In May, I was in my office grading papers when an email came through from Arika, a paralegal working for Toronto lawyer Gary Grill. They were reaching out to me about potentially serving as an expert witness in a murder trial. The case involved Hassan Ali, better known as the rapper Top5, who was charged in 2021 with first-degree murder in the shooting of 20-year-old accounting student Hashim Omar Hashi.
Arika mentioned that they had come across my research on drill rap and hoped I could testify on the inadmissibility of rap lyrics and music videos as criminal evidence. Without hesitation, I agreed.
