Is Radio Going Off the Bleep End? : Stations have gone beyond FCC requirements in editing Everlast’s ‘What It’s Like,’ cutting lyrics about drugs, weapons. ‘It’s a pretty sensitive time right now in the country,’ says one executive. Pop Beat

Everlast’s gritty essay “What It’s Like” has been among the year’s most-played songs on radio, but if you cruise down the radio dial in Los Angeles, don’t expect to hear the same version twice.

On KROQ-FM (106.7), for instance, rapper Everlast boasts that he has “smoked the finest green,” but over on KYSR-FM (98.7) the line is edited with sonic squiggles to become “bleep the finest bleep.”

On KLYY-FM (107.1), the song depicts a doomed dope dealer waving a “chrome .45,” but down the dial at KEZY-FM (95.9) the character’s livelihood is more mysterious--he’s “out on the corner with bleep”--and he gets killed after he “lost his head (and) pulled out his bleep.”

Editing out obscene words and imagery is hardly new in the radio business--classic songs by the Who, the Rolling Stones and the Steve Miller Band have famously gone under the knife--but the Everlast song is an example of music now being filtered for words that go well beyond the four-letter variety.

“That song sounds like Morse code on some stations,” says Sky Daniels, general manager of Radio & Records, the trade publication. “Why? Because it’s a pretty sensitive time right now in the country, and digital technology makes it easier than ever to edit a song. It adds up to more bleeps.”

The times are sensitive because media content is under intensifying scrutiny after the Colorado high school shooting and other flash points of youth violence. Moreover, observers say the widespread consolidation in the radio industry has ushered in a new level of corporate culture that may err on the side of conservatism.

“It used to be you would cut out hard-consonant profanities to avoid legal ramifications,” Daniels said, “but when you cut out a mention of gun, that’s a moral call and there’s no guidelines for that.”

For station managers and program directors, the current climate makes it logical to scan every new song for references that might offend, observers say. To Everlast, though, the handling of his song has been criminal.

“They just butcher it,” says the former frontman for the Los Angeles-based group House of Pain. “It’s a joke.”

The musician says editing standards not only vary by station, they also vary by song and genre. Hip-hop acts are edited more harshly than rock acts, he maintains.

Ironically, the rapper--his real name is Erik Shrody--typically eschews profanities in his music. “I’m proud of that,” he says, “but this song is so dark I could only find these words to tell the stories.”

The street scenes in the song depict an alcoholic panhandler, a young, unwed mother-to-be and the family of a slain drug dealer, and the “walk a mile in their shoes” message has earned critical plaudits. The downbeat, folk-flavored song has helped Everlast’s album, “Whitey Ford Sings the Blues,” sell more than 2.4 million copies and created a hit for a wide range of radio formats.

Not all of the stations playing the song are unsettled by the lyrics, and, in fact, the edgy lyrics are ideal for stations seeking cachet with young or edgy audiences. KROQ and KLYY, for instance, do not edit out “whore” or “balls” from the song for their alternative rock audiences.

“There are stations that will play songs purely for the shock value,” says Michael Steele, music director for KIIS-FM, which aims at an older audience. “They’ll play a song that will make the kids say, ‘Wow, they must be really cool and out there.’ ”

Stations looking for that type of “street cred” will also use editing sounds that barely obscure obscenities, calling into question the goal of the effort. “If you can hear the f and the k, why bother?” Daniels said. “They just want to stay legal.”

Federal Communications Commission guidelines set down a list of obscene words that are inappropriate for radio broadcast and call for stations to govern their content by their community standards--standards that, of course, vary by region and era.

“The use of language is much more colorful today in society than it used to be,” says Jeff Pollack, chairman of the Los Angeles-based Pollack Group, the nation’s largest radio consulting company. “And the language of the streets and the language of the schools is reflected on the radio.”

The power and allure of those colorful words is a touchy topic these days. While some media are reining in questionable content, others in the ever-widening entertainment world are willing to use titillation to stand out in the crowd.

This week, Doug Herzog, Fox Entertainment president, said the TV network would “push the envelope” and include bleeped-out profanities in a new sitcom instead of clumsy euphemisms for the ribald words. On the film front, a survey by a film watchdog group also reported that “South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut” contains more profanities per minute than any previous studio movie.

To Steele, the music director of KIIS who describes his audience as “moms with minivans,” every song must be judged on its own merits. His station opted not to cut the gun references from “What It’s Like,” but did excise “green.” The station has also cut other drug references, such as a Third Eye Blind lyric about “crystal meth.”

“You never want to wreck the vision of the artist,” he says. “It’s like chopping the penis off Michelangelo’s David because it offends somebody. . . . Art needs to be protected.”

Many artists and their record labels have tried to avoid radio edits by preemptively editing the song themselves and sending regular and “clean” mixes to programmers. The practice offends some artists, but others make the best of it.

Jeffrey Naumann, a Virgin Records vice president, points to rocker Lenny Kravitz, who knew a profanity among the lyrics of his song “Cab Driver” would not make it past radio gatekeepers. So Kravitz taped a New York taxi horn to use as a sound effect in place of the word.

“Artists are really looking to get airplay, and if the stations or label have to do a little nip and tuck on the song, hey, it’s worth it,” Naumann said.

To Everlast, though, a dozen nips and tucks amount to meatball surgery when it comes to the biggest hit of his solo career. But the bleeps do have an up side, says the rapper.

“The words that get cut are the ones [fans] sing the loudest during concerts,” he said. “When people hear it on radio they say, ‘What the hell is he saying there?’ and they go and buy the record. So I guess it makes me controversial.”