Guate Pictures

Archive for January 20th, 2010

If you’ve ever purchased a CD or at least been to a record store and looked around, you’d be familiar with the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) logo that’s on some of the record album covers that says: Parental Advisory – Explicit Content. The recording company that produced the album decides which ones get the sticker and which ones don’t, so it isn’t exactly a rating given out by some accredited evaluation group. There isn’t a standard set of criteria to tick off against, but the albums that have this warning are usually presumed to have instances of strong profanity, violence and/or sexual situations. Critics have said that an album that has a sticker doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s more profane than one that doesn’t have a sticker. Some have been first released without the label and subsequently re-released with one. In other words, the label isn’t as telling as album titles like “Prolonging the Magic” and “Barely Legal.”