The 2 Live Crew "The Bart"

No rap group (save, perhaps, N.W.A) has stirred more controversy or provoked more heated debate than the 2 Live Crew. The furor over the graphic sexual content of their X-rated party rhymes -- specifically their 1989 album As Nasty as They Wanna Be -- was a major catalyst in making rap music a flash point for controversy and an easily visible target for self-appointed moral guardians. The fierce attacks on the group's First Amendment rights put many of their defenders in an awkward position -- passionately supporting their freedom of speech on the one hand, but often finding little artistic merit in their music. And they were indeed crude and coarse, and frequently misogynistic by most standards; even if they fit squarely into a tradition of raunchy, sexually explicit black comedy (Redd Foxx, Rudy Ray Moore, Blowfly, etc.), many critics and intellectuals found their view of sex repellently juvenile, even ugly (and if they found it funny, it was hard to say so publicly). Despite (or, more likely, because of) that fact, the 2 Live Crew were fairly popular even before all the uproar and benefited greatly at first from all the publicity, although later on the novelty perhaps wore off due to overexposure. Regardless of whether one enjoys their sense of humor, to focus only on the controversy ignores the 2 Live Crew's musical contributions. They were responsible for popularizing the booming, hard-driving sound of Miami bass music, and they were the founding fathers of a populist, dance-oriented rap subgenre that relied on simple, explicit chants and up-tempo rump-shaking grooves, appropriately dubbed "booty rap."

Category:

Music

Tags:

• 2Live
• Crew
• Luke
• Skywalker
• BVM
• music
• videos
• hip-hop
• rap

[spellbinderart]

Man I remember this shit back in 8th grade. Those were the days. And for you youngsters that don't know. The 2-live crew won a landmark ruling from the supreme-court which struck down the governments attempt to bar adults from listening to obscene music like the 2-Live Crew, siting violence against women. The Supreme-court argued that banning 2-Live Crew was a violation of their Right-to-Free Speech and that adults are solely responsible for their own behavior.

[analyzze]

fuckin awesome, florida styles man..booty bass..thats the way i like it

[existenceisrelative]

@djbizzibuk Are you suggesting "jedward" is going through some kind "benjamin button" process by which they get younger as time goes on? Because the absurd cartoon characters in this video are clearly older than the absurd cartoon characters that stalk your television landscape.

[divatactics]

as nasty as they wanna be

[bannokphatz]

crank that bart......lol

[reivenlocke]

Banned in the USA is when they started going downhill. Sports Weekend afterwards was okay, but they never got back to that level they were at in the late 80s.

[djbizzibuk]

LOL Has any one heard of Jedward in the UK??.. Google 'em!!.. Didn't know they were in this vid ;p

[themetalhead456]

@AntiMTVMovement how is miami bass gay if 2 live crew talks about pussy and fucking chicks

[MaStormy]

@DLCOrganization That is the truth....the ONLY music channel that was playing LUKE records was The Box!!!

[fleshnbone187]

@ProudScotsmanRex 2 Live Crew have lots of clean records, just check out the stuff from their first two albums specially, several albums feature no expletives and "Nasty As They Wanna Be" also has got a couple of clean songs including "Get Loose Now" and "Coolin".

[caeseroct0]

I think one of those white guys is Vanilla Ice.

[StephanieLives]

@ProudScotsmanRex That's because you haven't heard the album version. It's... it's a little different than the video one. :-P