Censoring Hip Hop
‘I was made by revolution to speak to the masses’
Immortal Technique
God damn what a brother gotta do / To get a message through / To red, white and you…
Ice-T – ‘Body Count’
In 1992, Aotearoa’s Police Commissioner tried to ban American rapper Ice-T from performing in Auckland, on account of his controversial single ‘Cop Killa’. The Commissioner then tried to have Ice-T’s (Rock genre 'side project') album ‘Body Count’ banned as well. Just what, exactly, was the problem?
Ice-T was raised on the ‘gang-infested, pimp-heavy streets of South central, Los Angeles’1 and nominated for a Grammy. In 1989 he wrote the book ‘The Iceberg/Freedom of Speech… Just Watch What You Say’. However the book, a literary protest against music censorship, was soon overshadowed by the controversy over his “Cop Killa’ single – written from the viewpoint of an angry African-American man who shoots LA police officers in retaliation to their beating of Rodney King – a highly sensitive issue at the time. It was argued the lyrics were ‘inciting violence’ – a musical call to take up arms against the police and, by association, the establishment.
Freedom of Speech
The Constitution says we all got a right to speak / Say what we want Tip*, your argument is weak / Censor records, TV, school books too / And who decides what’s right to hear? You!
Ice-T – ‘Freedom of Speech’
*[Tipper Gore, the wife of Al Gore and Second Lady of the United States from 1993 until 2001.]
The outrage produced from the release of ‘Cop Killa’ drove conservatives and police groups to demand the record company censor new pressings of the album. The following year, Ice-T toured several universities, including Harvard, Stanford and NYU, lecturing on the state of first amendment rights (freedom of speech) and civil liberties in his country.
He continued to write lyrics that challenge the state’s power to silence what they consider ‘dangerous’ – even taunting them, in the song ‘Freedom of Speech’ with the fact that ‘the sticker on the record is what makes ‘em sell gold… the more you try to suppress us, the larger we get…’2
‘It seems like the only thing that America hears is violence and destruction. If black folks would have just marched, that would have just been on the news for 30 seconds.’
Ice Cube speaking of the LA riots following the death of Rodney King.3
The outrage over Ice-T’s lyrics was not an isolated incident. A Billboard editorial (November 23, 1991) called fellow rapper Ice Cube ‘racist’ and urged retailers not to sell his Death Certificate album. Many stores refused to stock the album, with the state of Oregon making it illegal to display Ice Cube’s image in a retail outlet. In England, the record distributors deleted two of the tracks without consulting Ice Cube, while a group calling themselves ‘The Guardian Angels’ picketed MTV to try to force his videos off the air. In the ‘Village Voice’ one of the writers lectured Cube about how he – and other Blacks – should speak to whites.4
Despite the attempt to silence Ice Cube, Death Certificate debuted at No.1 on the R&B Album chart and No.2 on the top 200 Album chart.5 In buying the album, ‘Ice Cube’s audience is putting its foot down in anger, frustration, or despair’6 – speaking out in a world where ‘Cube’s critics say… that the first priority is for everyone to be polite’!7 With this deeply philosophical priority (!) in mind, rap lyrics have continued to stir up heated debate to this day… and have spawned a new sound in Hip Hop – the ‘bleep’ over!
You know, they give the black community so many pacifiers, and a pacifier doesn’t do no good, and if we don’t have a bottle, we’re ready to explode.8
We dance forever around the issues, and [embrace] songs about unity and love. But until we really confront truth, we are going to have a Tupac or an Eminem or Biggie Smalls to remind us about it.
Stevie Wonder, to the LA Times, about Eminem’s song ‘Stan’9
In more recent times, Eminem’s Grammy nomination caused quite a stir. The classical music reviewer of the US National Public Radio called for a boycott of the Grammy’s – suggesting that all classical musicians force babies to listen to Mozart because ‘other music’ was damaging. A radio station programme director (who insisted on remaining anonymous) stated he wouldn’t play Eminem because ‘the job of a program director is to be a gatekeeper for the audience’, while another who has banned Eminem said his biggest problem with him was ‘the pissed-off attitude that he purveys.’ When a sixth grade music teacher from Iowa asked her students to put together a report on Eminem she was reprimanded (and later resigned) on the grounds of ‘inappropriate lyrics’ – despite the fact that the reports did not deal with lyrics at all.10
The most important issue here isn’t whether Eminem’s lyrics are ‘good’ or ‘bad’… ‘right’ or ‘wrong’… The issue is that a kid from the trailer parks has been able to create a de facto dialogue within (and certainly without) a huge and diverse fan base. The issue is that most of his dialogue, which could be of great benefit to society, is never heard.11
In the end, this isn’t about shutting up Eminem. It’s about keeping the rest of us quiet.12
It seems ironic that, in a world where TV news crews are able to push their way into the centre of an individual’s real-life crisis, to find out ‘how they feel’, artists are silenced for expressing similar pain. It’s not an argument for wholesale acceptance of Hip Hop’s lyrics, but that an open discussion of all points of view could produce a useful dialogue about the real life-and-death situations many people deal with in their lives.
It’s not just an ‘overseas’ problem – as Dean Hapeta (Te Kupu) has discovered. His passion for his people and his beliefs mean that [he] is shrouded in controversy where mainstream media is concerned.13 So, too, is King Kapisi, whose criticisms of missionary behaviour in the Pacific have earned him critics within his own Pacific Island community. But does the fact that many people find Hip Hop’s messages uncomfortable mean they should be silenced?
