Ian Parker
Bleck
English 101
June 1, 2009

F*** Tha PMRC

In 1988, NWA released their album ‘Straight Outta Compton’ which featured songs like “Fuck Tha Police” and “Straight Outta Compton.” Songs like these expressed their feelings towards the life they knew. Just 3 years earlier, al Gore’s wife, Tipper Gore, and her group, The Parents Music Resource Center, took a bill to court to get the parental advisory sticker put on the sleeves of records. Stopping these actions of senators’ wives and people alike is a crucial event that should have happened. Censoring what these artists have to say is like trying to justify burning the constitution or bill of rights. In On Liberty, John Stuart Mill asked, “How much of human life should be assigned to individuality, and how much to society?” (Mill 85) This question applies to all aspects of human involvement with each other. In censoring our music and hushing the people who valiantly create this music, we halt any concept of further understanding each other’s ways of life.

I first pose the question of why our music is being censored. It may be that some artists write lyrics about killing someone or having sex, but what good movie doesn’t also talk about those subjects? I think that if little Bobby’s ears have been molested by the radio, his parents should be better parents. In being a parent of a child, it is their responsibility to keep any harm away from the child they wanted to have but to shelter that child from anything such as music, is just keeping a child closeted from what society will throw at it once it reaches the real world. Money shouldn’t be wasted on groups like the PMRC, started by Tipper Gore in the 80’s to get stickers on Judas Priest albums. Politicians wives have no right telling others that music should be censored because some kid was high and killed himself listening to Judas Priest. An African musician named Johnny Clegg once said that “Censorship is based on fear” (About).Dealing with music, that fear is truth. It’s the truth of what happens out in the world everyday and to shelter their children at this point in their lives, to keep them sheltered from cultures unknown to them, is extremely unfortunate for their growth to becoming an adult. Only when these kids are sheltered from this at an early age do they become bigots and racists and sexists. Not knowing what these artists are truly saying keeps them from mental stability.

Most lyrics in the hip-hop and rap communities are inspired by the literal neighborhoods they lived in. Most musicians or artists speak of their lives in metaphors or sing about current problems in the world. To most people, the lyrics they hear are taken in the wrong context of what the artist might want them to hear. When NWA wrote “Fuck Tha Police” (this is years before Rodney King), they lived in a community where the police would beat them up and arrest them for being black. I would hope that hearing these people rap about coming from the streets and being oppressed by the police for the community they live in and the way they dress, one could at least sympathize for their beatings and scrutiny. Mothers and fathers around the world hear all this music and immediately process it as negative. Though it is negative, its negative in a good sense of the word. Being that close-mind and being close-minded in front of your children is nothing but wrong and further redeeming the fact that society is a hole.

Parents and children are skeptical to meanings of lyrics and rightly so. Hearing artists speak what they think is a shock. Kurt Cobain sing “Rape me/Rape me my friend” on the radio with your children in the backseat would give them the wrong impression of the word. Keeping children away from harm, or visions or sound that may cause mental harm, is each parents main goal in raising their children. As a person, I wouldn’t want my child going around saying George Carlin’s seven dirty words to the cash register at the local grocery store. It would cause much embarrassment to me and the people around me. All parents want their kids to be respectful and courteous when out in public. So when they are in public, they don’t want the kids yelling Public Enemy lyrics at strangers. It is a real concern that mom and dad have, that their child or many children be good people and not use bad language to express themselves openly.

The problem with every parents worries is this. If they were good parents, they would teach their kids when and where it’s okay to use such language. If their kid was whining because they wanted the hottest rap album and parents succumbed and the kids started acting atrocious, it’s the parents fault for buying the album. They should have no complaints about the child’s behavior because they shelled out the $13.99 to get the child the music. Strictly the get the kid to shut up, even though the album has a parental advisory sticker on the album cover, glued to the bottom right corner. it’s the parents failure to hold firm ground on the matter that child acts up afterwards.
Censoring our music is a glimpse of the fear average, sheltered people hold. When Tipper Gore started the PMRC, many musicians came forward to speak about the injustice of censoring their art. To quickly note, Igor Stravinsky’s ballet “The Rite of spring” caused riots upon its debut. Music with no words whatsoever caused riots. Music holds emotions so deep in people and to simply put a bleep where a “bad” word is, takes the emotion away from the song, The integrity is lost and what purity was in the world dies away. As a musician, I believe all the world’s honesty lies in music and to censor our music to the extreme, with bleeps and blanks, is only progressing the disintegration of art. Would you burn an original Da Vinci? Probably not. So why ruin these artists words by putting a bleep where the curse is written.

Note-I'm sorry about the language, just trying to get my point across. Ironic, isn't it?