Luke Campbell's 'Freak Fest 2000 Weekend Bash' Jumps Off For Spring Break in Miami From March 23 -26;
Loud Records Pays Tribute to Big Pun During All-Star Concert Weekend

Luke Campbell celebrates the releases of his new flick and soundtrack "Luke's Freak Fest 2000" on Luke Records/Loud Records with his "Freak Fest 2000 Weekend Bash," a spring break weekend full of festivities from Thursday, March 23, 2000 thru Sunday, March 26, 2000 sponsored by Loud and Luke Records.

Additional sponsors include UBO's Lukeworld.com, ENYCE and BET.  The highlight of the weekend is an All-Star Concert paying tr to perform are Loud Recording artists Luke, Raekwon, Mobb Deep, LV, M.O.P., dead prez, Three 6 Mafia, Tha Alkaholiks, and Bootleg; Luke Records recording artists No Good, Jiggie, 606 and La Face recording group The Goodie Mob.  The concert, hosted by BET's Liza Michelle, Tigger, and Luke will be cybercast live on UBO's Lukeworld.com.

"Luke's Freak Fest 2000," the soundtrack, executive produced by Luther Campbell and Jay "Ski" McGowan, was released on March 14.  In addition to some of the artist listed above performing at the concert, the album boasts tracks from the late great Big Pun, Quad City DJ's, Krayzie Bone and 95 South.  The first single, "Loving You" by Sylvia is receiving rave responses at crossover radio stations across the country.

The film, due for release on pay-per-view in May and DVD shortly thereafter, was conceived and executive produced by Campbell.  It chronicles a zany three-day beach party weekend (much like Freakfest 2000 Weekend Bash) where three young male college students from Chicago discover a weekend adventure when they run into a trio of women, childhood friends, reuniting in Miami for the weekend.  The film also features Tigger in his first acting debut, and Bishop Don Juan, from HBO Documentary fame, "Pimps Up, Hoes Down."

For a complete list of "Freak Fest 2000 Weekend Bash" events, press kits, and interviews with Luke Campbell, please contact Tresa Sanders at Loud Records New York City headquarters or e-mail @ Tresa-Sanders@Sonymusic.com.

Even without Luther Campbell, the members of 2 Live Crew may never be able to shake their controversial past.
"Some people still have the 2 Live Crew watch out," Fresh Kid Ice, one of the original three members of the group, says by phone from a tour stop in Germany.
Does "obscene" translate into German?
In any language, a 2 Live Crew concert usually spelled trouble. Since the release of As Nasty As They Wanna Be in 1989, the members of 2 Live Crew - Campbell (a k a Luke Skyywalker), Fresh Kid Ice and Brother Marquis - have had as many critics as they have had fans.
The group's albums are fountains of four-letter words from which many people did not want to drink. Besides attacks from Tipper Gore and her Parents Music Resource Center, a Florida court declared As Nasty As They Wanna Be legally obscene. The decision was later overruled by a federal appeals court.

Then there was the 1990 arrest in Broward County, Fla., where the Crew was arrested for singing profane lyrics on stage. The members were acquitted, but the arrest is captured in a photograph of a handcuffed Campbell in a new exhibit - "Roots, Rhymes and Rage: The Hip-Hop Story" - at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland.

"At the time, it was new," Fresh Kid Ice (a k a the Chinaman) says of the obscene material. "And people didn't know how to embrace it."
The group answered its critics with Banned in the USA (1990), an album with a song by the same name that championed the First Amendment and free speech. (Ironically, the album was still slapped with a "parental advisory" sticker, often referred to as the "Tipper Sticker.")

It was around the same time the three members started pursuing solo careers. Fresh Kid Ice and Brother Marquis reunited in 1998 to release The Real One on Lil' Joe Records.
A reunion of the three Crew members is in the works.
"It's in the hands of the lawyers now," Fresh Kid Ice says.
Until then, fans can expect more of the same "locker-room talk" and traditional Miami bass sounds from Fresh Kid Ice and Brother Marquis.
"We basically do party music," Fresh Kid Ice says.
But he would just prefer history not repeat itself.
"In some ways, it was stressful," he says of past events. "There were trucks with antennas and police (at concerts). It was kind of wild."

Nasty as he wants to be, no more;
RAP: 2 Live Crew's Luther Campbell is trying to corral his flesh-peddling alter ego, Luke.

Luther Campbell has come to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to find himself.
Fresh off a Cleveland flight, aptly robed in black, the Miami native son famous for taking the blush out of dirty songs makes his way to an exhibit that honors him as one of the famous flashpoints of rap. He chatters softly with a disarming gentleness about the raunchy side of a genre he has come to personify.
What happens next seems beyond the Campbell we know.
As he rounds the corner, he comes face to face with the sum of his life. It is represented in a grainy, larger-than-life photograph: Bent for the pat-down. Braced by the squad car.
Frowning and somber. Handcuffed. Under arrest.
Campbell stares at the photo so hard he could be inhaling it.
It's his 1990 arrest in Broward County, Fla., for singing profane lyrics on stage.
"My whole life I have been handcuffed. My personal life, my professional life. Handcuffed. "
Such a pronouncement seems even too much for its author so Luther Campbell does what he does best. He hides. Luke comes out to protect Luther. The wild and crazy Luke. The ringmaster of raunch.
The one who can't imagine a day without milling flesh, locker-room banter, paternity woes and living large.  The one who lives his life by not living his life.
The metamorphosis is astonishing.
The trademark grin is back, along with the high-fives, the wicked humor.
Gone is the introspective man who knows Luke needs to grow up, the one who still mourns the loss of his mother, the one who for the first time has a girlfriend, his fiancee. This is the Campbell you don't know. Because, in many ways, he doesn't either.
"I am still learning about me," he says.
Here's a guy who is nearing 40 in a rap business whose superstars are mere children.  His generation's insatiable sexual appetite made Campbell a millionaire; this generation's sated sexual jadedness makes it hard for him to shock like he did in the 1980s ("Throw That D", "Me So Horny").  The flesh-to-impress shtick lost its punch when sex became the underlying theme for most every video airing on MTV and BET.
And his greatest claim to fame _ his arrest and national constitutional battle for the right to bare bad words _ well, it's old news.  That his album "As Nasty As They Wanna Be" cleared the path for foul rhymers like Foxy Brown is lost on the under-30 crowd, and forgotten by the rest.
But Campbell will not go quietly.
"I am not quite sure where to go from here," Campbell says in a voice so thin, you know it's coming from his essence.  "I really don't.
"Now I have to start thinking about being a good husband, providing a home," says Campbell, 39, father of four children, ages 6 to 16. "Sometimes I get nervous. "

HANGING TOUGH

Of course, to try to understand Campbell, his three-dimensional complexity and where he is going, you would have to understand where he came from.
Campbell's story is well documented: from a solid, disciplined Liberty City home, the baby boy of a retired janitor and a beautician who preached the Good Book from her salon.  Campbell graduated in 1978 from Miami Beach High School, where he was a decent football player and an even better street tough.
"I was a tough guy in school. It's not something I am proud of," he says. "I really wish I had gone to school and did the right thing. "
After school, he would use his mother's new stereo to play deejay. Soon, in between shifts as a dishwasher at a hospital, he was spinning records at dances and making party tapes. In 1986, as the front man for 2 Live Crew (with included Christopher Wongwon and Mark Ross), he cut a record, "Throw the D," among the first bass songs to hit the airwaves. He sold it out of the trunk of his car to radio stations and clubs.
The group was a quick smash hits, Its first two albums, "Move Somethin' " and "Live Is What We Are," both sold more than 500,000 copies. Campbell started a record company, Skyywalker, a testament to his quirky tastes. Later he renamed it Luke Records, after George Lucas and the "Star Wars" crew sued.
The third release, "As Nasty As They Wanna Be," released in 1989, became the unlikely centerpiece that tested the Constitution's tolerance for dirty words.
In 1992, Campbell and 2 Live Crew won a federal appeals court ruling that ended a 2 1/2-year battle in Broward County over whether the album "As Nasty As They Wanna Be" was obscene, as the Broward County Sheriff's Office contended, following their arrest at a Hollywood club for singing lewd lyrics.
The case put South Florida into the world news and made Campbell more popular, even richer _ and subject to more trouble.
He came away knowing and living the cliche: Sex sells _ even when records don't.
Over the next three years, Campbell would take a beating on all fronts.
He came under investigation by the NCAA for allegedly paying University of Miami football team members to score touchdowns.
There was the breakup of 2 Live Crew. And a $ 1.6 million judgment in state court against Campbell for allegedly cheating one of his rising stars of profits. And ongoing demands for child support from the mother of two of his children.
And finally, in 1995: Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
During his reincarnation, Campbell was hosting "Luke's Peep Show" and a BET pay-per-view show, and making the XXX-rated underground videos he still markets.
And then, his not-so-subtle testament to the proclaimed metamorphosis: "Changin' the Game," the title of the album released in 1997.  But as a sign that the transformation wasn't complete: He made two versions of the album, one dirty and one clean.
And in June 1998, he met the woman he says he will marry in 2001. Tameka Donyale Peters is a quiet, petite woman with a slight Southern accent and a penchant for simple silver jewelry.  She is thin, though shapely.  Has smooth chocolate skin, sharp features and doe-like eyes.  And she dresses casually.  Not at all like the bodacious chicks with the epic-sized bottoms in his videos and concerts.
"All the nasty words and stuff, that is what he does. It's his product, but I know the person behind that. I am sure people wonder about me," she says.
"This is a man who is not afraid to admit when he is wrong. He is sweet and gentle," says Peters.
So what does Campbell do now that he's an adult? How does he apply his hard-earned wisdom and what happens to Luke?
In many ways, his first feature-length film, "Freakfest 2000," and accompanying soundtrack, due early this year, is more of the same. But, he says, that is just the beginning of a movie career.
He is working on a script now about a comedy/love story using the Golf Club of Miami as the backdrop. The movies will likely be distributed in pay-per-view format. And with each movie, he also plans to release a soundtrack, keeping him alive as a recording artist, too. He continues to head Luke Records with several artists on the roster.
By the end of February, he plans to launch www.Lukeworld.com, a super-interactive site with a chat room, live coverage of him at his Miami Beach office, visits to strip clubs, a virtual store and virtual conversation with Luke himself.
"Luke has to grow up. I am trying to manage Luke so he can evolve. I gotta stop giving people the ammunition to trash me," he says. "I got to go out on a limb and make Luke tasteful. He can still be in the sex business, but it needs to be more classy. I just hope people will accept the new Luke. "

Hanau (dpa) - Die Polizei im hessischen Hanau hat wegen des Verdachts auf Vergewaltigung Ermittlungen gegen den Saenger der US-Rap-Gruppe "2 Live Crew" aufgenommen. Hintergrund sei die Anzeige einer Frau, die vor zwei Wochen ein Konzert der Band in einer Discothek in Hanau besucht hatte. Die Frau sei waehrend des Auftritts auf die Buehne geholt worden und habe sich dort zunaechst freiwillig beruehren lassen, teilte die Polizei mit. Spaeter soll es dann hinter der Buehne zu der Vergewaltigung gekommen sein. Die Band aus drei Saengern und drei Taenzerinnen war bereits einen Tag nach dem Konzert in Darmstadt vorlaeufig festgenommen worden. Inzwischen seien die Amerikaner wieder auf freiem Fuss, duerften Deutschland aber nicht verlassen. Der Betreiber des Lokals habe nach eigener Darstellung nichts davon gewusst und das Konzert auch nicht gesehen. Das Ordnungsamt prueft nun, ob er seine Konzession abgeben muss.

Contacts:

Name: (Assistant)
Luther Campbell - President
Michael Hopkins - Dir

*Thanks to a bootleg video, rapper Luther Campbell has been cleared of battery charges. The charges stem from a woman concert goer claiming that Campbell threw her from a stage during a July performance in Lafayette, Louisiana. Instead of showing Campbell committing the dirty deed, the videotape showed two of his dancers involved in the incident.

Tribe 8 made MTV News this last week, on Thursday. Here's the transcript, excerpted from the broadcast....
- ------------

One other rap Pay-Per-View note: The worlds of explicit hip-hop and lesbian punk collided last weekend in Miami at the taping of "Luke's Peep Show" -- organized by Luther Campbell of "2 Live Crew" fame for a November Pay-Per-View. The lesbian punk element was a west coast group called Tribe 8, who were invited by Luke when he learned that they often perform topless. However, we're told Luke's x-rated sensibilities were shocked by their stage act, which includes a Lorena Bobbitt inspired treatment of a fake penis. If you find this all too irresistible, Tribe 8 will also appear this winter in an independent film called "A Gun For Jennifer" -- about female vigilantes avenging domestic violence by abusive husbands.

And that's the news for now, be sure to catch "The Week in Rock" this weekend - -- Friday at 7:30 PM and Saturday at 6:00 PM. And we'll have more news later, here on MTV.