It is a result that has the government licking its wounds. In May 2022 Fulton County prosecutors indicted 28 men from Cleveland Avenue, a rough part of Atlanta, for committing a string of killings, robberies and drug deals in service of a street gang led by Jeffery Williams, a rapper who goes by the name “Young Thug”. Over the past year the state presented a Georgia jury with nearly 200 witnesses and a barrage of rap verses that, it argued, proved that “YSL”, used to denote Mr Williams’s platinum-selling record label “Young Stoner Life”, also stood for “Young Slime Life” and was an affiliate of the notorious Bloods gang from Los Angeles. But when the alleged kingpin pleaded guilty in late October to overseeing crimes the judge chose to ignore the state’s recommendation to lock him up for decades, opting instead for 15 years probation and banishing him from Atlanta for ten.