Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, August 20, 1995                   TAG: 9508180084
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: D3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: WILLIAM RASPBERRY
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

GANGSTA RAP

Time Warner Inc., whose violence-laced and sexually explicit rap recordings have been dragging its corporate soul into the hell of disastrous public-relations, is reportedly selling its 50 percent share of Interscope Records back to the label's founders.

It would be a major victory for William Bennett of Empower America and C. Delores Tucker of the National Political Congress of Black Women, who have been attacking Time Warner for its violent and sexually explicit images. Interscope is the corporate home of some of the top-selling (and most outrageous) ``gangsta rappers.''

Tucker and Bennett have been calling on the record companies - and especially those owned by Time Warner, also singled out by Sen. Bob Dole - to ``voluntarily'' stop producing and marketing the obscene material. If the reported sell-back goes through, Tucker and Bennett will have won.

And so, by the way, will Time Warner.

The entertainment giant is ``acting like a leader'' in selling back to its founders the half-interest in Interscope it bought for $120 million, Bennett said. ``Once they got over the confrontation and the sense of being attacked and criticized, they sat down as business people and as citizens. I congratulate them. They did the right thing. I hope this is a statement about a larger point: that there are some things so bad that no responsible company will market and sell them to our children.''

In what way will our children be better off if the same anti-social and female-degrading filth is sold to them by a divested Interscope? Isn't this just a version of selling your soul-destroying assets to your little sister? Well at least the ``little sister'' won't be backed by the marketing power of Time Warner, whose music division had sales of more than $4 billion.

Is the reported deal primarily the result of Time Warner's interest in protecting its corporate image? If so, it would be of great encouragement to other critics of what is being sold to our children, conveying the message that pressure pays off.

But according to The Washington Post's Paul Farhi, who reported the story, Time Warner is also doing itself a favor. The corporation's contract with Interscope, says Farhi, prohibits it from refusing to distribute any Interscope recording, no matter how offensive.

I'm much more bothered by a third question: Why is most of the onus for that vile stuff on Time Warner, and not on the ``artists'' or the people - our children - who buy what they peddle?

The worst of the genre is particularly degrading to African American women, and virtually all of it is the work of African American men. I've heard the ``explanation'' that these rappers don't really want to put out this awful stuff, that the big companies, by refusing to produce or market the less-shocking lyrics, make them do it.

Maybe there's an equally glib answer to why so many of our children - including our daughters - support their own degradation. Still, there's something a little weird about appealing to white executives to make black men stop degrading their black sisters. Can't we put just a little of the blame where it belongs?

Washington Post Writers Group