Publication Type: Invited Paper
Abstract: In 1984, when Tipper Gore bought the most popular album in America, Prince’s Purple Rain, for her daughter Karenna, age 8, she thought she was giving her the critically-acclaimed album so she could listen to the hit single “Let’s Go Crazy.” However, upon listening to the record with her daughter, Gore heard one of the deeper cuts, “Darling Nikki,” a song replete with explicit lyrics about masturbation and sex. Gore was appalled by the lyrics but even more appalled that she, as a parent, had brought that kind of music into the home. So, as the apocryphal story of this discovery goes, Gore was spurred to action to help parents protect their children and their homes. She and her friends, wives of prominent Washington, DC politicians, formed the Parents Music Resource Council in 1985. It was a group that they claimed would act as an information clearinghouse with the intention of helping parents navigate the sea of potentially-salacious popular culture products to determine what was appropriate for their children and give them power over what came into their homes.

While most accounts of the debates over the content of popular music in the 1980s portray it as a contest over the merits of censorship in a free society, I argue this was a contest over defining suburban space and the values it represented. Specifically, this paper will addresses how the PMRC and its allies constructed the suburban home as a space imperiled by sex, drugs, the occult, and youth insurrection, and how that construction facilitated the prioritization of particular cultural concerns.

Using evidence from the Senate Subcommittee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation’s hearing on the content of popular music, the popular music that was under review, and literature and media appearances of the PMRC and its members including Tipper Gore’s parental guide Raising PG Kids in an X-Rated Society, I will argue that once the home was posited as under siege from explicit pop cultural content by concerned parents, a movement emerged to regulate the culture industries and the artists they employed in the hopes of securing the borders of the home. Further, I will contend that culture critics like Tipper Gore and the PMRC promulgated this regulation as part of an emergent cultural politics that blended liberal and conservative positions and tactics as a common sense non-politics that prioritized defense of the home and family over more strict ideological concerns. The result was this concerted effort to portray suburban homes and families as under attack from explicit content produced by the culture industries legitimated culture warriors attempted regulation of those industries through the seemingly inescapable logic of home and family defense all the while contributing to a larger discourse of a suburb under siege in the 1980s.

Publication Type: Invited Paper
Abstract: Most of the Music geniuses of African decent have no concept of the multi-billion dollar industry they have spawned. However, they are painfully aware of their non-participation in the money their music makes for others. The financial loss inflicted on Black Music Makers and their heirs is sufficient to make a major impact on the economic status of Africans in the Americas.Another historic truth is that Black Folks in this country get nothing of major impact without a law, i.e. – Civil Rights, Voting Rights, Education, Employment and Housing. We must have laws with sanctions to get into the music money. We must overcome a hundred years of deliberate intent – “not to pay Black Artist for Race Records” and go after our money NOW. Music is changing to digital format, is being bought up by foreign conglomerates and will soon be lost to us forever. A letter has been sent to the President asking for a Commission to study and recommend solutions. However, we can’t wait on others, we must make this fight for ourselves. (Copy of letter available on request).Along with the money, we must also fight to take back the beauty and dignity of our music without sacrificing the creative genres launched by young Artists. In tribute to the valiant fight initiated by the late, great Honorable Dr. C. Delores Tucker we must also demand the clean up of our lyrics.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Chart-topping rap music depicts women of color in ways we describe as violently pornographic. This article presents a content analysis of the lyrics of the 49 most popular mainstream rap songs over a two year period. The analysis revealed three over-arching themes depicting women: 1) physical violence against women, 2) women in demeaning sexual positions, and 3) women as sex workers. Mainstream rap music uses many of the same conventions as mainstream pornography such as characterizing women as strippers and prostitutes, constant references to women sexually servicing men, and high levels of male aggression toward women. This article contends that the “pornification” of rap is part of a larger and ongoing process in popular culture in general, that increasingly mimics the content and style of pornography.

Supporting Publications:
Supporting Document

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This article investigates the songwriting of Bruce Springsteen through a careful analysis of his lyrical word choice. Employing a sophisticated, unconventional computer program designed to track language patterns, this study probes Springsteen’s craft by running a series of statistical tests surrounding his songs. In doing so, it demonstrates a democratic disposition in Springsteen’s lyrics, developed by his reliance on concrete language.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript