Geto Boys Music Group

Geffen Records announced Wednesday that it will not distribute the debut album by Houston rap group the Geto Boys because of offensive content. "The extent of which the Geto Boys album glamorizes and possibly endorses violence, racism and misogyny compels us to encourage Def American to select a distributor with a greater affinity for this musical expression," the Los Angeles-based company said in a statement.

Flip on a Geto Boys album, and you enter a place where life is nasty, brutish and short. To its many detractors, this hard-core rap group from Houston is itself nasty and brutish. At 4-foot-2, band member Bushwick Bill is undeniably short. The latest Geto Boys album, "Till Death Do Us Part," is mainly business as usual for the Geto Boys--and, with the album having quickly gone gold, business is good.

Flip on a Geto Boys album, and you enter a place where life is nasty, brutish and short. To its many detractors, this hard-core rap group from Houston is itself nasty and brutish. At 4-foot-2, band member Bushwick Bill is undeniably short. The latest Geto Boys album, "Till Death Do Us Part," is mainly business as usual for the Geto Boys--and, with the album having quickly gone gold, business is good.

Considered in the most forgiving light possible, the hard-core rap group the Geto Boys are pathologists who take cuttings from society's diseased body and hold them up to a microscope for our inspection. Remove the benefit of the doubt--as Geffen Records did in 1990, when it refused to distribute a Geto Boys album it found to glamorize "violence, racism and misogyny"--and the group is part of that pathology.

Considered in the most forgiving light possible, the hard-core rap group the Geto Boys are pathologists who take cuttings from society's diseased body and hold them up to a microscope for our inspection. Remove the benefit of the doubt--as Geffen Records did in 1990, when it refused to distribute a Geto Boys album it found to glamorize "violence, racism and misogyny"--and the group is part of that pathology.

Todd (Too Short) Shaw--the latest sexually explicit rapper to be drawn into the growing national debate over obscenity in pop music--makes no bones about what he does for a living. "There's a lot of money in rapping dirty," he says. "We're running a business here. I give my fans what they want."

Todd (Too Short) Shaw--the latest sexually explicit rapper to be drawn into the growing national debate over obscenity in pop music--makes no bones about what he does for a living. "There's a lot of money in rapping dirty," he says. "We're running a business here. I give my fans what they want."

Geffen Records announced Wednesday that it will not distribute the debut album by Houston rap group the Geto Boys because of offensive content. "The extent of which the Geto Boys album glamorizes and possibly endorses violence, racism and misogyny compels us to encourage Def American to select a distributor with a greater affinity for this musical expression," the Los Angeles-based company said in a statement.