2 Live Crew was one of Miami’s most successful Hip Hop groups and entered the rap world when only New York and the West Coast were getting play for the most part.
Recently speaking with NPR, Luther Campbell (aka Luke Skywalker) recalled Campbell V. Acuff-Rose Music, a landmark copyright law case that he and his group were involved in. He says he felt alone in the legal bout and that few in the music industry supported him.
“I felt like the only person that was with me, was me — and the people of my community, the people of Liberty City,” he said when asked about the case. “That was it. And that’s why I always came back home, even when I became more and more successful. Because you had rap groups, in the height of it all, going on TV — you know, from Salt-N-Pepa to Kid ‘n Play — talking bad about what we were doing on records. You had the Russell Simmonses of the world, all these same people that you would have thought would have supported us, coming after the music.”
Campbell also recalled releasing music in competition with others at the time when they began as a group.
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“I sat there [thinking], if we’re gonna compete with these guys, we don’t have the same budget they have, so what we’re gonna have to do is do something different: Let’s do comedy. Let’s sample some of these famous comedians, like Redd Foxx and Leroy & Skillet and Aunt Esther — and we’ll keep this bass music, this uptempo, Miami-style music,” he said. “We’re gonna do dance. And that will set us apart from everybody else.”
Read the full interview here.
