1990s SPECIAL REPORT: "HIP HOP LYRICS UNDER FIRE"

Don Imus told his listeners that rappers routinely "defame and demean black women" and if his remarks had been in a song, it would more than likely have been a hit.

Probably not, I-Man.

Still, major dust-ups over hip-hop lyrics seem to occur every four years or so — whether it's the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Discrimination taking Eminem to task over what it believed were ****phobic lyrics or Ice-T and his rock band, Body Count, tangling with Time Warner over perceived endorsements of violence against police. And through it all, MTV News has been there — when Luke Skyywalker exited a Florida courthouse after his First Amendment case, sitting down with Tupac to discuss Congress analyzing his songs, and getting the word from Young Jeezy about his banned Snowman T-shirts.

Now, with Russell Simmons, Oprah Winfrey, the Reverend Al Sharpton and anyone with a blog weighing in on what rappers should and shouldn't say, we look back — in this exclusive MTV News video timeline — on the artists, the songs and the words that have stirred up such strong emotions.