Policing of rap lyrics is near-impossible task
The likelihood of Don Imus starting a national conversation about rap music in any capacity would have been ludicrous a month ago.
But then the radio host was dismissed for using racist and sexist terms to malign the Rutgers University women's basketball team and the attention of some observers turned to hip-hop. After all, as Imus himself argued before his firing, rap music has played a part in normalizing the denigrating phrase he used.
Oprah Winfrey, the Rev. Al Sharpton, and others also set their sights on the offensive verbal currency of some commercial hip-hop. A closed door meeting among a group of record company executives -- including those representing Warner Music, Island Def Jam, and Universal Music -- was held last week to examine the issue.
On Monday Russell Simmons, who made his fortune by allowing hip-hop artists to use the language of their choosing on records released by the legendary Def Jam label he co founded, recommended a voluntary ban on a trio of oft-used words, two of them offensive to women (including the one used by Imus) and the other a vulgarity about the entire black race.
The three words should now be "considered with the same objections to obscenity as 'extreme curse words,' " Simmons said in a statement issued jointly with Benjamin Chavis, co founder of his advocacy organization the Hip-Hop Action Summit.
Simmons's gesture is both incomplete and disingenuous. He picked only three words out of a dictionary's worth of possibilities. He seemed to contradict his own previous defense of artists' rights (and overlooked his own financial enrichment by their expression). And he knows full well that if people want to use these words, and other people want to hear them, any attempt at censorship would likely be futile.
Every student of hip-hop knows that there are any number of derogatory euphemisms hurled at women atop the head-bobbing grooves. Why, say, does Simmons not object to the equally objectionable homophobic slur that is used with almost as much frequency as those three on his list?
Don't misunderstand. The three words in question are hurtful, desensitizing , and, from a songwriting standpoint, unimaginative and lazy. Having been called all three of them, I know they can sting and would be thrilled to have them go away. But if we start arbitrarily outlawing certain words, where do we stop? Who gets sworn in to stand word patrol? And who gets penalized?
I personally find the constant references to alcoholic beverages like Cristal, Courvoisier, and Bacardi incredibly irritating. Can we get rid of those too? How about crunkmeister Lil Jon's relentless barking of "OK!"?
In Queen Latifah's 1993 classic "U.N.I.T.Y.," she confrontationally asks "Who you calling a [expletive] ?" in a lyrical stand against misogyny and for pride and self-preservation. By Simmons's newfound standards, the word would have to go. And if instead it is considered an exception, what else would fall into that category?
In fact, focusing solely on hip-hop overlooks the culture's culpability in the second-class treatment of women, minorities, and the poor, and how prevalent harsh language and attitudes are in all avenues of entertainment. Additionally it broadly paints an entire style of music with a brush that only applies to one sharp, albeit high-profile, edge.
Prior to the release of this statement, Simmons, who sold Def Jam in 1999, himself seemed firmly on the side of free speech. The day after Imus's dismissal Simmons said, "Comparing Don Imus' language with hip-hop artists' poetic expression is misguided and inaccurate and feeds into a mindset that can be a catalyst for unwarranted, rampant censorship."
Last week on Winfrey's show he seemed interested in shining a light on the social and economic factors that give rise to derogatory language.
"Whether it's our sexism, our racism, our homophobia, or our violence, the hip-hop community sometimes can be a good mirror of our dirt and sometimes the dirt that we try to cover up," Simmons said. "Pointing at the conditions that create these words from the rappers . . . should be our No. 1 concern."
Just as we as a people are free to engage in objectionable speech -- and to turn away from it if we are offended -- hip-hop's critics are free to debate, coax, bully, even legislate that speech. Certainly the desire to have more civil discourse and imaginative entertainment is laudable.
But the bottom line in any commercial enterprise is what the market will bear. And here, a weariness with the mind-numbingly repetitive, casually hateful emphasis on violence, misogyny, homophobia, and commercialism may be doing the necessary corrective work. Like much recorded music, hip-hop sales are on the decline already, with the raw and violent strain of the form no longer dominating.
At the same time, it seems awfully convenient that those in the boardrooms who have benefitted so handsomely from peddling these images are now deciding it's time to outlaw them.
Sarah Rodman can be reached at srodman@globe.com. For more on music go to boston.com/ae/music/blog. 
