When Chad Anthony Sisk, a 15-year-old high-school student from Philadelphia, showed up at a congressional hearing recently, he brought with him an assortment of X-rated material.
The material included three compact discs: Il Na Na by Foxy Brown Hardcore by Lil' Kim; and Life After Death by the late Notorious B.I.G., also known as Biggie Smalls or Christopher Wallace. Although all of these albums came with black-and-white parental-advisory stickers denoting obscene language or explicit sexual content, the stickers are useless, Chad told a Senate subcommittee.
"At first, I didn't pay attention to the parental-guidance signs on them because I could still buy them," he said. "Only once at Tower Records did they say, `Are you over 18? Do you know you can't buy this without your parents here?'"
If there's a problem buying albums in the store, children always can "join the mail-order records club and get 11 for a penny," Chad continued. Mail-order catalogs may ask one's age on the order form but still process the order. "They warn you there's cursing on it, that's all."
The parental-advisory labels on compact discs and tapes are effective only if parents monitor their children's purchases. "It's supposed to be a tool to just help parents who are accompanying their kids," says Sarah Pitts, store manager at the Serenade Record Shop in Washington. "We don't really think of it as our responsibility or our duty, let us say."
"These malicious lyrics grossly malign black women, degrade the unthinking young black artists who create it, pander pornography to our innocent young children, hold black people -- especially young black males -- universally up to ridicule and contempt and corrupt its vast audience of listeners, white and black, throughout the world," says C. Delores Tucker, president of the National Political Congress of Black Women, about "gangsta rap" genre.
During the congressional hearing a North Dakota man testified that his 15-year-old son killed himself after listening to a CD by shock-rocker Marilyn Manson. Such stories prompted Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, Connecticut Democrat, to challenge the judgment of record companies. "I think you just have to acknowledge music has consequences," he said.
It also has cash value. The domestic record market does $12.5 billion worth of business, mostly through six distributors: WEA Inc., also known as Warner Music Group; Polygram (Dutch); EMI Music Distribution; BMG Distribution (German), Sony Music (Japanese); and Universal Music and Video.
Tucker has targeted Manson's label, Interscope, a company now owned by Seagrams Co., the Montreal-based liquor and entertainment giant, and she is fighting three lawsuits from record companies claiming she has interfered with their business. But Tucker and her husband, William, have been undeterred, buying 15 shares of stock in Seagrams in order to protest at the company's stockholders meeting in November.
"I would hate to think that the need for corporate profits are so desperate that corporate principles and societal responsibility are sacrificed on the altar of expediency," says William Tucker. "If this were the case, one could easily justify buying 50 percent of a Colombian drug operation."
It troubled him, he added that Michael Jackson lyrics offensive to Jews promptly were excised -- aiming his remarks at Seagrams chief executive officer Edgar Bronfman Jr., 42, a Jewish billionaire whose father, Edgar Sr., is the president of the World Jewish Congress. "The puzzling question that remains to be answered here is does offensive music mean less when the artists are black?"
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Time Warner, criticized four years ago for releasing a rap song advocating the murder of police officers, now has come under attack for distributing a song that critics say promotes domestic violence. The entertainment giant's latest shock-song is "Smack My Bitch Up" ny the British band Prodigy. The song's refrain -- "Change my pitch up/Smack my bitch up? -- is repeated over a heavy rhythmic beat.
The band claims the song is about "extreme manic energy," not domestic violence. But the record company, Maverick and Time Warner's Warner Bros. Records declined it depicts women being manhandled. MTV will only play an edited version between 1 a.m. and 5 a.m.
At least one activist group is taking the lyrics literally. "It would appear that this about violence against women," says Elizabeth Toledo, vice president for action of the National Organization for Women. "While artists should have First Amendment freedoms, it doesn't make it any less offensive when we have a song depicting violence against women."
Both Maverick, co-authored by Warner Bros. and pop start Madonna, and Warner Bros. Records are standing firmly behind the Prodigy. "The situation is what its been since Bob Merlis, spokesman for Warner Bros. Records, "In the eight months it's been out, we have not received one complaint here over that song."
The band's album, Fat of the Land, appears without a parental-advisory sticker and has sold more than 2 million copies and generated two other hit singles in the United States.
COPYRIGHT 1998 News World Communications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning
Bibliography for: "Warning labels don't keep kids from shock CDs"
Julia Duin "Warning labels don't keep kids from shock CDs". Insight on the News. FindArticles.com. 10 Apr, 2012.
COPYRIGHT 1998 News World Communications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning
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