What is the reason for such music as 2 Live Crew’s “Doing it in the Butt” and so on? Is such music even though protected by the first ammendment good for the country? I don’t think our forefathers ever thought people would be using lyrics such as these back then or they would have rethought the free speech thing.
So what does the effect of this music have on people? I wonder if it promotes promiscuous sex that causes so many problems on todays society. I mean if you would have went to a 2 live crew concert and heard the lyrics and watched them have sex on stage, it would probably make you a little horny when you left. Is that their goal(other than shocking and making money)? Are nasty songs hurting the black, hispanic and white culture in general? With so much sex, unwanted children will occur resulting in fatherless, abused and neglected offspring or worse yet more abortions.
What do y’all think about it? I know free speech is important but do you think nasty stuff like that was what are forefathers wanted to protect? Do you think such lyrics really do effect peoples libido? I mean if they didn’t, why does the govt put warning lables on the albums?
2 Live Crew?? Are you posting from a time warp in 1989? Why don’t you talk about *real *nasty music from 2001, like Li’l Kim?
Dude, rap music only goes back to the early 1970s (if you count The Last Poets as the progenitors of rap) and only became popular in the early 1980s with Kurtis Blow, Sugar Hill, and Grandmaster Flash. I assure you, people were having sex before then.
The government doesn’t put warning labels on CDs (albums? what year are you posting from again?). Record companies do so as a result from pressure from the PMRC. (Thanks, Tipper :rolleyes: )
WB, IIRC, record companies do put warning labels on albums, cds, etc. It is a voluntary action. But come on, WB, 2 Live’s album was stooopid funny, IMHO. (plus it’s what, like 15 years old now)
First, if we pick and choose the speech we protect based on what we think the forefathers “wanted to protect” - it’s not really free speech, is it? The speech that makes us uncomfortable is the speech that needs protection, in my opinion.
Second, I seriously doubt that 2 Live Crew’s admittedly raunchy and misogynistic views on sex are causing pregnancy and abortion. But it’s a chicken-and-egg thing - is art reflecting life, or life reflecting art? In this case, I’d say 2 Live Crew and their like are oversexed adolescents who make money pandering to other oversexed adolescents. I don’t think they’re selling to people who don’t think they way they do in the first place.
Third, it’s not just rap. Heavy metal has its share of skirt-chasing, hee-hee-look-a-boobie lyrics, too.
And fourth, “Pop That Coochie” is always good for a laugh. Anyone remember “Gangsta Bitch” Barbie on SNL? On the package was a splash containing the words, “Pops That Coochie!” Oh man, that kills me.
Ok I know it is old but I just saw a best of Saturday Night Live with Cris Rock and he was making fun of 2livecrew. I almost got the point that he even thought the lyrics were just plain out rude and riduculously nasty. So that is the reason for using 2livecrew. I really don’t know any other nasty rap artist. It ain’t my thing.
I guess I was wrong about the govt mandate on warning lables. But has there ever been a study done on the affect of nasty music and young people being more promiscuous?
Hey, Bill, how’s it going? Awright, first things first - of course our forefathers thought people would be using lyrics such as 2LiveCrew’s (now there’s a blast from the past). Simply put, such lyrics and worse were already part of the culture in colonial times. Ever hear a good old-fashioned sea shanty? Ever read Canterbury Tales? Ribald and pornographic songs and verse have been part of our culture ever since the first cave man make a circle with one hand and stuck a finger from his other hand through it.
And our Founding Fathers, well aware of such “poetry”, did not make an exception in the First Amendment to exclude such things from protection.
Again, first things first. 2LiveCrew never had sex on stage. Second, I will have to challenge you on the causation between music and promiscuous sex. Sexual promiscuity was rampant, perhaps more so than now, in the 70s, when music was nowhere near as graphic as it is now.
Overall, I am quite certain that some people are adversely affected by sex and violence portrayed in music and other forms of entertainment (you may take away my liberal card now. :D) However, there are two reasons why such portrayals should not be banned.
First, banning a spread of certain information and imagery through particular means is ineffective. The information and imagery still exists. Heck, I learned more about sex on the playground of my Catholic grade school than I ever did from Penthouse Letters.
Second, whatever people who are adversely affected, they are by no means the majority. Why should the problems of the few outweigh the rights of the many?
I don’t think I would be allowed, in this forum, to describe him to you. But I have a feeling you’ll be finding out soon enough. You two have, let us say, similar approaches to intellectual inquiry.
Weelllll. Since the highest teen pregnancy rate was in the '50’s, perhaps we can suggest that early Rock-n-Roll or maybe late Big Band music had the greater effect on young libidos.
I gotta ask: Does 2LiveCrew make you horny Bill?
