Sunday, January 1, 2012

A Very Simple New Year's Resolution for 2012...


Rappers, rappers. You don't need to add a Parental Advisory sticker to your cover art. It's not necessary. There's nothing cool about tagging your own artwork with fascist government propaganda. First of all, it kinda goes without saying that the words "fuck" and "shit" will be uttered once or (more likely) several times throughout your album/mixtape/whatever you've just released. Second, if you're releasing something via the internet, parents are probably not gonna see this cover art anyways. Let's face it: the kids are downloading it when their parents aren't even looking (along with porn, of course). Who are you even 'advising', really? Third, and most importantly, you're self-limiting and even censoring (to a degree) your own work. Why?

Parental Advisory stickers, or "Tipper stickers", were first implemented in the late '80s by the Recording Industry Association of America because the Parents Music Resource Center bitched and moaned like annoying ol' Helen Lovejoy from The Simpsons. With the pressure caving in, the RIAA acted, putting these little stickers on album covers. For those too young to know or remember, Parental Advisory stickers were actual adhesive stickers stuck to the cases of compact discs. Then some time later, album covers themselves came with the Parental Advisory message directly added to the artwork. This practice, of course, still goes on 'til today.

But it doesn't have to for your FREE(!) and INDEPENDENT(!) music releases. So stop that. Today. Thanks. /endrant

P.S. Grab the new Raekwon tape here!