Record Chain Clears Shelves of Rap Album : Pop: Musicland and Sam Goody stores ban sale of 2 Live Crew’s ‘Nasty,’ but not the group’s cleaned-up version of ‘Wanna Be.’

The nation’s largest chain of record stores on Thursday ordered all its outlets to stop stocking and selling “uncensored” recordings by the controversial Florida-based rap group 2 Live Crew.

In a computer memo to the Minneapolis-based Musicland group’s 752 stores--including about 90 Musicland and Sam Goody outlets in Southern California--chief executive officer Arnie Bernstein instructed stores to ship 2 Live Crew stock back to headquarters in April.

The order applies to the group’s expletive-laced “As Nasty as They Wanna Be” album and other recordings but not to the group’s considerably toned-down alternate version “As Clean as They Wanna Be.”

Bernstein told the chain’s employees that all inquiries about the new policy should be directed to him. A secretary in Bernstein’s Minneapolis office said, however, that he was in a board meeting for much of the day and was unavailable for comment.

Veronica Ronchetti, manager of the Musicland at 725 S. Figueroa St. in downtown Los Angeles, said that the computer memo was waiting for her when she opened the store Thursday morning, and that she was instructed to tell customers that the store now only sold the “clean” versions of the group’s material.

Employees at other Musicland stores confirmed the report.

The 2 Live Crew’s sexually explicit album “As Nasty as They Wanna Be” has been at the center of a storm recently. A call for an obscenity and racketeering investigation against the group’s Miami-based Luke Skyywalker record label by Florida Gov. Bob Martinez led to stores throughout the state pulling the group’s records from their shelves.

On March 9, a judge in Florida’s Broward County, which includes Ft. Lauderdale, ruled the “Nasty” album obscene and banned its sale in the county, and on the other side of the state last week a 19-year-old clerk at a Sarasota record store was arrested for selling a tape of the album to an 11-year-old girl.

“Obviously we’re not pleased,” said Skyywalker public relations director Debbie Bennett of the Musicland action. “But we can understand where they’re coming from. No retailers want to take too much heat over this and we don’t want them to. But I received a few calls from Musicland employees telling me they don’t think it’s right and they will tell the company.

“Obviously there’s nothing legally we can do,” Bennett said. “You can’t make a retailer stock anything.”

Bennett said that Skyywalker is today filing an amendment complaint to suspend the Broward County ruling while a court case is prepared, but has asked retailers in Broward not to break the ban as long as it stands. She also claimed that the controversy over the group had actually launched the album into the top spot among cassette and compact disc sales in the Musicland chain.

The “Nasty” album cover carries a notice warning of explicit lyrics, and Skyywalker head Luther Campbell has stated that he does not consider the album appropriate for minors.

Several chains, including Albany, New York-based Trans World Music, the nation’s second-largest chain with 433 outlets, had already pulled the records from their Florida stores and instituted an 18-and-over sales policy for sales of the recordings elsewhere.

Musicland’s move on Thursday was the first nationwide action against the recording, however.

Times intern Joe Velazquez also contributed to this story.