Yes, that is the first line of Immortal Technique's song "Freedom of Speech" (you have no idea how much I wanted to use it for our Perilous Animoto...it ended up being a little bit too explicit for the group's taste though.)
Anyway, take a listen to the song. It's pretty good! I love it. After downloading the song (thanks to Sarah Goomar), I went on to research the rapper Immortal Technique a little bit more. I already had a song by him ("Dance with the Devil"- it's pretty scary but also an amazing song, I'd recommend a listen if you've never heard it), but I never really knew who Immortal Technique was. From his wikipedia article, I learned that the rapper's real name is Felipe Andres Coronel, he is 31 years old, he was born in Lima, Peru, and he is not, nor has he ever been signed to a record label.
That last part is the part that really shocked me- how is it possible that an artist as truly talented as Immortal Technique (by my standards) isn't signed when all of those crappy rappers out there like Asher Roth are??
And then it occurred to me- the whole point of the song "Freedom of Speech" was that being signed to a label was a limit of the first amendment in itself. Immortal Technique doesn't want to be signed to a label because what he raps about is important to him- he doesn't want corporate sponsors and record label executives telling him how to express himself and when to tone down his message.
I never really thought of having corporate sponsors as a limit of freedom of speech, but I guess that's the compromise many artists will make for fame and the ability to have their music heard. In what other ways is freedom of speech limited by mainstreamed American culture?
(Another thing to ponder is what effect Immortal Technique's country of birth may have had on his political views- having not been born in the United States, how could his outlook be different than those of us who are American-born citizens?)
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