of morality. It is important that censorship of music be looked at as to whether or not Schiller 4it is going to improve the world we live in. Many people do feel that the censorship of some songs is necessary. For example, one of the most controversial songs of all time is Ice-T’s “Cop Killer”. In it, the rapper sings about the way he felt towards cops. He did not mean that we should all go out and start killing cops, yet the song was merely his way of expressing his anger towards police officers (Light 20). So it is necessary for us to look at a situation such as this and determine what is more important, our freedom of expression or the censorship of music.It is not always just the CD’s that are being censored. A bill now out in Michigan proposes that any band planning to put on a concert in their state must first be named “appropriate” by state officials. Any band that is deemed “inappropriate” will not be allowed to perform their concert(Mass. M.I.C., “Michigan’s Concert Rating Bill”). Yet perhaps the most unbelievable happened on March 3rd,1998, when police officers entered the home of Shawn Thomas and arrested him for rapping. Better known as C-BO, Thomas was rapping in his home, singing songs about police brutality, gang life, and hate crimes that he had written himself. Thomas was later convicted of breaking his parole, by “speaking of gang life.”(Nuzum). This case not Schiller 5only shows music censorship reeking its havoc on America and how brutal it is to our first amendment rights, but it also shows a real violation on his civil rights. This shows that in a lot of cases music censorship is not always a justifiable thing and that it can, at times, be more for a person’s own desires and preferences, rather than to “better the country.” The bills over music censorship presented to the U.S. Senate grow more and more each d...
