What was the first album to be slapped with a parental advisory sticker for explicit content?
Honestly, in the age of streaming, the parental advisory warning has become a bit of a lost rite of passage. As a child, getting your first CD with that little black and white sticker of maturity was like graduation into adulthood, leaving behind the innocent days of censored radio edits and clean lyrics to enter into the world of ‘real’ music. Of course, we now realise the facade – it was never really that deep – but even still, it was a trademark for any music fan in discovering new tastes and broadening your horizons.
We might look at it with a bit of a halcyon glow, but in reality, the art of the parental advisory sticker for explicit content is a symbol confined to relatively modern history, having only been first brought into use 34 years ago. By today’s standards, we might not see the odd swear as a massive problem; however, believe it or not, this was a massively controversial battle between the music industry and government, which the force of the law eventually won. There was anger and embarrassment among artists – but which of them was unlucky enough to have their album be the first to have this badge of shame slapped on?
The winners – or losers – of that contest were hip-hop band 2 Live Crew, with their 1990 record Banned in the USA. A suspiciously coincidental album title, you might think, not only due to the Bruce Springsteen reference but also because of the continuing theme of censorship. However, there was no irony – as it turns out, 2 Live Crew had been through all this before.
Banned in the USA was a direct allusion to a legal battle the group had been embroiled in relating to their previous offering, As Nasty As They Wanna Be, which also won the accolade of being the first album pronounced legally obscene by the US government in 1989. As such, the follow-up’s name was an attack on that process – only for the government to do them over once again by making Banned in the USA the first to brandish the monochrome explicit label.
However, debatably, there were more pernicious motivations at play. As more albums got slapped with the sticker following 2 Live Crew’s, the labelling was generally unfair and inconsistent, with the music of white artists often being let slip through the net – even with the presence of overtly explicit content – while Black acts, including 2 Live Crew were treated much more harshly. The label was seen to be enforced increasingly commonly in associated genres such as rap and R&B, giving rise to a racist argument in the doling out of the sticker.
This fell at the door of the government lobbyists who had enforced the rulings in the first place – the Parents Music Resource Center made up of the wives of 15 US government representatives, most notably Tipper Gore, the wife of future Vice President Al Gore. It really was a people – or the music – versus the government situation, and one, which, unfortunately, the comparatively little guys were never set to win, although not without valiant attempts to overturn it by the likes of Frank Zappa.
Nevertheless, 2 Live Crew have earned their spot in the history books whether it’s for rightful reasons or not. It set into motion a whole new era of music, for better or worse, where censorship came to the fore, and in some ways although having changed shape, has never fully left us. The sticker itself may be somewhat of a relic of the past, but its impact will never be.
