What's with the cursing on Aceyalone's Magnificent City? Not a question about quantity or quality...

April 25, 2008 7:48 AM

What's with the cursing on Aceyalone's Magnificent City? Not a question about quantity or quality...

There are plenty of Aceyalone recommendations in the history of Ask Mefi, apparently, so I'm hoping one of you Acey recommenders can help me out here. I bought a copy of Magnificent City and for some reason, all the curses are edited. I learned from my Googling that there was a rule against cursing at the Good Life Health Food Centre's weekly open-mic night, which was an early influencer, but that doesn't really help me understand why "motherf er" is edited just like that all over this 2006 record. It's really distracting and annoying.

I've looked at reviews of MC and I've looked at the Wikipedia page on Aceyalone and I can't find any reference to this.

Is there an unedited version of this record?
Does anyone know why this was done in the first place (given that Aceyalone is not a staple of commercial radio)?

Next stop is actually emailing the record label to find out but thought I would ask y'all first.

posted by chesty_a_arthur to media & arts (4 comments total)

Clean version for radio and kids, happens all the time. I'm not sure how to tell the difference with that particular release but if it doesn't have a parental warning on it you probably want to look for one that does.
posted by rhizome at 9:38 AM on April 25, 2008

Lots of cd's are produced for certain chains like WalMart and Target without the cursing. Those companies move alot of music and have the clout to force acts to produce two versions. Then often those versions filter their way to used cd stores as well. Sometimes the versions are simply edited out cusses and sometimes they rewrite the songs without cusses.

I noticed an interesting phenomenon with some Snoop and Dr. Dre records a while back. I enjoyed the clean versions much more than the unedited versions. It seemed like when all the dirty words were removed from their repertoire Snoop and Dre were forced to actually write more coherent rhymes. So they didn't edit out cuss words, they rewrote entire songs for clean versions, which were more skillfully arranged then the dirty versions.
posted by vito90 at 11:27 AM on April 25, 2008

I'm pretty sure there's only one version of the album, because at least on the copy I have, only the "fuck"s are edited out (whereas if it were a truly "clean" or "radio-friendly" version, the "shit"s would be gone, too, I think).

I can only speculate as to why, though--to avoid a Parental Warning sticker? To avoid having to produce two versions of the album?
posted by cosmic osmo at 11:51 AM on April 25, 2008

It's on Decon records, a small label, and I doubt it was carried by Walmart or Target (will be pleasantly surprised if it was.) As far as airplay, as Cosmic Osmo points out, the fucks are edited, but other Pacifica words are left in (should have noted that specifically.) Will update if Decon can tell me what's up because now I have. to. know.
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 12:20 PM on April 25, 2008