Rating:
Genre:
Rap
Release Date: 06/10/1996
Although
the 2 Live Crew's debut album,
2 Live Is What We Are, went gold and sold more than 500,000 copies in the U.S., the LP wasn't without its detractors. Some New York hip-hoppers argued that
Luther Campbell and his associates were pandering to the lowest common denominator, and everyone from church groups to feminists argued that their X-rated
booty rhymes were nothing more than pornography with a beat. But the
Crew's fans didn't care what their critics had to say, which is why their second album,
Move Somthin', was also a big seller. Anyone who found
2 Live Is What We Are offensive was unlikely to be converted by
Move Somthin';
booty rhymes like
"HBC," "One and One" (an X-rated interpretation of
the Kinks'
"All Day and All of the Night") and
"S&M" are as crude and sexually explicit as anything on the group's previous album.
"S&M," as its title indicates, is an ode to kinky sex. The
2 Live Crew was hardly the first group to address the subject of bondage and sado-masochism -- back in 1967,
the Velvet Underground's
"Venus in Furs" was among the kinkier
rock songs of its day. Some of
the Ohio Players' pre-
Mercury album covers employed S&M/bondage imagery, and the 1980s
heavy metal band
Bitch had a female lead vocalist who loved to sing about the pleasures of being a whip-toting dominatrix. But kinky sex hasn't been a prominent subject in
hip-hop, and
"S&M" is unusually kinky for
rap. Of course,
the Crew didn't need to rap about whips and chains to offend people; even without
"S&M," this LP would have been X-rated.
Move Somthin' was trashed by the
Crew's critics, but those who aren't offended by X-rated humor will find it to be a thoroughly entertaining sophomore effort.
~Alex Henderson, All Music Guide
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