With the start of summer comes the start of county fair season, but this year’s Fairfax Country fair is spicing things up, and we’re not talking about the food.
Old-school rap group Naughty by Nature will be one of the acts at this summer’s Celebrate Fairfax!, performing Saturday night with Tone Loc and Sugar Hill Gang. And even though it was told it has to self-censor, we wonder just how Ferris-wheel-riding-balloon-holding-kid-friendly the rap group can make its songs that talk about sex, drugs and violence.
Take its most famous song “O.P.P.,” for instance. How will the group sing about “getting down” with “Other People’s Property” — aka having an affair — without taking out the “O.P.P.” part all together? Will the song’s many euphemisms about the female body be taken out, or will most kids not understand what they mean? And the fact band member Treach’s lyrics for the song were inspired by a drug dealer seems wrong for a family-friendly county fair.
Meagan Lindsay, director of communications and outreach for Celebrate Fairfax!, assured us the fair has a “strict contract” with the group that requires its language “to be appropriate for all audiences” making for a “show [that] will be fun and popular with all ages.”
Whatever happened to fairground standbys and less controversial music acts like KC & the Sunshine Band, the Temptations or Huey Lewis and the News?
