Apparently, a group of overparanoid parents and religious fanatics have a tiny bit of a problem with what amounts to being a rather popular rap song by Lil Wayne, entitled “Every Girl”. They’ve launched a website in an attempt to try and convince radio stations to either limit or cease entirely playing the song, as they say it encourages the exploitation of children–or more appropriately, girls. The song in question has apparently made it to the top 20 chart, and so as can be expected is getting a fair bit of play on national radio stations–minus the explicit lyrics, of course, which so far as I can tell make up probably half the song.
The article above outlines the specifics of exactly what their issue is with it, but for lack of a better way of putting it, their problems are two-fold–he released this song, which all but seems to encourage the exploitation of the female sex, plus his daughters and their friends were apparently on stage dancing to it during a live performance of this song last week.
If you can actually stomach the horible typing found in a goodly portion of the comments to that article, they raise several valid points that really, any reasonable person would have a difficult time arguing with. Most noteably, they point out almost exactly the level of ridiculous the situation reaches that a website, which encourages supporters to do everything from broadcast their support on Twitter or Facebook to calling up the local radio stations in question, is demanding the hault of that particular song–particularly when, as is pointed out in the comments, there are songs of an equal or worse nature being played on likely those very same stations. Add to that, the children the claim says are supposedly being harmed by this are old enough that they have technologies such as computers, iPods, etc and are more than likely savvy enough to have gotten their hands on this particular song by other, less than legal means if they really wanted to listen to it. Plus, the song’s been uploaded to YouTube (WARNING: NSFW), making their attempts to hamper local radio stations a little bit pointless–if they really wanted to hear that song anyway, they would.
To me, this almost seems like yet another push by the religious community, with the help of a few overprotective parents, to try and gain some degree of relevance in today’s life. Really, though, the fact that radio stations, even in its sensored form, have absolutely no problem playing music of this variety when even 10 years ago they did, should be clue enough that it just doesn’t work that way anymore. Of course, I still welcome this group to try and will try and keep an eye on their efforts–who knows, I may find myself surprised. Then again, that may be assuming far too much.