2 Rude Dudes : Rolling Stone

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 multi-platinum 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