On June 8, 1990, an undercover Broward County detective entered into E-C Records and purchased 2 Live Crew’s As Nasty As They Wanna Be on vinyl and cassette for $8.49 each. Charles Freeman’s struggling record shop was in a troubled part of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, surrounded by a few churches, run-down nightclubs, and modest homes. Residents of the area would complain of slow response times to 911 calls and harassment of Black motorists by police. Freeman had saved up $8,000 to open E-C Records almost four year prior and now owed thousands in back rent. But even one sale helps, right?
After Freeman ended the transaction, six deputies stormed E-C Records, arresting the shop owner and seizing the six remaining copies of As Nasty As They Wanna Be.
“I’m not going for censorship,” Freeman said as he was taken into custody. “America is free, free for everybody.”
He was later released on $100 bail. The 32-year-old father of three was charged with a misdemeanor for selling “obscene material.” Freeman faced up to one year in prison and a maximum fine of $1,000.
Freeman’s arrest was the second in Florida to stem from 2 Live Crew’s third album. A Sarasota man was charged with a felony that previous April after selling the album to an 11-year-old girl. He was not prosecuted.
As Nasty As They Wanna Be was released in 1989 and featured the controversial singles “Me So Horny,” “C’mon Babe,” and “The Fuck Shop.” On February 22, 1990, Florida Governor Bob Martinez ordered an official investigation into the record and the Miami rap act for possible violation of obscenity and racketeering laws.
“Songs like those in question promote the worst in society, and they have no business being available to minors,” the governor wrote in his letter to the state prosecutor.
In March, Judge Mel Grossman ruled that the album was obscene. The band sued, but this ruling was later backed up by U.S. District Judge Jose Gonzalez after a two-day hearing. Sheriffs in three South Florida counties now had the legal right to arrest anyone caught selling the album.
Vice President Dan Quayle applauded the ban, saying more local officials should “exert moral authority and moral leadership.” Anti-pornography activists praised the ruling, celebrating that 2 Live Crew leader Luther Campbell could no longer “mentally molest” children with his music.
Freeman’s arrest came just days after Judge Gonzalez’s ruling, but he was far from the first to be arrested for selling 2 Live Crew records. In April of 1987, an 18-year-old part-time clerk in Callaway, Florida, sold an album to a 14-year-old and was charged with a third-degree felony for violating a state law prohibiting the “sale of harmful material to a person under the age of 18.” The charge carried with it a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $5,000 fine. In the clerk’s defense, this cassette was not marked with a parental warning label. She was later acquitted.
In June 1988, Alabama shop owner Tommy Hammond was arrested after police confiscated numerous rap albums from his store and deemed the content in violation of state law. This case also involved an undercover officer purchasing a 2 Live Crew cassette. Hammond was convicted the following year and fined $500, but he appealed the conviction on the advice of the judge.
During the hearing, jurors were shown Eddie Murphy’s Raw special, as well as actual pornography readily available around their small town. On February 22, 1990, just as Florida’s governor ordered the investigation of 2 Live Crew’s newest record, Alabama jurors acquitted Hammond, who was white, after only 90 minutes of deliberation.
“When they showed all the things that were tolerated in the city at the time, I couldn’t see any difference between them,” said one juror.
In response to the Florida governor’s order and judge’s subsequent ruling, 2 Live Crew released their fourth album, titled Banned in the U.S.A., in July 1990. It was the first album to feature the once-familiar black-and-white parental advisory sticker.
Freeman’s trial began on October 1, 1990. The jury made up of mostly women sat awkwardly as all 80 minutes of As Bad As They Wanna Be boomed and rattled throughout the courtroom. The album’s lyrics include 87 references to oral sex and 116 mentions of genitalia, as well as samples of Rudy Ray Moore, Full Metal Jacket, Richard Pryor, Andrew Dice Clay, Eddie Murphy, Kraftwerk, Guns N’ Roses, and Van Halen.
Issues of racial bias were central to the trial before it even got started. Of the 35 potential jurors assembled for the trial, only one was Black. The final jury would be all white, from middle- to upper-class backgrounds, and were largely unfamiliar with rap music. Freeman had been saving up to buy a $45,000 house. One of the jurors in his trial lived in the fourth most valuable home in Broward County, estimated at more than $3.6 million. Freeman’s attorneys asked the judge to assign a more diverse jury, but the judge refused on the grounds that Broward County’s process for jury selection was completely random.
Freeman’s trial sparked debate regarding how the county selects its jurors. At the time, a computer program would randomly select prospective jurors from the county’s list of 626,973 registered voters, as mandated by law. Howard Finkelstein, Broward’s chief assistant public defender, called the jury selection system institutionally unfair.