What little I listened to of 2 Live Crew seemed to be just filthy comedy not to be taken seriously, like some of the riper stand-up comedians (but generally not as clever). Sort of like Andrew Dice Clay set to rap.
This is a curious point. I believe this was the case because of less protection than today not necessarily more sex.
Like I said I really don’t listen to them. But if I kept hearing some of the lyrics like I heard on that SNL special, yea I think sex would definetely cross my mind. Heck, afterall, I am dude.
Sua,
How the heck you been dude. Let me thing on your post and I will respond. The first thing that comes to mind about the rights of others. If this type of music, does cause more social problems isn’t that effecting the rights of others in a negative way?
Andros,
I LOVE that song. It rocks but it doesn’t make want to go get nasty with some chick. It justs makes think that politics is a hard thing to make better. Which is true.
Since I know Bill’s feelings on this-
What do you think the FF would say about the NRA and all the school shootings? Surely they didn’t want the 2nd Ammendment to justify every loonatic getting a gun on demand?
Sooooo. It would be better for teachers to shoot bad students than for the students to be having sex.
Music is the beat to which we live our lives. It does not dictate how we live. If a teenager has sex it will be to the beat of the music s/he likes. Music does not make you have sex any more than oysters do.
I Do believe that in this OP, Bill has managed to jerk his knees on enough topics (free speech, racial issues, teen pregnancy, founding fathers, pornography) and with such oversimplifications and generalizations that he has actually achieved critical mass. Let’s all give him a hand ::standing ovation::
Ok, seems to me I recall your young ones are preteen or young teens. let me clue you in. I recall my folks thinking I was gonna end up pregnant & in hell for listening to Joan Baez (well maybe, but not for the reasons they thought). You really have to learn to allow other folks to have different taste than you in everything - sex, entertainment, religion, etc.
For example, you apparently find the idea of anal sex repulsive. Others disagree. You hate rap music, others don’t. I don’t personally like cola’s, chocolate or toast, but I’m not wanting to ban them from the restaurants, ya hear me??
I can appreciate (and am anticipating your concern - the young males that are around your daughters, what if they listen to that rude ass stuff?) the issue. As a parent of a now 17 year old, what I chose to do about his musical taste is : let him have it, keeping it above ground. When he was 13/14/15, his tastes ran to some pretty awful stuff (and if you think 2LiveCrew is nasty, you haven’t checked out the CD covers on Canibal Corpse). I didn’t censor his music, and guess what - in a fairly short amount of time, he got over it. Don’t sweat the small stuff ya know?
(and aside to Sua you obviously aren’t reading myPenthouse letters )
Let me start my refutation by clarifying a small issue for you. What you seem to be referring to as rap is a subgenre, albeit a popular one. Not all Rap is bitches and blunts, after all. For example, there are groups such as Us3, De la Soul, Arrested Development, Public Enemy that talk more about the issues (or what they percieve to be the issues) that affect people.
When you mention Radio, always remember the word “Commercial”. The Radio will play whatever will make money for the station. Rap got started on Underground, College, and Community stations.
people have been outraged by new forms of music all the time, as mentioned in above posts.
True, but it was rather dangerous and edgy for a commercial form of music in its time, right?
perhaps all the hardships of Ghetto life are what prompts Rappers to write, and speak about. But I would guarentee that the majority of the people who are claiming that lifestyle have either a) never actually experienced it or b) are exaggerating it.
Rebelling sells.
Agreed. But you are painting an entire form of music with a very large brush.
As I said above, Rebellion and non conformity sells.
More to please sponsors than to protect the public.
Why do you think that is? because people who listen to a song want to hear how the artist expresses themselves.
And Jerry Falwell has been using that constitutional right to blame sept 11 on anyone civil liberty groups. You dont have to be a musician to have a “Warped Mind” :rolleyes
Is he forcing anyone to listen to his music? then he can say anything he wants to say. I retain the right not to buy it. The off button is a wonderous invention.
thats great. Can I blame Rap for the fact I didnt get laid until I was 16?
Of course not. Unless mentally stable, a person is responsible for his or her own actions. It is not musics responsibility to teach right from wrong.
Art immitating life or life immitating art?
Natural Selection in action.
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the joys of drugs, especially pot and later, coke, and the pleasure of getting drunk and cutting loose.
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And wherein lies the problem? If someone wants to take drugs, they’ll take drugs. The musicians didnt sell them the drugs (excepting Rick James and that guy from The Village people, of course ;))
My National Anthem talks about killing Saxon foes, Denmarks talks about killing the rest of Scandanavia. do you propose we stop playing those? And the theme from M.A.S.H is called “Suicide is Painless”.
Be careful with that Ax, Eugene.
Guess what? Religion has been doing that for centuries.
