DFSAB, The Literary Discussion

Profanity in literature. Many writers use that. Some, because of their targeted audiences, don't. In the eBooks - or even the classic handwritten books that our author writes or had written, he lightly censors the cussing. I wanted to find out why that was.

A few people might look at that and say, either cus or don't cus, but don't do it halfway. Others probably wouldn't pay it any mind - either way. Still, there might be a few are completely against the use of profanity in all its forms.

Let me start with showing you what the writer does and Dope Enterprises' editor has embraced as 'kinda our own little thing'. For the big five cus words of damn, fuck, shit, ass, and bitch; our eBooks display those as da-n, fu--, shi-, as-, and bitc-. Functionally, each is intrinsically censored so that their pronouncement never comes to pass - although, the visual is definitely intact. There's no way that those words can be in any way misconstrued. So why not just spell them all the way out? Why not be like everybody else?

Come on now. You've read my posts for long enough. You've read these eBooks for a while now. You have to know that being like everybody else is not our way. But we don't do the things that we do simply to be different because that would imply that there was a conscious intent and an effort being made to deviate from the norm. To us, many of the things that we do *are* the norm.

With the cussing in particular, the writer has written those words in the dashed-out manner for (going on) decades. It's very much a part of his natural flow, and if you've ever heard him cus, he actually speaks those words similarly. Writing is something that gets in a writer's blood - their soul, so it often bleeds out into their everyday personality. How could it not? Honestly, he's spent more time around, with, and in the presence of his muse than family, friends, or associates combined - by a factor of years. There's a different discussion in that statement about effective introversion, often accused schizophrenia, and a really interesting otherworldly relationship which leads to the telling of a painful biography which is actually irrelevant to this post, but I often like to point that out because...again, writing does affect everyday life; so very little of what we've done is 'spur of the moment'.

To fully do this topic justice, my Shokan scouts had to probe deeply into that biography. It brought up the history of our sister company, Def Mute Records. DFSAB is a song from the group ChaoS (The CHAOtic Syndrome) which featured E Luv (who you should know if you read SpaceStation Colt: Damnitio Exeum (2009)) and GMNT among others (although he was going by TMNT back then) plus DJ VoiceCrack (our resident soundtrack composer) on the production. There were others in that group, but those are some of the names that you should definitely recognize from the Dope Enterprises, literary side of things. The classic album might yet be put out this year as a critical rerelease, but its significance is even deeper and goes back even further than the mentioning which surrounds even that track's original release.

Including this particular album, ChaoS: Freakin' A/Crazy Loco (1993), Def Mute Records has released a total of twenty-one albums - as of this post. That's with underground (of which this album is) and mainstream releases factored in. By today's standards, where what we're told is quality happens to be questionable and the only way for the unaffiliated to get out there is to release quantity, twenty-one albums might not mean or seem like a whole lot. There are actually freebie EP's which also got released along the way - one hugely popular too. But for a record label from the suburbs of Buffalo Grove, it was actually pretty cool.

If you ever get a chance, pop on over to the Def Mute Records web site and take a listen. Some of that stuff is really, really hardcore from the perspective of the rap albums that they released. They're not really doing anything with that right now because the focus is more on putting out instrumental albums which keep pace with Dope Enterprises and are the actual full-length soundtracks for the eBooks of the SpaceStation Colt Imprint. Just to throw some rumors out there, an Earl Solow (another name that you might recognize from these stories) album might be dropping in a few years to coincide with the release of, I believe, the fifth SpaceStation Colt novel, The Next Dead Rapper. Don't quote me on any of this since everything is hearsay. The album would be entitled Earl Solow: On the Solow Tip.

Anyway, two albums before ChaoS dropped, a lesser known album with really high-pitched, prepubescent voices was released called, The Trigger Happy Mofu-s: Xplicit & ILLicit (~1992). This was released back when parents could still barge into rooms in their own home that they maintained and paid the bills for without having to announce themselves. Well, there was quite a bit of cussing, and that tape was confiscated for something like five years. It was a wonder that the tape was even returned, but that's a piece of Def Mute Records' history - their first ever album. The music wasn't very good, and the lyrics weren't all that crisp, but compare that to what they're releasing now - twenty years later, and the evolution is astonishing.

In short, somebody's mom put the fear of an Ethereal into him, and he'd taken the censor method that started with writing and used it ever since. Surprisingly, other rap albums did get released, covertly, during that period which had cussing in them as well, but the labelmates had learned to do things more discreetly when no parents were around - moving forward. Also, as time passed and the artists and producers started growing up, leeway was given, and a happy medium was reached where secrets no longer needed to be kept, creativity (and the associative cussing) was respected, and each party - parent and offspring alike let things move forward.

Remember, this was the suburbs of Buffalo Grove. Cussing in rap was getting extremely bad press - unwarranted in my estimation because I doubt that the people who were so worked up about it ever even listened to it. Plus, the double standard of watching Rated-R movies was applied when condemning certain artists. Honestly, 1988 was the greatest year in music to me and anybody else who you will talk to at Def Mute Records. It was the year that inspired them to start that record label in the first place. And as DJ VoiceCrack nears having produced his 300th track, you have to concede that the occasional bad word did much more harm than good.

If you get a chance, take a listen to some of the pre-soundtrack Def Mute Records works. There's an entire narrative to this piece of the overall Dope Enterprises Infinity history which pays homage to our writer's original, noble excuse for keeping completely different friends from high school, college, and the corporate years close.

Everything is. It all comes back to this original point of DFSAB which acknowledges a previously fledgling past where a record label tried to come together in the aftermath of putting down some explicit lyrics that net a parental advisory. These eBooks constantly recognize that period and dutifully apply the subtle censoring to the cus words that appear within their pages.

Lightly censored, it's meant for respect as well as emphasis. It's eye-catching, but not in a bad way. Some have said that people read by picking up patterns - almost glancing over the words and not taking things in letter by letter. I find that a little disconcerting because skim-reading can cause a person to miss a few things, might shortchange their own experience, and doesn't really do the eBook justice. But, read how you like. Who am I to dissuade another? The dashed-out cus words almost slow the reading down for a reader, so (from my admittedly biased character perspective) I don't necessarily consider that a bad thing.

Cussing in general is also not exactly a good thing. At least, the Human culture doesn't see it that way, so a pseudo acknowledgment of this generational fact is interesting. Kids do actually get their hands on these eBooks, and there can be an influence - whether meant or unintended. The writer actually grew up reading adult-themed action novels but recognizes that some parents might not want their children doing the same. And sometimes, parental oversight does slip through the cracks when these works wind up accidentally in a child's hands. The statement, as with the societal norm, is to say that those words are still not commonplace. Although they appear within the pages of Dope Enterprises' rather adult books, a hint of social responsibility is also being extended in their partial censoring.

It's kinda like bleeping out the words in music, but much cooler because it doesn't detract from the original work - because it is the original work! Those cus words are still in there. And, the flow of the story is not in any way hampered. Sounds like a win-win all the way around to me.