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Remember 2 Live Crew? Sure you do: those nasty-as-they-wanna-be rappers from Miami whose sleazy lyrics and sexually explicit shows delighted suburban fans, tortured Tipper Gore, and raked in millions in album sales in the late Eighties. A decade later, the raunchy rappers, sans group leader Luther "Luke" Campbell, are back on the tawdry tip, putting together new tracks for the freakshow feature film The Jerry Springer Show: The Movie, due this Thanksgiving. |
"They sent us a trailer and the movie seems like an expanded
version of the show," says Joe Weinberger, head of
L'il Joe Records, home to Crew members
Fresh Kid Ice and Brother
Marquis, who've held on to the group's old name.
As part of 2 Live Crew's deal with the trash talk
show-turned-movie, the group will record the theme song, a nasty
remake of James Brown's "Living in America," and
update their 1989 hit "Me So Horny." According to Weinberger,
footage from the movie, as well as Springer himself, will appear in
the Crew's upcoming videos.
Although Luke Campbell, who's got a spanking new label deal with
Loud Records, has moved beyond the Crew, the other
members and their new label L'il Joe have obtained rights to the
multiplatinum 2 Live Crew back catalog. The rights were granted
through a bizarre and ugly lawsuit that ensued when Luke and his
label, Luke Records, former home to the original
Crew, went bankrupt in 1996. Weinberger, who at the time acted as
Luke's chief financial officer, waived his claim to the money he
was owed in exchange for the right to buy out the company and back
catalog at the reduced price of $800,000. The company's worth was
estimated at $3 million.
Not surprisingly, both Luke and Weinberger have sharply different
stories on what went down just prior to and during the lawsuit. The
two no longer speak and are focusing on their own ventures.
Weinberger, who says he's made L'il Joe profitable by weeding out
the music from the back catalog which bombed in stores, says Luke
has been interfering with the company's business by publicly
bad-mouthing him. "What he's looking to do is for me to sue him so
he can garner some publicity, and I'm not going to do what he wants
me to do," says Weinberger. "My strategy is to ignore."
Luke, however, contends that though he feels he was wronged by
Weinberger, he's now focused on the future. "I've let it go for
years now. In fact, this is probably the last time I'll talk about
it," says Luke. "He'll have to live with the guilty conscience
since he stole something that another person worked very hard for.
Without me, that catalog's worth nothing, so they should move on
and let's see who the better record company is."
Let's hope this is as nasty as they wanna be.
TIARRA MUKHERJEE(October 9, 1998)