Live Crew

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- In Saudi Arabia's music shops, where employees are always careful to protect this country's Moslem values by blacking out bare legs and cleavage on Western album covers, the biggest seller is one of America's raunchiest groups.2 Live Crew's "As Nasty As They Wanna Be," rap music so explicit that last fall a federal judge in Florida declared the album obscene, is selling off the shelves.To be sure, someone has touched up the photo on the cover.But no one has suggested that its sensational tracks shouldn't be heard in the capital of the Saudi kingdom.

Tapping away at some sports media notes while listening to Brett Favre sing, "I don't know why you say goodbye/I say hello": *If you were in the habit of turning off the television sound to listen to the radio broadcast during Ravens games, you won't have to do that in the preseason. That's because the radio broadcast will be the TV sound. No more Dick, Moose and Goose calling the exhibition schedule. The Ravens have replaced Dick Stockton, Daryl Johnston and Tony Siragusa with a simulcast of the WBAL/98 Rock team of Gerry Sandusky, Stan White and Rob Burnett.

The hottest single at the Record Town music store in Mondawmin Mall is "Power of Love" by Celine Dion. I know this because Record Town posts a list of its top 20 singles for the convenience of customers.Salt 'N Pepa, Bryan Adams and Ace of Base made the list. So did Culture Beat and Toni Braxton and Queen Latifah. But I stare at the posted chart -- and stare at it some more. I get real close and squint and stare again. But try as I might, I can't find anything there by the notorious rap group 2 Live Crew.

Whenever I speak to high school students, nothing sends them into fits of guffawing more than the notion that their elders, in our never-ending quest to protect them from the ravages of gangsta rap, think that the group 2 Live Crew is a gangsta rap outfit.Oh, how the young folks snicker and giggle! But their elders, having put our feet in our mouths once too often on this issue, have solved the problem. We'll simply redefine reality. That'll show the whippersnappers.In an article Thursday, Sun staff writer C. Fraser Smith reported on the latest goings on in Annapolis.

MIAMI, Fla. -- As his trial opened in Fort Lauderdale last week, Luther Campbell, 29, the leader of the rap music group 2 Live Crew, was anticipating a clash of cultures.He said he thought the six jurors, who included three women over age 60 and only one black, might be too old, too white and too middle-class to understand his raunchy music.But the rapper from Miami apparently misjudged the Broward County jurors, who Saturday quickly acquitted Mr. Campbell and two other band members of obscenity charges.

Let's be honest now. Upon hearing that the 2 Live Crew has finally released its sequel to "As Nasty As They Wanna Be," the first question that popped into your mind wasn't, "How good or bad is it?" No, what you really want to know is, "How nasty is it?"Not to worry -- it's perfectly natural to be curious about such things. "As Nasty As They Wanna Be" is the first and only album ever to have been banned as obscene in the United States. Furthermore, 2 Live Crew promised that its next album would be even filthier than the last.

We have heard the lyrics of the rap group 2 Live Crew's album, "As Nasty as They Wanna Be," and they are indeed disgusting, appalling and, yes, even obscene. But obscene or not, we reject the idea that anyone, anywhere, should be prosecuted and convicted for writing songs, singing songs, selling records -- or doing anything else that falls within the ambit of the freedom to speak or perform.This week in Florida, a record store owner was convicted, and faces a jail term, for selling 2 Live Crew's records.

WASHINGTON -- For the first time, the Supreme Court pondered yesterday the right of performers to make fun of someone else's song with a parody. But it did so in totally unfamiliar cultural territory: the worlds of rap and rock 'n' roll.Dealing with tunes their children or grandchildren would more easily recognize, the justices kept mainly to the legal questions -- except for a passing remark by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wondering whether it was musical progress to translate "rock" into "rap."

For some time now, popular music has been under attack i this country.From the rash of record-labeling proposals that surfaced in state legislatures earlier this year to the recent obscenity cases against rappers 2 Live Crew, pop musicians have been taking heat on a number of fronts. In recent months, records have been banned, concerts canceled and rock groups sued, and it's a trend that shows no sign of abating.It used to be that the worst a performer would face after a concert was a bad review, but these days, many musicians find themselves facing arrest.

Depending on who is asked, the conviction of a Florida record-store owner for selling an obscene record is either the death of the First Amendment, a victory for anti-pornography forces, or something in between."

Henry Wilson Harrison, who as a merchant marine officer in World War II helped save the lives of 11 of his crewmen after their ship was sunk by a German U-boat, died Friday of Alzheimer's disease at Genesis Heritage Nursing Center in Dundalk. He was 85.The seamanship and navigation skills he acquired growing up on Tilghman Island helped him sail a 25-foot, sail-powered lifeboat through rough seas for more than 1,000 miles until the survivors were rescued by a fishing vessel off the northwest coast of Africa.

The hottest single at the Record Town music store in Mondawmin Mall is "Power of Love" by Celine Dion. I know this because Record Town posts a list of its top 20 singles for the convenience of customers.Salt 'N Pepa, Bryan Adams and Ace of Base made the list. So did Culture Beat and Toni Braxton and Queen Latifah. But I stare at the posted chart -- and stare at it some more. I get real close and squint and stare again. But try as I might, I can't find anything there by the notorious rap group 2 Live Crew.

WASHINGTON -- For the first time, the Supreme Court pondered yesterday the right of performers to make fun of someone else's song with a parody. But it did so in totally unfamiliar cultural territory: the worlds of rap and rock 'n' roll.Dealing with tunes their children or grandchildren would more easily recognize, the justices kept mainly to the legal questions -- except for a passing remark by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wondering whether it was musical progress to translate "rock" into "rap."

Let's be honest now. Upon hearing that the 2 Live Crew has finally released its sequel to "As Nasty As They Wanna Be," the first question that popped into your mind wasn't, "How good or bad is it?" No, what you really want to know is, "How nasty is it?"Not to worry -- it's perfectly natural to be curious about such things. "As Nasty As They Wanna Be" is the first and only album ever to have been banned as obscene in the United States. Furthermore, 2 Live Crew promised that its next album would be even filthier than the last.

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- In Saudi Arabia's music shops, where employees are always careful to protect this country's Moslem values by blacking out bare legs and cleavage on Western album covers, the biggest seller is one of America's raunchiest groups.2 Live Crew's "As Nasty As They Wanna Be," rap music so explicit that last fall a federal judge in Florida declared the album obscene, is selling off the shelves.To be sure, someone has touched up the photo on the cover.But no one has suggested that its sensational tracks shouldn't be heard in the capital of the Saudi kingdom.

THUMBS UP Deee-Lite. With "World Clique," this trio helped put the fuback in funky.Robert Plant. The best way to keep the Led Zeppelin spirit alive isn't a reunion, it's more new work like "Manic Nirvana."Lisa Stansfield. Is the best new soul singer of 1990 an Englishwoman? Sure is.Madonna. Pop music's "Woman Most Likely To," and proud of it.Robert Johnson's "The Complete Recordings." Proof that no amount of time can diminish the power of the blues.A Tribe Called Quest. Insightful, inventive and tuneful,"People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm" is a perfect example of positive rap.Living Colour.

EN ROUTE to acquitting the rap group 2 Live Crew of obscenity charges, jurors in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., asked and received the judge's permission to laugh aloud at evidence.The testimony had them in stitches: prosecutors and detectives reciting, in dull monotone, raunchy lyrics from the performance that got the band arrested.The trial shows the hazards of bringing obscenity laws to bear on speech. Speech is slippery and mutable; meanings change, depending on the speaker, the audience and, as this trial showed, the passage of time.

JUST AS the dust starts to settle on the 2 Live Crew controversy, we have Madonna. Her video, "Justify My Love," banned by MTV, has (of course) become a best-seller. What is it that makes Madonna unique? Are her outrageous sexual images that much different from those found on most MTV videos?More than one columnist points out that Madonna is a woman with power -- in charge of her own sexuality and (in the video) the sexuality of others. Some find that exciting; others find it troubling.Meanwhile, 2 Live Crew has been acquitted.

JUST AS the dust starts to settle on the 2 Live Crew controversy, we have Madonna. Her video, "Justify My Love," banned by MTV, has (of course) become a best-seller. What is it that makes Madonna unique? Are her outrageous sexual images that much different from those found on most MTV videos?More than one columnist points out that Madonna is a woman with power -- in charge of her own sexuality and (in the video) the sexuality of others. Some find that exciting; others find it troubling.Meanwhile, 2 Live Crew has been acquitted.

Court decisions to the contrary, 2 Live Crew's "As Nasty As They Wanna Be" is by no means as raunchy as rap gets. In the months since the Crew's album was declared obscene in Florida, sexually explicit rap has become something of a growth industry, with an expanding number of acts out to prove just how nasty they can be.Although the vast majority of rappers rarely venture beyond the innocent innuendo of Candyman's "Knockin' Boots," a few make no bones about...