OLC has gotten a definite negative rep throughout the years, mainly for being tough guys and/or for being racist. I will not discuss this matter here, as this band has broken up and I don't know what's up with them or their personal agendas. What I do know is that they did have some pretty provocative lyrics for sure, but they had also repeatedly stated that they were not a racist band. We could say that One Life Crew was not a politically correct (PC) band and just leave it at that. No matter the case, OLC mananged to stay at the forefront of HC kids' agenda more than 10 years after they broke up, and is still a band that is widely talked about.
We gotta face the fact that the people in some of the better bands in hardcore have always been unusual individuals with a lack for better judgement. In many cases,
awesome hardcore has come these kind of people, who are not your everyday PC dudes. We can be sorry for who these people are, but it doesn't undermine the importance of the music they put out. Extreme minds make extreme music
and that's the whole case sometimes. At the end of the day, antisocial, provocative, negative
behavior and extreme viewpoints are and have always been part of
hardcore music. For better of for worse, it's what makes it hardcore. And if you don't like it,
maybe you shouldn't be listening to this type of music in the first
place.
The video below contains OLC's whole Crime Ridden Society recording (released in 1996), which is a piece of hardcore history you wouldn't want to miss. It is stompy, angry, heavy old school hardcore that countless bands have tried to imitate since (more often than not without the same intensity factor). Crime Ridden Society hits hard and explains a lot about the route hardcore took in the years to come, up to this day.
