girl in bikini on the cover: Lets bust her! You can’t slap the right hand without slapping the left. Why condemn me-a black artist and entrepreneur-for my particular brand of adult entertainment? I own and operate one of the largest independent recording companies around, and that could be why I was singled out. People need to realize that I’m not in stores with guns to customer’s head forcing them to buy my albums. It’s freedom of choice, and that’s what America is supposed to be about. It seems to me that priorities are all in the wrong order. We have an outrageous amount of people sleeping in the streets and without anything to eat, but we find rappers more important. Our environment is slowly being pulled apart, and we put people in jail for a bunch of words. Kids can’t read or write, but that’s not enough. Sometimes I wonder what the starving people in Ethiopia would think about the money we wasted on taking this to court. We have placed warning stickers on our albums and put two versions of each album-an adult and a G version-in order to satisfy the public. And as far as I know we’re that only band that does that. We know that today they are trying to censor rap and tomorrow it would be classical music or theater or ... November 5, 1990. Censoring rap is against the law! If you don’t want to listen you don’t have too. Rappers have every right to express themselves in any way they want to. Rap music has been positive to society. Rap music has informed people about black culture! People always find out what is the bad thing about rap through the media. The never find out what good it does. Rap should not be censored.

the same language were separated from each other. Censoring rap music is just this same form of separation. Rap is the number-one selling form of music today. Rap has brought people a new sense of pride and a new form of self expression. Rap has brought black kids and white kids closer together. Thanks to rap, white kids are gaining a better understanding and a new respect for black culture. Rap has done nothing but bring people together. So, what’s the problem? “It’s people who don’t understand the music or the culture that are creating problems.” says Chuck D, “2 Live Crew has been around since mid-eighties, but as long as black kids were buying their records, nobody said a thing. As soon as white kids started buying them, and MTV started playing them, now suddenly we’ve got a problem. This hypocrisy makes me mad.” 2 Live Crew sings about sex, a natural part of life. Advertisers use it every day. What’s next? Playboy magazine? How about Muscle and Fitness magazine? It has a

izations as Stop the

Some topics in this essay:
Muscle Fitness, Live Crew, Freedom Speech, America Africans, Los Angeles, Supreme Court, Miller California, Sexton Rap, Be” Bestseller, Vassar Stanford, live crew, 2 live, 2 live crew, rap music, freedom speech, rap censorship, rights freedoms, music censorship, white kids, record 2 live, rap brought, contemporary community, album “as nasty, contemporary community standards, charter rights freedoms,