Twenty-five years ago today, members of the 2 Live Crew were arrested in Florida for obscenity.
Following the release of their third album, Nasty As They Wanna Be in 1989, a federal judge in Florida ruled that tracks off their record like "Me So Horny," "D*ck Almighty" and "The F*ck Shop" were too obscene. The ruling made it illegal in certain counties of Florida to play or sell the album. The group was also restricted from performing the songs.
On June 9, 1990, the group decided to perform songs from their album in a Florida sex club. They were arrested soon thereafter.
2 Live Crew frontman, Uncle Luke, recently recalled the creation of the "parental advisory" sticker during an interview with Sway on Shade 45.
"At that time it was an attack on hip-hop," Luke remembered. "You had Tipper Gore, Al Gore's wife, she had created this list, put me, Ice T, N.W.A., all kinds of different artists on that list along with a bunch of other rock 'n' roll artists. They wanted basically to get rid of hip-hop. My first album actually got banned by a federal judge, said it was explicit lyrics and it shouldn't be sold. So we actually got it [taken] off the shelf so we ended up going to have to fight that."
After a lengthy trial and media frenzy, Miami's 2 Live Crew and the DJ that played their music were all acquitted, pointing to an exercise in freedom of speech.
As Nasty As They Wanna Be went on to sell over two million albums, making it 2 Live Crew's most successful release to date.
Atlanta trio, Travis Porter, paid homage to the strip club anthem pioneers, naming their latest release 3 Live Crew.