“If the object was to have a fair cross section of the community to draw a jury pool, they’d utilize phone records, birth certificates, or some other pool in which more people participate,” Finkelstein said. “Those who vote or take an interest in the political process are generally those who have the financial luxury to care about social issues. Those who are the object of social issues struggle on a daily basis to survive. Accordingly, few register to vote.”
At the time, Black residents made up 13 percent of Broward’s population, but only 8.5 percent of its registered voters. In the fall of 1990, reporters with the South Florida Sun Sentinel surveyed 10 juries sitting through trials in the Broward County Courthouse on a random Thursday afternoon. Of the 68 jurors in courtrooms, only three were Black. Of the 160 potential jurors in the courthouse waiting room, only six were Black. Jurors in Broward County would continue to be selected from the voter registration database until 1998 when Florida switched to driver’s license rolls.
“It’s clear that the jury is not from the [Black] community, or familiar with the community,” said Freeman’s defense attorney Bruce Rogow. “This music is like a foreign country to them.”
The second setback for the defense happened when the judge blocked an attempt to present the jury with albums from the Ghetto Boys and Ice Cube, as well as pornographic magazines and videos such as Neighborhood Nymphs that were also available in Broward County at the time. A defense attorney said this “cut out one of the hearts” of their case.
Forced to rely on their expert witnesses to sway the jury, the defense called a sex therapist to the stand. She reported that she had surveyed 18 of her patients who listened to the album, and none admitted to being aroused. Not once.
This did little good, and the three-day trial ended on October 3 when Freeman was found guilty. The jury deliberated for just 90 minutes.
“They don’t know nothing about the goddamn ghetto,” Freeman shouted as he left the courthouse. “They don’t know where my record shop is. The verdict does not reflect my community standards as a Black man in Broward County.”
ACLU spokesman Phil Gutis opposed the verdict, stating, “More than a million people have bought and enjoyed the album, and here we have an all-white jury of six people in Broward County deciding what the rest of us should be able to see, hear, and enjoy.”
Michael Greene, president of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, felt the same, stating, “Today the victim is a little guy who sells records, but we’re sure the target is a black form of music and freedom of expression.”
Freeman’s attorneys promised to appeal the verdict, arguing again that the jury did not truly represent Broward County or the country as a whole. Freeman and his attorneys lost the bid for a new trial in November, after the defense argued the judge gave the jury additional instructions that had not been agreed upon by the defense and prosecution. This verdict came after three members of 2 Live Crew were acquitted on misdemeanor charges stemming from a live performance in a nightclub.
“I’m not surprised,” Freeman told reporters after his appeal was denied. “You expect the worst and that way you deal with it a little better. I think the whole thing is a joke. It’s a circus.”
Leading up to his sentencing, Freeman told reporters that his business had been totally disrupted. He claimed that he had developed stomach ulcers and would vomit after each meal. Speaking with the Tampa Bay Times, Freeman stated the record store was his attempt at cleaning up his act after a “life of crime.”
“I never imagined I’d be about to go to jail for selling a record,” he told the Times. “I’m just trying to earn an honest living down here. No judge should be allowed to dictate what kind of music an adult can listen to.”
On December 12, 1990, Freeman received the maximum fine of $1,000, plus $87 in court costs. The sentence came two days after charges were dropped against a Texas record store owner who sold the record. At one point in the hearing, Freeman stood and said, “Your honor, I would like to say that the prosecutor, you, and this whole fucking court is out of order.”
He immediately apologized for the outburst, but would receive a 30-minute lecture from the judge, who sarcastically compared Freeman’s insistence on selling the banned record to the efforts of famous civil rights leaders.
Freeman shuttered E-C Records shortly after receiving the fine. He told reporters the business had been struggling for years and he owed his landlord $6,600 in back rent.
“I’m a fighter and I’ll try something,” he told the Associated Press. “This is America, and things go and things come.”
Freeman failed to find work after a final closeout sale in May 1991. Reports say that he had grown bitter with 2 Live Crew’s frontman Campbell. Freeman lobbied musicians and record companies to help him reopen his business. He received $800 from Capitol Records, and a charity concert raised an additional $3,000.
In July 1991, Freeman was arrested again — this time on a charge of conspiracy to distribute cocaine between January 1987 and January 1989, before he entered the public spotlight. Prosecutors also alleged that Freeman shot another man in 1987 after a dispute over a drug payment. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 18 years in prison.
Two months after Freeman’s conviction for drug charges, 2 Live Crew successfully appealed the judge’s order condemning As Nasty As They Wanna Be. Campbell joked to reporters that he had invited a conservative activist to celebrate the legal victory by grabbing a drink together at Hooters.
The ruling in favor of As Nasty As They Wanna Be came one day after a Broward circuit judge upheld Freeman’s $1,000 fine for selling copies of the record to an undercover detective for around $17. Largely thanks to the controversy, the album went platinum, selling over a million copies.
