No Album Out Yet but Rappers Still Under Fire

A rap group called the Murderers is already on trial--and it hasn’t even released its first album yet.

The Queens, N.Y., group, which features million-selling rap star Ja Rule, is the latest hip-hop group to find itself answering criticism about coarse language and violent imagery, but in this case the heat isn’t coming from anti-rap crusaders--it’s coming from the group’s corporate backers.

The album, “Irv Gotti Presents the Murderers,” is scheduled to hit stores March 21 after a series of delays that the group attributes to squabbles with Seagram’s Universal Music Group over its menacing moniker and lyrics about violence toward police officers and gays. In the end, the group reluctantly re-recorded some tracks and the objectionable lines were excised, Ja Rule says.

The group also has been told that its name is too negative to be included in video credits on the BET music channel.

The experience has left the rapper bitter about policies he views as hypocritical.

“That’s all that’s been the story so far,” Ja Rule says. “ ‘Why did you name it the Murderers? Why are you calling yourselves Murderers?’ ”

The rapper pointed out that the label didn’t want the group to use a derogatory term for homosexuals or a slur aimed at police, but allowed them to use a racial epithet toward African Americans at will.

Is it hypocrisy, or merely an exercise of corporate responsibility in a time when violent and polarizing pop culture content is under intense scrutiny? Universal Music, a Goliath of the industry with 27% of the U.S. music sales market in 1999, has a review process in place to screen the content of all of the 800 or so new titles it releases each year. Sources say red-flag issues include the depiction of bigotry and violence against police.

“The company has a comprehensive review process in place to monitor the content of all of its releases for all of its record labels,” the spokesman said. “This is a subjective process and not everyone will always agree with these decisions.”

The spokesman also said the company would not address Ja Rule’s comments or discuss internal dealings with artists.

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The dealings with Universal may be upsetting for Ja Rule, but controversy can translate to a commercial boost in the rap market. “It’s a whole big thing that no one wants to show or play us,” says rap impresario Irv Gotti. “This is going to be some special, underground stuff.”

The group--which is rounded out by Black Child, O-1, Vita and Tah Murdah--was told by Black Entertainment Television that the music channel would not use the group’s name in artist credits for the video, and would instead list the member’s individual names.

“I was just uncomfortable playing a group called the Murderers,” said Stephen Hill, vice president of music programming for the cable channel. Hill added that while he likes the video and plans to include it in the station’s playlist, many young viewers of the channel “look up to these rap superstars” and that the group’s name is too negative to condone.

A spokesman for MTV, meanwhile, says that the channel will not alter the group’s name in credits.

Gotti, born Irving Lorenzo, is releasing the Murderers album on his Murder Inc. label, a joint venture with Def Jam, which is in turn under Universal Music’s vast corporate umbrella. To him, Universal’s complaints about the Murderers are a familiar refrain.

“The censorship with us is just like with N.W.A and Luke,” he says, referring to the controversy kicked up in the 1980s by N.W.A’s gangsta-rap classic “F--- Tha Police” and the obscenity case brought against Luther “Luke” Campbell of 2 Live Crew for lurid lyrics.

More recently, the violence of rap has gone beyond imagery. The slayings of Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G. shook the genre’s community, and the violent crime charges against stars such as Jay-Z and Sean “Puffy” Combs appear to be ratcheting up concerns among corporate executives.

The Bertelsmann Music Group, for instance, is weighing whether it should even release the debut album from Combs’ protege Shyne, who had just been indicted on three felony counts of attempted murder. Combs, meanwhile, is still dealing with weapons and bribery charges in New York, and last year pleaded guilty to a harassment charge in connection with an attack on a rival record executive. Combs is chairman of Bad Boy Entertainment, which is a joint venture with the German-owned BMG, and that corporation’s leadership has been badly rattled by Combs’ high-profile arrests.

Rap is integral to Universal’s sales, but it has also brought controversy with its profits. In 1999, five of the 10 best-selling Universal acts were rappers--and two of them, DMX and Jay-Z, spent part of the year defending themselves from charges of possession of illegal hollow-tipped bullets and a nightclub stabbing, respectively.

The Murderers’ first single is titled “We Don’t Give a F---” (an alternate version called “We Don’t Give a What” has been tailored to meet radio and airplay standards). Ja Rule says it’s a statement record.

“We’ve got a strong foundation on the streets,” he says. “Some people think that you have to be real commercial to sell records. What we’re doing isn’t about records. It’s about a movement: us against them, the streets against the political forces that stop certain artists from putting out certain records.”

Gotti assembled the Murderers after he’d helped engineer the success of Ja Rule (whose debut album for his label, 1999’s “Venni Vetti Vecci,” has sold more than 1.2 million copies) and DMX, as well as producing some of Jay-Z’s music.

After building interest late last year, the Murderers have seen their album pushed back three times.

“I’m looking at the [Amadou] Diallo case,” Ja Rule says, referring to the recent trial of four New York police officers. “They just let all of the cops go, who shot at this man 41 times, and I can’t say, ‘F--- the police,’ on a record. Get out of here. That’s amazing to me.”

Times staff writer Geoff Boucher contributed to this story.