New York – Hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons said Monday the recording and broadcast industries should consistently ban three racial and sexist epithets from all so-called clean versions of rap songs and the airwaves.
Currently such epithets are banned from most clean versions, but record companies sometimes “arbitrarily” decide which offensive words to exclude and there’s no uniform standard for deleting such words, Simmons said.
The recommendations drew mixed reaction and come two weeks after some began carping anew about rap lyrics after radio personality Don Imus was fired by CBS Radio and NBC for referring to the players on the Rutgers university women’s basketball team as “nappy-headed hos.”
Expressing concern about the “growing public outrage” over the use of such words in rap lyrics, Simmons said the word “ho” and another derogatory term for women, as well as the N-word, should be considered “extreme curse words.”
“We recommend (they’re) always out,” Simmons said in an interview Monday. “This is a first step. It’s a clear message and a consistency that we want the industry to accept for more corporate social responsibility.”
Last week, Simmons called a private meeting of influential music-industry executives to discuss the issue. However, no music executives were associated with Monday’s announcement by Simmons’ Hip-Hop Summit Action Network.
Calls to Sony Music, Universal Music Group and Atlantic Records were not returned. The Recording Industry Association of America and Warner Music Group declined to comment.
Reaction to the announcement was mixed.
Bakari Kitwana, who has written about rap in books such as “Why White Kids Love Hip-Hop,” said it was a step in the right direction, while author Joan Morgan said it doesn’t go far enough. Calling for the removal of the three epithets assumes “all of the violence, misogyny and sexism in hip-hop is only expressed in (those words),” she said.
