If you’re anything like us, you’ve got at least a few albums worth of music that is – in some way or another – related to marijuana and/or drug use. Maybe it’s Snoop Dogg, maybe it’s Cypress Hill, or maybe it’s as benign as a Bob Marley album. Not a big deal here in the U.S. where we’ve got the right to have and create such things.
But take that collection over to Kuala Lumpur and you’d be breaking the law.
According to The Malay Mail, Malaysian officials with the House Ministry have demanded that rock albums deemed offensive for drug references be seized. One retailer says that officials took Marley and David Bowie albums off the shelves. Marley for the reference to cannabis in the title of his song “Kaya” and Bowie because it his “Diamond Dogs” album shows Bowie’s head on the body of a dog.
Because marijuana is illegal, so is any imagery of it according to the House Ministry. Same goes for anything they deem offensive.
Apparently all of this started when a Hindu group got their baggy pants in a ruffle over a 40+ year-old album: the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s “Axis: Bold as Love” because the cover depicts Hendrix as a Hindu god.
Have they listened to Hendrix? If there is a god, he’s about as close as we will ever get to hearing what it sounds like.
Anyway, in honor of their backwards-ass views on art and cannabis — enjoy some Bob Marley: