The Rap Against a Rap Group

By Richard Lacayo

If things do not change soon for 2 Live Crew, the dirty-talking Miami-based musicians may be spending more time trying to beat raps than performing them. A federal judge in Fort Lauderdale ruled two weeks ago that their double album, As Nasty as They Wanna Be, is obscene -- the first musical recording ever banned by a court. Soon after, a Fort Lauderdale record-store owner was hauled in by police for selling their album. Then two members of the group were arrested for performing at an adults-only nightclub in Hollywood, Fla. The penalty in both cases could be a $1,000 fine and a year in jail.

Even fans of rap music may find it hard to rally around Nasty, a danceable but dim-witted pop product that relies on countless descriptions of oral sex and genitalia, not to mention a knuckle-sandwich approach to women. But the moves against 2 Live Crew come on top of the obscenity charges against the director of the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati for mounting a show of photographer Robert Mapplethorpe's work. Artists, writers, filmmakers and musicians have to wonder whether these actions herald an anti-obscenity campaign that could send them scrambling for cover.

Until recently, authorities have been largely inclined to stay clear of pop culture or artwork -- areas where obscenity convictions could be almost impossible to obtain -- and concentrate instead on hard-core porn. Los Angeles prosecutors, by targeting materials that depict bestiality, defecation, sex with children and the torture of women, won all 26 obscenity cases they have brought since 1988. At the federal level, the Justice Department secured 120 obscenity indictments last year, up sharply from 26 in 1987. But the department's National Obscenity Enforcement Unit has tended to focus on nationwide wholesalers of the hard-core stuff.

Despite its reputation for loosening the restraints on sexual expression, the Supreme Court in recent terms has been making things easier for the anti- obscenity prosecutions. The court recently upheld an Ohio law that made it illegal to possess child pornography. Last year it okayed the use of powerful racketeering laws to seize the assets of pornographers.

Local prosecutors have also learned that they can flex their muscles on a national scale, shutting down interstate porn operators by bringing them to trial in conservative localities. The New York-based Home Dish Satellite Network once beamed X-rated films on its American Exxxtasy Channel to 30,000 subscribers around the country. It was driven into bankruptcy earlier this year after a district attorney in Montgomery County, Ala. -- where 30 households received the service -- brought criminal charges against the company's officers for violating the state's anti-obscenity laws.

But when it comes to material that can more plausibly claim the status of art or pop culture, obscenity is still in the eye of the beholder, and even in conservative localities juries and prosecutors do not always see eye to eye. The Supreme Court ruled in 1973 that courts can regulate expression only when the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would be likely to find that the material appealed mostly to prurient interest, was patently offensive and was entirely lacking in serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value. Under that difficult standard, a jury in Alexander City, Ala. -- a place that no one would mistake for Sodom -- acquitted a record- store owner last February who had been arrested for selling Move Somethin', an earlier album by 2 Live Crew.

The band has been arguing that the gross language in songs like Me So Horny and If You Believe in Having Sex is part of a black cultural tradition of profanity, exaggeration and humor that has fed into rap. Lead singer Luther Campbell also charges that race has been a factor in the harassment of his group. Why is it, he asks, that the same record stores that are forbidden to sell his albums still carry the slickly packaged dirty talk of the white comedian Andrew Dice Clay? Sheriff Nick Navarro says the difference is that no one has complained to his office about Clay.

Meanwhile, the campaign against 2 Live Crew is gaining support. In San Antonio police officers ordered record-store workers to remove Nasty from their shelves or face arrest. The city council in Huntsville, Ala., where the band had scheduled a weekend concert, hurriedly extended its anti-obscenity ordinance to live performances. Onstage last week under the watchful eyes of officials in Duluth, Ga., the band offered only cleaned-up versions of its songs, while the sing-along audience eagerly filled in the X-rated language. Then again, the attempt to suppress 2 Live Crew has been good for business. The Nasty version of their album, which had sold a respectable 1.7 million copies before the porn police swung into action, was headed for the 2 million mark last week.

With reporting by Jerome Cramer/Washington and Don Winbush/Duluth, Ga.