Audio By Carbonatix
Cleveland’s hate for LeBron James has reached new levels. The city’s 96.5 Kiss FM has decided to censor the player’s name from Jay-Z’s hit “Empire State of Mind.” One of the station’s DJs decided that the word “LeBron” was just as offensive as any other word banned from radio airplay, and decided to “flip and reverse” the reference. Jeez, Cleveland, hold yourself together. This is getting ridiculous.
In the song Jay drops the line, “”[If] Jeezy’s paying LeBron, I’m paying Dwyane Wade.” The lyric is a reference to Jay-Z’s ability to pay for cocaine at incredibly discounted rates. As in rapper Young Jeezy once boasted about paying $23K (LeBron’s former number is 23) for a kilo of cocaine, but Jay pays just $3k (Wade’s number). Apparently that was kosher enough for every radio station in America to play.
But the mere mention of “LeBron” was too harsh for Cleveland’s ears.
“I was playing the song and realized that the word “LeBron” is as offensive to some people as the ‘Seven Words You Can’t Say On The Radio,'” DJ “Java” Joel Murphy tells sports blog WFNY. “Anytime one of those words shows up in a song, we either bleep it, cut it out completely or obscure it by flipping it backwards. So, I suggested to our programming dept that we should treat the name “LeBron” similarly.”
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“So far no complaints from the ‘leave LeBron alone’ or ‘get on with your life’ crowd,” said Murphy.
Well, we’re here now Murphy. Get on with you life. And, ok, it’s a good song and all, but it’s about a year old. Why do you even still have it in rotation?
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