What is the most offensive album of all time?
It might be the lyrics, the politics, or just the haircuts on the cover – some records just really get a rise out of people. Angus Batey goes in search of the most offensive album of all time
Ask a hundred people to identify the music that most offends them, and you'll get a hundred different answers. Some of us are offended by an artist's politics, some by their singing voices, some by their lifestyle or wardrobe. Offence can be caused by accident, when an artist misjudges a mood, or makes too sudden a change of creative direction. Even blandess can offend those who believe art's job is to provoke, cajole or inspire. But rock and pop have long embraced shock tactics and the deliberate deployment of offence, often used to underpin the sense of community that brings fans together – it's a tactic that stretches back to rock'n'roll's opening of the generation gap.
Usually it's what the music stands for that causes offence, in endless variations on that original exploitation of the generation gap. But what of an album that is in and of itself offensive? What would it sound like? What would it be for? Who would it offend, and how? And what would happen to the artist that made it? O'Shea Jackson, better known as Ice Cube, might know. During the late 80s and early 90s, he made a string of records that transcended the attention-grabbing offensiveness of even the group he had made his name as rapper and principal lyricist with NWA.
"With my records, nobody is safe – not even me," Ice Cube says. "Sooner or later, I'm gonna touch a subject that touches you. I don't think anybody's exempt – white, black, male, female, gay, straight; everybody kinda gets it. And I make it like that because I think everybody, in a way, deserves it."
His solo debut, AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted, delighted in its ability to needle listeners. Knowing that his likely supporters included middle-class liberals beginning to see rap as black America's most potent means of political protest, Cube threw in material calculated to push them away. By the time he released its follow-up, Death Certificate, in 1991, the then 22-year-old wasn't just lashing out at racist police and white liberals, he'd levelled his sniper scope on blacks, Asians and other rap stars. Rereleased earlier this year, it remains an album that sprays its venom in every direction at once: an equal-opportunities offender.
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