Though the First Amendment to the Constitution clearly states that the U.S. Congress \u201cshall make no law\u2026abridging the freedom of speech,\u201d free speech is widely understood to have its limits. It is dangerous and potentially criminal, for instance, to yell, \u201cFire!\u201d in a crowded theater. But what about yelling \u201c$&%#@!!\u201d in a crowded nightclub? Lenny Bruce and other comedians tested the limits of that practice in the 1960s, but it was not until the late 1980s that the issue of obscenity came front and center in the world of popular music. The group that brought it there was 2LiveCrew, a hip-hop outfit led by Luther \u201cLuke Skyywalker\u201d Campbell. On June 10, 1990, just days after a controversial ruling by a Florida federal judge, Campbell and two other members of 2LiveCrew were arrested on charges of public obscenity after performing material from their album As Nasty As They Wanna Be in a Hollywood, Florida, nightclub.<\/p>\n
United States District Court Judge Jose Gonzalez had set events in motion three days earlier in a 62-page written opinion that began, \u201cThis is a case between two ancient enemies: Anything Goes and Enough Already.\u201d At issue in the case before Judge Gonzalez was whether the songs on 2LiveCrew\u2019s album As Nasty As They Wanna Be were obscene and therefore not protected by the First Amendment. Applying a standard established by the Supreme Court in its landmark Miller v. State of California case, Gonzalez ruled that As Nasty As They Wanna Be violated local \u201ccommunity standards\u201d of decency without possessing any mitigating artistic merit. Two days later, a Fort Lauderdale record-store owner was arrested for selling copies of the 2LiveCrew album, and the day after that, Campbell and his cohorts were arrested.<\/p>\n
Civil libertarians and prominent academics rose immediately to the defense of Campbell et al., making legal arguments in support of their right to perform and sell songs like \u201cMe So Horny\u201d and \u201cThrow The ****.\u201d Ultimately, those arguments prevailed, as the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Judge Gonzalez\u2019s order and the United States Supreme Court declined to reconsider that ruling. Predictably, the biggest winners in the case was 2LiveCrew. The publicity surrounding their legal battle helped make a multiplatinum smash hit out of As Nasty As They Wanna Be, despite a near-total lack of radio play. As for Luther Campbell and his band mates, all charges against them were dropped.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Though the First Amendment to the Constitution clearly states that the U.S. Congress \u201cshall make no law\u2026abridging the freedom of speech,\u201d free speech is widely understood to have its limits. It is dangerous and potentially criminal, for instance, to yell, \u201cFire!\u201d in a crowded theater. But what about yelling \u201c$&%#@!!\u201d in a crowded nightclub? Lenny […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3506],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8536"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8536\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}