When The Kingsmen’s version of “Louie Louie” was released in 1963, it wasn’t just the unruly guitar that had the establishment nervous.
Soon after the song, complete with its famously garbled vocal nonsense, hit the airwaves, the FBI launched an investigation to determine whether the lyrics had obscene content. After 31 months they concluded that the lyrics were unintelligible, ceding their overriding sense of decency to what should have been obvious in the first place ““ if you need over two years to figure out what something is saying, it’s probably not very effective at corrupting the youth.
The Kingsmen got off easy, but that’s because they weren’t swearing. In 1989 the hip hop group credited for the Miami bass sound, 2 Live Crew, was subject to an overzealous group of locals rather than the more cerebral FBI. Local courts can get crazy, which they did, deciding that the group’s “As Nasty as They Wanna Be” was a little bit nastier than anyone should ever be and sanctioned the arrest of the group’s members on obscenity charges.
2 Live Crew was eventually acquitted, but the amazing parts are that one, they actually had to show up to court for swearing, in the middle of a recession, crack epidemic, and some of the highest crime rates in recent U.S. history, and two, that their acquittal required the expert witness testimony of a Harvard professor, Henry Louis Gates Jr., to claim that the sexual themes reflected historically important elements of the black community.
Compare these two examples to the current situation, and it becomes apparent that some attitude in the censorship chain has shifted. We are now in a time when nearly every radio rap single has a dirty version and a clean version; where potty mouth incantations of bodily functions are perfunctory, not challenging.
So what changed? The controversy surrounding “As Nasty as They Wanna Be” sold 2 million records ““ in all the cities with enough on their minds to laugh at rural Florida’s sensitivities ““ so it’s safe to say that heavy usage of the obscene had, for a time, some very profitable gimmick potential. But in a situation similar to the arguments of many commentators on film, the average music listener has, to a degree, become desensitized to the words and concepts that once sent you to detention. Profanity is the norm, not the controversial exception.
What’s interesting ““ and counter intuitive ““ about the situation is that the public outcry aimed at preventing obscene concepts from reaching the ears of children just made it more profitable for artists to use the concepts in the first place. The line often used by apologists is that “profanity for profanity’s sake” is worthless and offensive, while if the words have some artistic value it’s a different story. Well, the first kind of profanity is exactly what resulted from repressive lawmakers ““ at the time, going there was enough to make an original record.
Music is like anything else: when there’s a demand, it will fill it. But thanks to the completely unintelligent odes to rippling, oiled backsides, the demand for gimmicky profanity per se is over. This is good news for everybody, since despite their place in pop music history, 2 Live Crew’s music is about as easy to burn out as their lyrics.
A fitting example of how profanity has to work to be interesting these days is the 2007 collaboration between rapper Spank Rock and producer Benny Blanco, titled “Bangers & Cash.” Fitting, because the LP is a retooling of the styles and concepts of the 2 Live Crew record, commemorating the booming, simplistic bass and oversexed rhyming (something that is in no way new to Spank Rock). On the record, and on Spank Rock’s 2006 debut, profanity is used in a self-consciously gratuitous way, to stand more for excess than any specific act. The track “Coke n’ Wet” features a chorus of the thorny placeholders of the hip-hop vernacular, a string of words that mean nothing in themselves but stand together as an ironic invocation of excess and everything that’s simultaneously right and wrong about hip-hop culture.
Of course, things don’t work out so systematically ““ not everyone’s hip to the many ways to blend the intelligent and the profane.
But in the meantime, while we wait for everyone to catch up, there’s always Spank Rock, who wants to watch the sweat drip from your … well, you know.
If you think we should censor the you know what out of music, e-mail LaRue@media.ucla.edu.