This legendary logo was originally intended to censor music. It became the perfect marketing tool.
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Series Very quickly after its creation, the "Parental Advisory Explicit Content" logo became the marketing standard par excellence for rap and metal. Yet, forty years ago, the label intended to muzzle all forms of provocative music. Missed.
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Late 1980s. Teenage bedroom walls are covered with crumpled posters of rivals 2Pac and The Notorious B.I.G. or Nirvana's grunge. These posters tell of the dreams and ruptures of a generation growing up between the din of Gulf War bombs and the groove of ghetto blasters. In the streets of major American cities, fashion is also becoming overt. XXL sweatshirts flutter like flags of insolence; baggy jeans defy decorum, Cortez and Dr. Martens pound the sidewalks. Grunge, born in the basements of Seattle, also infiltrates high schools like a sweet poison with greasy hair, plaid shirts, and the absent gaze of those who understood too early that the world owed them nothing. Skateboarders reign supreme in empty parking lots, caps screwed on backward, Walkmans on their hips. Public Enemy beats thump against concrete walls. We hang out in malls, pirate cable channels, then record fourteen-track "I love you" cassettes.
In 1988, NWA's "Straight Outta Compton" hit the airwaves like a bombshell. It wasn't just the content that was disturbing—brutal, outspoken, unvarnished—it was the attitude, the insolence. When the RIAA issued its "This music contains explicit lyrics" warning, the Californian group laughed it off. The album became a phenomenon, not despite the sticker, but because of it. White teenagers from the suburbs of California and New York...
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