They should label both the clean and explicit versions
January 25, 2006I agree it’s a good idea that the record industry labels explicit albums with that little parental advisory sticker. But the problem is you don’t always know whether an album has a clean/explicit version. So it’s possible to accidentally buy a “clean” version, because you don’t know you should be looking for the one that has the parental sticker.
That happened to me this weekend. I was at the used CD store and picked up a copy of Outkast’s Stankonia, which I’ve been told is a great album. But it’s an older album so I didn’t even think about the whole explicit/clean issue. Wasn’t until I got home and listened to the CD that I realized it was in fact the clean version.
That’s just annoying. I think if they’re going to label “explicit” albums they should also label the “clean” version. So that you as the consumer knows when you see the “clean” label that there is an alternative “explicit” version available. That way you wouldn’t accidentally buy the clean when you wanted the explicit.
Not a huge deal–the used CD store has a 7-day return policy so I returned Stankonia. Unfortunately they did not have the explicit version so I picked up something else entirely, Maroon 5’s debut album from a couple years ago. Those guys definitely don’t have a clean/explicit issue with their brand of pop rock.
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