The Wiz: "Motherf$&ker"🖕 in Music!🤘
What connects an old American murder trial, Samuel L. Jackson, rock and hip-hop? The expression "motherfucker" 🖕!
One of the earliest recorded uses appears in testimony from a late-19th-century American murder trial, quoting a barrage of insults the victim directed at the accused.
More examples followed and the word entered music. Since so much began with the blues 😉, some early recordings came from there too.
The blues 🎙️
Blues singers in the 1930s and 1940s disguised the expression with similar-sounding phrases. One early example comes from legendary singer and guitarist Memphis Minnie in 1935.
And here is Dirty Red in 1947:
Rock 🎸
One landmark appearance in popular rock came from Detroit's explosive proto-punk outfit "MC5", the Motor City Five. A studio recording might have made a label hesitate, but their 1969 live debut reached shops with Rob Tyner's immortal introductory roar to "Kick Out the Jams".
Tyner fires up the audience and launches the song with its notorious shouted expletive.
Retail resistance followed almost as quickly. Some shops refused to stock the album, and an edited version replaced the offending address with "brothers and sisters". It only made the band and audiences more fired up live!
Around the same time, a legendary psychedelic folk-rock band used the expression more discreetly in a magnificent album's opener: "Jefferson Airplane" and "We Can Be Together", from "Volunteers".
Here it appears within a slogan associated with an anarchist group active during the Vietnam War. Listen around 3:27 for the confrontational line.
Moving toward the mainstream 📺
Although traditional television still censors it, the term is now common in music, especially hip-hop and rock.
Cinema 🎬 and music together helped carry it further into mainstream African American popular culture, through a legendary soundtrack.
The late, great Isaac Hayes worked the beginning of the word into the soul and funk masterpiece "Theme from Shaft" (1971). The music earned Oscar and Grammy recognition, including for the soundtrack album, and appears on countless best-of lists 🏆.
The film was a landmark in popular action cinema, placing a powerful African American hero at its center 💪🏿.
A female voice stops the full word before it lands. But the meaning gets through perfectly, as the playful exchange makes clear.
The call-and-response turns an interrupted insult into a knowing celebration of Shaft's toughness.
I have to include "The Simpsons" 🟡 tribute, with Bart and Lisa duetting on the theme, another indication of how widely it traveled into popular culture.
Joining the dots and completing a musical circle 🔃
Let's finish with two Los Angeles powerhouses combining late-20th-century rock and hip-hop, with the expression firmly in their arsenal.
First, "Body Count", whose energetic, aggressive metal is fronted by rap star Ice-T 🍹. You will find a generous supply throughout their catalog, including within seconds of the opener on their outstanding 1992 debut.
The second closes the circle back to "MC5". I first heard their song through a cover by a group some consider the finest live band in the world: "Rage Against the Machine", that extraordinary combination of hip-hop, funk and metal. Fire 🔥 in their eyes, throats, hands and feet! Here is Zack de la Rocha delivering a characteristic roar around 4:58 in one of their best-known songs.
From "Rage Against the Machine" (1992):
A shared surprise 💥 and a personal note
I was fortunate to see both bands near their peak at Tel Aviv's late, lamented Cinerama, where a vast parking lot now stands. After around a year without gigs, the venue may not return, but concerts finally can! Buy tickets for our talented artists, and hopefully we will meet by the stages 🤘.
Enjoy!
O.Miz🎧
In the image, counterclockwise from lower-left: the incident behind the old murder trial, Memphis Minnie, "MC5", Isaac Hayes's "Shaft" soundtrack, "Body Count", "Rage Against the Machine", Samuel L. Jackson's unmistakable look and the expression itself, in the spirit of free speech 🙃.
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