Tay-K’s “The Race” video and lyrics are being used as evidence in rapper’s sentencing

"The Race," the song and music video that made Tay-K a star, has been entered as evidence in the rapper's sentencing after he was found guilty of murder on July 19 in the murder of 21-year-old Ethan Walker. McIntyre faces between five and 99 years in jail, and his sentence may be announced as soon as Monday.

The FADER’s Ben Dandridge-Lemco has been reporting from the Dallas courtroom where the sentencing proceedings for the rapper born Taymor Mcintyre are taking place. The prosecution’s final witness on Monday afternoon was an IT employee at the state attorney’s office. During her testimony, the prosecution introduced a disk with a download of the music video for "The Race" from YouTube. Prosecutors played the video all the way through for the jury, before then admitting a print-out of the lyrics as evidence and distributing the lyrics to the jury and playing the video again.

In addition to the video, prosecutors introduced screenshots of the video into evidence. McIntyre can be seen in the pictures holding a weapon and standing next to a “wanted poster" — it is unclear whether or not the poster is authentic or not. They also introduced images that had been taken from McIntyre’s social media accounts, including images of him pointing a gun at the camera, the cover artwork for his Living Like Larry EP (in which he also holds a gun), and a picture of him in jail laying down and pointing at the camera. The screenshots, lyrics, and the disk with the video were all obtained by the witness at the direction of the prosecutors.

In 2016, a then-16-year-old MacIntyre and a group of friends broke into Ethan Walker's home. Walker was shot and killed by Latharian Merritt, who was sentenced to life in prison last year. Tay-K was charged soon after the robbery and placed on house arrest, which he escaped. It was during this time that he filmed "The Race," and the notorious circumstances behind the song helped boost it to a Billboard hit.