Graffiti Rules
It is not only rap music that has been attacked over time. So, too, has aerosol art or writing. Starting out with the desire by young people to ‘put their mark’ upon the world around them, it later developed into various forms of ‘public art’ – such as ‘tagging’, ‘bombing’, ‘hitting’, ‘throwing up’ and others.14 These messages or statements were meant for their communities but, because they chose to ‘bypass the system’, ‘the system’ got angry – many US cities and towns view aerosol art as a problem.15
This led to anti-graffiti task forces being set up in major cities like Chicago, San Francisco and Philadelphia (the original home of aerosol art.) And in Aotearoa, too, aerosol art was viewed as the defacing of public property – a crime. City Councils saw it as pure vandalism and have set up anti-graffiti programmes in towns and cities. Lower Hutt has a ‘graffiti busters’ programme and Auckland City has set up a ‘zero-tolerance’ policy against graffiti.16 However, practitioners like Pest5, an Auckland based writer, feel that such programmes only ‘widen the rift between youth and the community, challenging the writers to retaliate’17– and welcomes initiatives in cities like Christchurch, Wellington and Gisborne, who are doing more to encourage and recognise aerosol art.
People will never really understand what graffiti is unless they go to NY to live surrounded by abandoned buildings and cars that are burnt and stripped and the City comes out saying graffiti is terrible, but then you look around the neighbourhood and you’ve got all this rubble and shit, and yet you come out of there with the attitude toward life that you can create something positive.18
B-boys in 1980s Aotearoa were not left out of this general moral judgement either. The groups of (predominantly) young Māori and Pacific Island youth who met in public to showcase their skills were labelled as ‘problems’ and ‘street-kids.’ The street-centred nature of B-boying, along with the dress code and hairstyles of many, was threatening to members of society unused to this form of expression. As a result, the negative media focus meant the actual skill and talent of the B-boys and B-girls remained largely ignored.19
Extending a Hand
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.20
It’s a scary world … a world rapidly changing, with the future unpredictable. At times it feels out of control – that the horse we’re on has bolted and we’re powerless to stop it. We lash out at the first person who steps in our path, hurling every insult at them we can think up – anything, to try and grasp the reigns again.
But getting back some control is not just a matter of denying all those things that frighten or disturb us. The key to this is knowledge. And knowledge is not one person's point of view… it includes an attempt to understand every person - every experience - good or bad.
Don’t fail to extend a hand to the next guy even if you hate the language he uses. Some people live in a world where to mellow your attitude for even an instant can be fatal, while others live in a world where conversation is impossible without the proper, ‘politically correct’ words. Each is unavoidable right now, but ultimately we’ve got to make them converge. But that can only happen in the trenches, not in the ivory towers where armchair pundits fiddle while our home burns.21
- Which US rapper did Aotearoa’s Police Commissioner try to ban in 1992?
- Whose Grammy nomination caused a political storm?
- Which Aotearoa Hip Hop artists have received criticism for their political stands?
- What were Aotearoa’s original B-boys labelled as?
- What did Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jnr have to say about injustice?
Extend your thinking
How do you feel about censorship? Do you think people should be allowed to say, view or do anything they like – regardless of the consequences? Why/why not? Who should decide on what gets censored? How should they decide? What are the censorship laws in your country? How could you find out?
1 Bio from official website for Ice-T http://www.icet.com .
2 Ice-T – ‘Freedom of Speech’.
3 Shaw, W. 2000 ‘Westsiders – Stories of the Boys in the Hood’, Bloomsbury, p202.
4 Rock and Rap Archives – Number94/Jan 1992
http://www.rockrap.com/archive/archiv94.html .
5 ‘Ice Cube’ bio –
http://www.icecubemusic.com/icecube_bio.html .
6 Rock and Rap Archives – Number94/Jan 1992
http://www.rockrap.com/archive/archiv94.html .
7 Ibid.
8 Ice Cube quoted in Shaw, W. 2000 ‘Westsiders – Stories of the Boys in the Hood’, Bloomsbury, p202.
9 Rock and Rap Archives – Number 180/March 2001 http://www.rockrap.com/archive/archi.180.html .
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid.
12 Ibid.
13 Mitchell, T. ‘Kia Kaha (Be Strong): Māori and Pacific Islander Hip Hop in Aotearoa-New Zealand.
14 Chalfant, H. & Prigoff, J. ‘Spraycan Art’ Thames & Hudson Ltd., London. 1987, p10.
15 Ibid.
16 Waiti, D. ‘Spotlight On: Angles on Global Hip Hop Culture’, in ‘The Next – an Impression of Hip Hop Expression’. p87.
17 Comments in article ‘NZ Graf Art’ at http://www.tearaway.co.nz .
18 Quote from Brim in Chalfant, H. & Prigoff, J. ‘Spraycan Art’ Thames & Hudson Ltd., London. 1987, p17.
19 Waiti, D. ‘Spotlight On: Angles on Global Hip Hop Culture’, in ‘The Next – an Impression of Hip Hop Expression’, p88.
20http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca.
21 Rock and Rap Archives – Number94/Jan 1992 edited by Dave Marsh http://www.rockrap.com/archive/archiv94.html .
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