Rapping the Ban and Banning the Rap

Russell Simmons, who heads up one of the most influential music companies in the country, is calling for a ban of three words from radio airplay.

Hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons said yesterday that the recording and broadcast industries should consistently ban three racial and sexist epithets from all so-called clean versions of rap songs and the airwaves.

Currently such epithets are banned from most clean versions, but record companies sometimes "arbitrarily" decide which offensive words to exclude and there's no uniform standard for deleting such words, Mr. Simmons said.

The recommendations drew mixed reaction and come two weeks after some began carping anew about rap lyrics after radio personality Don Imus was fired by CBS Radio and NBC for referring to the players on the Rutgers university women's basketball team as "nappy-headed hos."

Expressing concern about the "growing public outrage" over the use of such words in rap lyrics, Mr. Simmons said the words "bitch," "ho," and "nigger" should be considered "extreme curse words."

Are you kidding me? Does he honestly think that this will get the rappers to change their wordsmithing to something else?

Let's be absolutely clear here. These artists have the right to say whatever they want, and the government should not be involved in limiting what they have to say, regardless of whether it may offend the sensibilities of those who listen. There's a cure for that - change the station. George Carlin would be quite amused at all this.

As for the consideration that some words should be treated as extreme curse words, will Simmons take a step that he knows would cause an immediate change in how artists write their lyrics? Will he fire those rappers who use the words? Will he stop promoting them? Will his company stop profiting from their sales? You know, those are truly steps that would get the rappers to actually pay attention and change what they say and rap about. However, as you and I know, this isn't going to happen.

It wont happen and the reasons go beyond Simmons. Other music companies aren't likely to stop making money off artists who use these lyrics because they sell lots of records. We've seen how music companies get to adjust the image of artists in their stables - just look at what they do on American Idol to adjust and tweak an image to get the musicians to appeal to a wider audience. The same goes for other artists who do everything from changing their name (John Mellencamp) to changing their look and sound from album to album. So, we know that they've got the ability to impose change if they want to.

They don't want to, no matter how much some might protest - and it is interesting to note that the protests fall short of demanding people be fired as was the case with Don Imus and his staff.

Thus, the simple answer is really an excuse. They can hope that the government takes to banning certain words, and they can slap parential warning stickers on the albums, but they'll keep selling and the words still get spoken and heard.

The music companies, including Simmons' will keep making money off records that include themes that denigrate minorities and women.