Are We Still Cussing and Swearing in Our Music?

A local artist got in some hot water for swearing at the Boogaloo festival in Town Point Park, Norfolk. In his own defense, he is from California and was probably ignorant to the anti-profanity laws in the region. But it got to me wondering, as some of the respondents to the article suggested that profanity was necessary in rap to sell the music. I've heard plenty of rap where profanity, if it existed at all, was to a minimum. In fact you almost have to wonder if it is 1992 all over again or if hip-hop itself hasn't matured at all whatsoever.

Many of our so called "positive" and "conscientious" artists aren't above using profanity here or there. In fact it falls off of the lips so easily it is almost as if it were merely part of their everyday speech, just like the word n* is. Speaking of which, Nas wasn't helping with the battered image of hip-hop by attempting to name an album N* but that is neither here nor there. I think we can all agree that profanity was never the key selling point of Nas' rhymes.

But does everyone else know that? I sit and watch MTV Jams and they were showing old videos of songs in which Timberland produced and I had to wonder, what type of s* was he really trying to sell us because this is just plain out rediculous? In particular his videos with Jay Z, in which literally hundreds of women are degraded and dancing for no particular reason. The videos that caught my eye were "Hey Papi" and "Big Pimpin", indicative of the mindless consumerism and hedonosm that typified Jay's rhymes at that time. In fact for Jay to be considered such a strong fixture in hip-hop, his videos could at times be quite rediculous.

The irony of which is that the video for "N* What" is actually rather artistic. This when he was first starting to break through from those devoted fans that were there in the beginning. These days us old heads complain about the lyrical skills of artists like Lil' Wayne, which is a complete departure of the old way of writing in which hip-hop takes on a fun quality full of contradictions, non sequitor, and a caricature of rhyme that is focused on wordplay and absent of any real instrinsic or tangible qualities.