Phil Donahue Debates Obscenity With 2 Live Crew’s Luke

Toward the end of one of the most explosive episodes of Donahue — in which host Phil Donahue, who died Monday, tackled the hot topic of obscenity in music in 1990 — a caller said she believed Madonna should be arrested. Phil just chuckled. “Have you seen some of these Donahue shows?” he asked, taking off his blazer and putting it over his head and stumbling down the stairs. “Next thing you know, you’ll see this [he mimics a perp walk] and the handcuffs. And you’ll say, ‘You know what? He’s guilty, he’s got to be. The cops wouldn’t arrest him if he wasn’t guilty.’” That’s just because of how Donahue was not afraid to tackle any subject.

On the 1990 episode, a week after two members of 2 Live Crew were arrested and Florida police took a record store owner into custody for selling their album As Nasty as They Wanna Be, Donahue welcomed the group’s Luther Campbell as a guest. (Former Dead Kennedys singer Jello Biafra, ex-Plasmastics frontwoman Wendy O. Williams, and Suicidal Tendencies’ “Cyco” Mike Muir also appeared to defend their rights to free speech in music.) Focus on the Family’s Bob DeMoss and an “anti-pornography lawyer” named Jack Thompson defended the other side, with DeMoss oddly the only person onstage to drop an F-bomb during the live taping. The entire show became one of Donahue’s most memorable episodes.

“What’s all the fuss about? Well, [As] Nasty as They Wanna Be contains a lot of references to oral sex and male and female genitalia,” Donahue said at the beginning of the episode. “I know that because it says it right here. Where do you draw the line? And what about the First Amendment?” And that question set things off for the next 45 minutes (without commercials) of intense debate.

Thompson was the most incendiary guest since he purported flat-out lies about 2 Live Crew’s music. “There are 600 sexual references [on the album],” he said. “There are descriptions and glorifications of the brutalization of women sexually. … Luther, the causal nexus between what you do and the mental molestation of children and the physical molestation of women…” He didn’t get to finish.

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“We don’t talk about women, man,” Campbell hectored. “We don’t talk about harassment, sexually brutalizing women in my music, man. You’re out of your mind. You quote that from another album, from somebody else’s album who has sex with corpses and all that … You don’t talk about them. We don’t do that in my music, man. I’m tired of you saying that, too.”

“How about the gang rape on the album?” Thompson asked

“What gang rape?” Campbell retorted. “You quote it. You read it. You listened.”

Other highlights include Campbell poking holes in the conservatives’ claims about performing adults-only concerts. In Los Angeles, he said, they had police checking ID at the door to make sure everyone was an adult and he was still arrested. When asked about exposing his daughter to his own music, Campbell said that’s why he makes two albums, a dirty version and a clean version for kids. (As Clean as They Wanna Be came out in 1989.) And when Donahue read the lyrics along with 2 Live Crew’s “S&M” (off their 1988 Move Somethin’ album), Campbell said: “Every [word] that was up on that screen, everything that the man sung, people have done. If adults hadn’t had sex … ” He didn’t have to finish the question, the answer was so obvious.

Donahue was a master of giving everyone equal time. Biafra was able to tear apart Thompson’s claims of obscenity over the Dead Kennedys’ “Penis Landscape” painting, and Muir had a chance to refute a claim that the Suicidal Tendencies song “I Shot the Devil” was about killing President Reagan (the lyrics, though, are about shooting Reagan, as well as the Pope and the Devil.)

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The host also let audience members present opposing viewpoints. One teen, whom Donahue joked might not be old enough to be there, said he listened to 2 Live Crew’s music and had a girlfriend whom he didn’t abuse. Meanwhile, an older man said, “I believe in 10 years you’ll see people fornicating on the street.”

Of course, people weren’t having sex in the streets in 2000. But by 2010, Khia was singing “My Neck, My Back” on the radio. And 10 years after that, Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion scored a hit with “W.A.P.” And even now, you can listen to As Nasty as They Wanna Be on the major streaming services, thanks in no small part to Campbell getting a chance to defend himself on Donahue.