to the killing of a police officer” because it said: “If you kill a police officer kill, plus five.” The song for which he has now been convicted contains the phrase “Kill the son of a munipa,” which “seems like the refrain,” and throughout the lyrics ideas for carrying out this death are given and weapons are shown, including an AK-47.
The song, which had nearly 48,000 views as of February 2021, “contains an advertisement for an evil that constitutes a crime,” a threat that is “growing in importance (…given its impact and following on social networks”). The judges explain that the rapper is “very well known among young people between 14 and 20 years old” due to his activity on Instagram (22,600 followers) and YouTube (20,100 subscribers and 2,128,093 views at the time of the event), both in Pamplona in the rest of Spain).
The judges said the singer's own criminal history made his verbal attacks on police even more relevant. Since July 2018, the Pamplona municipal police intervened several times with the defendant “on the occasion of fights and threats”, weapons were confiscated from him and “he was even investigated for belonging to a criminal organization,” the judges explained.
In fact, the verdict assumes that the song, which the rapper uploaded to his YouTube account on June 21, 2020, was motivated by “the defendant's hostility” towards municipal officials. The verdict recalls “the aggressive character and criminal actions of the defendant, who has already been convicted of threats, bodily harm and robbery,” as well as the fact that “weapons were confiscated” during police operations.
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“All this, together with the discomfort of the city police, means, in the court's opinion, that the requirement of intimidation necessary for the crime of threats has been met,” the judiciary said in a statement about the content of the verdict. The judges conclude that this case is not about “pursuing a specific genre of music, since it is not judged on songs with “violent content”, but rather about all the aforementioned arguments and therefore the requirements of the Type of threat to meet. of Article 170-1 of the Penal Code.