Censorship edits in music

mistersloane

heavy heavy monster sound
Apparently these edits ( y'know, where they put a 'boink' sound over the rude word ) have several categories :

Blanking; when the volume is set to zero for all or part of the word.
Bleeping; playing a noise, usually a "beep", over all or part of the word.
Resampling; using a like-sounding portion of vocals and music to override the offending word.
Resinging; removing the word or part of the word and keep the instrumental part of the song
Backmasking; taking the offending word and reversing the audio, sometimes the whole audio is reversed (often to simulate a 'backspin' sound), but more usually only the vocal track is reversed.
Skipping; deleting the word from the song without a time delay.

Does anyone know who the first person was to use these techniques? Or do people have any favourite ones, ones where the edits are better than the originals? My fave is 'Bang Bang' by Capone N Noreaga, where Alchemist puts in an amazing backward synth sound over where they say 'shit' in the chorus, when I heard the real version it disappointed me...any more?
 
Last edited:

john eden

male pale and stale
IIrc "Replacement Killer" by Elephant Man just has a load of gun-cocking noises in it. :cool:

Also a fan of when they just reverse the offending word.
 

STN

sou'wester
My personal favourite is Roxanne Shante's 'Brothers Ain't Shit' where the bleeps are so loud in the mix as to be more aggressive than the original swearwords. There's also a fair bit of word-reversing, which gives the record a confused, angry sound.
 

crackerjack

Well-known member
My personal favourite is Roxanne Shante's 'Brothers Ain't Shit' where the bleeps are so loud in the mix as to be more aggressive than the original swearwords. There's also a fair bit of word-reversing, which gives the record a confused, angry sound.

Her Big Mama is hilarious too. half the words are missing on the clean version.
 

mistersloane

heavy heavy monster sound
If it's possible, can anyone up their examples? I just searched for the 'clean' edits of the Elephant Man and Shante tracks but can't find em. Lol trust Roxanne. They tried to do a clean version of 'Fuck Tha Police' but then just got rid of it on the censored album version because it rendered the track meaningless. It's less what was censored that I'm interested in, more the creative application of theose sort of edits.
 

STN

sou'wester
I'm too thick to upload it, I'm afraid. It was on a Cold Chillin' 12. I can't remember if it was radio edit/album version or radio edit/instrumental on the 12. It could even have been radio edit both sides.
 

crackerjack

Well-known member
I'm too thick to upload it, I'm afraid. It was on a Cold Chillin' 12. I can't remember if it was radio edit/album version or radio edit/instrumental on the 12. It could even have been radio edit both sides.

Ditto with me. I've just checked my Brothers ain't 12", and it's actually LP version both sides.

My Big Mama is 12" only too - wouldn't have a clue how to upload and since I can't even open my computer CD player at the mo, it's irrelevant anyway
 

mistersloane

heavy heavy monster sound
Lol thanks for the suggestions though, I'll search around. My ex's daughter used to think that Eminem was actually saying all the edits when I got her his first album, that the noises were actually rude words.
 
Top