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Does anyone else feel that the "PARENTAL ADVISORY EXPLICIT LYRICS" sticker has become more of a deliberate and almost necessary decoration than an actual RIAA imposed rating?
True mixtapes are not made under contract with an RIAA affiliated label. They're often free self-released products, with several different cover art concepts, many of which are fan made. Yet they ALWAYS have the PAEL warning somewhere on the cover. More and more you see it actually drawn into the cover with ink. Or superimposed onto the cover in Photoshop.
It's just, like, damn... Tipper Gore, how ya feeling now? That logo goes on everything! It's a pre-requisite in the hip-hop community. Some of the albums you find it on (like original pressings of 808's & Heartbreak on CD, for instance...) have almost NO explicit material whatsoever. And the mixtapes, it doesn't even matter! Nobody's counting uses of the word "fuck" to see if they can get away with avoiding it like some directors do with the "R" rating.
Rappers just put it everywhere, whether they're swearing a lot or not. And some of the other places it's popped up (like Incesticide, and NYC Ghosts & Flowers) just don't even make sense. It's on the Smashing Pumpkins greatest hits, for fuck's sake. Why?
They should have made a less visually appealing "warning" sign for explicit music. Ever since The Downward Spiral and the Chronic, kids have just seen that logo and wanted whatever it was on.
Maybe Tipper Gore was in with Suge Knight or some shit.
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