Crack

Controversy sells records. This is a fact everybody knows, and nearly everyone in the industry is looking for a way to cash in on.

It’s increasingly tricky, because there are only a few taboos left. What was super freaky nasty ten years ago doesn’t even ruffle feathers today. For better or worse, the world has been desensitised to the nastiness. But before this world gets even more freaky and nasty, let’s pay homage to a man who raised the bar higher than it had ever been back in the 80’s.

His name is Fresh Kid Ice (a lovely amalgamation of three of the best words going) and Crack was lucky enough to get him on the blower in his Florida crib. Fresh is the front of one of the most controversial hip-hop groups of all time, 2 Live Crew. The first thing Crack wants to know is if the man behind such timeless debauchery as Pop that Pussy and Face Down, Ass Up, is still living the same dream.

“Well I’m a parent now” explains Fresh, “the kids are in their twenties, my youngest daughter, she’s gonna be 18 this year and I have a grandson. I’m a hip-hop dad now, as they say.” However, this ‘hip-hop dad’ is still playing shows and touring the globe. “We just got back from Australia, we did a few shows over Christmas and New Year.” not surprisingly, the Aussies are big fans. “It's nice to do shows overseas. Hopefully one day we can come over and do a show in the UK.”

But hold up a minute. Fresh Kid Ice, at home with the family, and now he’s describing doing shows as ‘nice’, and without colloquial inferences. This is from a man whose back catalogue makes Snoop Dogg look like a thoroughly wholesome chap.

So was it all just a façade from the start then? Of course not. After a bit of coaxing, Fresh lets out a mischievous giggle “Of course some of it was storytelling, but a lot of it, we lived. We experienced a lot in our younger days.” He giggles again and stops short of going into graphic detail, perhaps thankfully. If you want to know what kind of stuff we’re talking about, go pick up any one of his records, preferably not whilst you’re having a cup of tea with your grandma.

2 Live Crew’s music was so controversial at the time it spawned a series of court cases. Not only were the group the accused several times, but quite a few shopkeepers found themselves before a judge for selling their CDs, often to undercover officers. By the late 80’s, the US had waged a war on the 2 Live Crew. Of course, hand-in-hand with the controversy, the record sales escalated. In 1989 their album, As Nasty As They Wanna Be, was certified legally obscene and it became illegal to sell it, so of course everyone wanted one. It remains their best selling album, having sold over two million copies.

The group invariably overturned the charges thanks to a very serious legal team, and so forged the way for other groups to be just as nasty. “Thanks to us and what happened with the whole controversy, a lot of rappers and a lot of artists can say what they want on a record. That’s one of the things we’ve contributed.” There is no surprise in the fact the group, whose records deal almost exclusively with sex, have had huge repercussions for freedom of speech in music.

Critics have often accused 2 Live Crew of having no real merit other than controversy. True, they aren’t as lyrically astute as KRS-One or a Nas, but aside from the nastiness, they did pioneer a new sound in hip-hop as Fresh explains: “We started a real individual movement in the South that was separate to the east coast and west coast styles.”

This is namely the precursor to the dirty south sound that is all over hip-hop and in the charts today. 2 Live’s simplistic and playful approach, focused purely on parties and, gave the south a unique identity that was more pop friendly than the others.

Fresh explains: “Back then to us it was more like locker room talk. What guys would say in the locker room, joking around amongst themselves, or at the bar or wherever. Or what the girls would say chilling with their friends but they won’t say blatant. So we thought we’d just say all of it out loud.”

Listening to their records, it’s the sound of guys talking among themselves and how undoubtedly a lot of people do and will continue to talk. So how can anyone stop it from being on a record? There will always of course be some outrage, but Fresh thinks this will just keep continuing. “Even on pop records or R’n’B records they’re cursing now, so that’s because of 2 Live Crew they’re able to do that. I think that’s a good thing”

And the 2 Live Crew are still getting involved, working on a new album, no doubt pushing the boundary a little further than the last. “We just keep trying to make records that are relevant today. And try and give the people what they want. If they wanna take their mind away from the stress and everything that’s going on in the world, we are gonna keep giving them a little 2 Live Crew to party to.”



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Words: Jack Lucas Dolan

Photo: Michael Freeby

Tune: Me So Horny

http://www.myspace.com/official2livecrew

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