2 Live Crew

The feminist in me wanted to hate this band more than I did, but really I could hardly stop laughing.

However, I must say there are far too many 2 Live Crew albums and they continue well past their prime. It's a bit of a one-trick pony. It's a very dirty pony, and they ride that dirty pony all the way to 1998 before fizzing out in a blur of solo projects and line-up changes. In their defense, those handful of late albums are certainly made tolerable by their consistency, but they are definitely not in the same vein as their classic work. And their work is classic. I must admit to shouting some of these lines in a schoolyard in 1980-something- without having any idea what I was saying.

The whole thing reeks of Florida, but I learned they only relocated there from LA because their first single was doing well in Miami clubs!

After the success of some early singles, As Nasty As They Wanna Be (1989) will always be a classic hip-hop record, and perhaps it earns that honor. It does not seem like anybody was this filthy before with literally every song being explicitly vulgar and pornographic. Of course they are also heroes for taking their obscenity lawsuit all the way to the Supreme Court. Record stores were being busted in Florida for selling the album. At the trial Henry Louise Gates Jr. testified in their defense that their entertainment was rooted in African-American folklore and traditions. They won and celebrated on their next album Banned in The USA, the title track of which effectively samples Bruce Sprinsteen, where they gloat hilariously and patriotically- turning their shenanigans into something larger. They also bolstered our rights to fair use in parody, after getting sued by [the people who owned the copyrights of] Roy Orbison and winning again. A surprise standout in their catalog was the live album that comes out right after those two breakthrough albums. It shows a band at the top of their game absolutely owning a crowd, that hilariously chants back all the dirty lines with astonishing enthusiasm. All the current hits are performed ably and some of the older tracks are teased. There is some of the usual nastiness, but I could not abide by the part where they bring girls up on stage and boo fat girls and stuff. Of all the nasty things they talk about doing to and with women (it sounds mutually pleasurable?), for me that moment on the otherwise excellent live album went too far and made me question the innocuousness of everything else.

Perhaps, remember them, if nothing else, for this awesome party song from the Firday soundtrack, which despite it's vulgarity is really just a watered-down version of their early-career libido:

I bet a lot of people who never even heard "Me So Horny" love the heck out of that song. Note also the Jimmy Smith sample.

It is nothing if not offensively crass - mission accomplished. I'm sorry, but is there a member of this band called "The Chinaman"?! It's not clear to me if he's actually of Asian descent or what. He also had a solo career (as did most of these guys) as Fresh Kid Ice. He also wrote a book: