Afrika Bambaataa is a major reason I fell in love with hip hop back around '82. Further, I've always felt "perfect beat" is a much better song than the more popular "planet rock". Back then, "planet rock" was for regular folk, "perfect beat" was for the breakers. Regular folk would be dancing on the floor, just like normal, and then, later in the evening, the DJ would drop "perfect beat" and it was on - specifically, this part: https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=229&v=rHQ11l4uiM4 . The dance floor would clear, otherwise you'd catch a foot from some dude spinning around. Good times.
I'm still trying to digest all the s3xual abuse allegations against Bam later in life.
Is TikTok how the practice of censoring one's own swears came about? I've seen it on a lot of social posts and have been wondering. Besides it being hokey (why use the word to then immediately self-censor), it also instantly dates the poster as someone too new to the world to be able to make an interesting post. That last part is just an opinion, though.
This is more of my personal axe to grind, but it's important to view this as a result of monetized content and highly algorithmic feeds. It is my understanding that these platforms don't even really remove this language, just demote it, but that the culture on these networks is entwined with people who post for money, so anything that reduces exposure or payout is shunned. This is true for TikTok, Instagram, YouTube (shorts).
That said I wouldn't even assume "s3xual" is a result of this. It smells of older censorship to me, all the new stuff is video-first, so phonetic substitutes are more characteristic.
