In a time dominated by stories of violence committed by men, one of the year’s best songs was made by a 17-year-old who could soon be executed by the state of Texas. Taymor McIntyre, better known as Tay-K, born a second-generation gangbanger in Long Beach, CA and raised in East Arlington, TX, faces multiple charges, among them two counts of capital murder.

If convicted — in a jailhouse interview this summer, Tay-K predicted there’s a 65 percent chance he won’t make it home — he will join the 2,902 people currently on death row in the U.S., over 100 of them likely innocent, according to one recent study, and a disproportionate number of them black.

The video for his breakout song “The Race,” all 104 seconds of it, was recorded while he was literally on the lam, a type beat-selecting outlaw. The song’s energy reflects that: “Fuck a beat, I was tryna beat a case / But I ain’t beat that case / Bitch, I did the race,” he raps, his voice barely pubescent. He sounds like he’s outrunning the law, and outrunning the track. The effect is that he lands slightly ahead of the beat, crunchy drums underscoring his one-liners.

Through his lawyer, Tay-K maintains his innocence. But his litany of charges, and his escape, certainly added to the buzz that propelled “The Race” to cult status this year. Should that real-life story make the song more compelling or less so? Can a piece of art be invalidated by the circumstances under which it was created? For some publications and listeners, the answer is yes; for others, quite the opposite.

The feasibility of ethical consumption is among this era’s most enduring, unanswerable questions. This year, The FADER chose not to cover certain artists out of a concern that generating clicks on their behalf would equal complicity for their crimes. When we look back at 2017, and how it has reshaped the way we all engage with the producers of culture, it's songs like "The Race," and stories as complex as Tay-K’s, that will stand out the most. — Rawiya Kameir