A sonic exploration and tonal analysis of contemporary creative music in a myriad of improvisational/composed settings, textures, and expressions.
Welcome to Sound Projections
I'm your host Kofi Natambu. This online magazine features the very best in contemporary creative music in this creative timezone NOW (the one we're living in) as well as that of the historical past. The purpose is to openly explore, examine, investigate, reflect on, studiously critique, and take opulent pleasure in the sonic and aural dimensions of human experience known and identified to us as MUSIC. I'm also interested in critically examining the wide range of ideas and opinions that govern our commodified notions of the production, consumption, marketing, and commercial exchange of organized sound(s) which largely define and thereby (over)determine our present relationships to music in the general political economy and culture.
Thus this magazine will strive to critically question and go beyond the conventional imposed notions
and categories of what constitutes the generic and stylistic definitions of ‘Jazz’, ‘classical music’, ‘Blues.’
'Rhythm and Blues’, ‘Rock and Roll’, ‘Pop’, ‘Funk’, ‘Hip Hop’, etc. in order to search for what individual
artists and ensembles do cretively to challenge and transform our ingrained ideas and attitudes of what
music is and could be.
So please join me in this ongoing visceral, investigative, and cerebral quest to explore, enjoy, and pay
homage to the endlessly creative and uniquely magisterial dimensions of MUSIC in all of its guises and expressive identities.
Saturday, April 20, 2019
Public Enemy (1986-Present): Legendary, iconic, and innovative rappers, arrangers, ensemble leaders, producers, and teachers
Public Enemy
rewrote the rules of hip-hop, becoming the most influential and
controversial rap group of the late '80s and, for many, the definitive
rap group of all time. Building from Run-D.M.C.'s street-oriented beats and Boogie Down Productions' proto-gangsta rhyming, Public Enemy
pioneered a variation of hardcore rap that was musically and
politically revolutionary. With his powerful, authoritative baritone,
lead rapper Chuck D
rhymed about all kinds of social problems, particularly those plaguing
the black community, often condoning revolutionary tactics and social
activism. In the process, he directed hip-hop toward an explicitly
self-aware, pro-black consciousness that became the culture's signature
throughout the next decade. While Public Enemy's early Def Jam albums, produced with the Bomb Squad,
earned them a place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, they continued
to release relevant material up to and beyond their 2013 induction.
Musically, Public Enemy were just as revolutionary, as their production team, the Bomb Squad,
created dense soundscapes that relied on avant-garde cut-and-paste
techniques, unrecognizable samples, piercing sirens, relentless beats,
and deep funk. It was chaotic and invigorating music, made all the more
intoxicating by Chuck D's forceful vocals and the absurdist raps of his comic foil, Flavor Flav. With his comic sunglasses and an oversized clock hanging from his neck, Flav
became the group's visual focal point, but he never obscured the music.
While rap and rock critics embraced the group's late-'80s and
early-'90s records, Public Enemy frequently ran into controversy with their militant stance and lyrics, especially after their 1988 album It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back
made them into celebrities. After all the controversy settled in the
early '90s, once the group entered a hiatus, it became clear that Public Enemy were the most influential and radical band of their time.
Chuck D (born Carlton Ridenhour, August 1, 1960) formed Public Enemy
in 1982, as he was studying graphic design at Adelphi University on
Long Island. He had been DJ'ing at the student radio station WBAU, where
he met Hank Shocklee and Bill Stephney. All three shared a love of hip-hop and politics, which made them close friends. Shocklee had been assembling hip-hop demo tapes, and Ridenhour rapped over one song, "Public Enemy No. 1," around the same time he began appearing on Stephney's radio show under the Chuckie D pseudonym. Def Jam co-founder and producer Rick Rubin heard a tape of "Public Enemy No. 1" and immediately courted Ridenhour in hopes of signing him to his fledgling label.
Chuck D
initially was reluctant, but he eventually developed a concept for a
literally revolutionary hip-hop group -- one that would be driven by
sonically extreme productions and socially revolutionary politics.
Enlisting Shocklee as his chief producer and Stephney as a publicist, Chuck D formed a crew with DJ Terminator X (born Norman Lee Rogers, August 25, 1966) and fellow Nation of Islam member Professor Griff (born Richard Griffin) as the choreographer of the group's backup dancers, the Security of the First World, who performed homages to old Stax and Motown dancers with their martial moves and fake Uzis. He also asked his old friend William Drayton (born March 16, 1959) to join as a fellow rapper. Drayton developed an alter ego called Flavor Flav, who functioned as a court jester to Chuck D's booming voice and somber rhymes in Public Enemy.
Public Enemy's debut album, Yo! Bum Rush the Show,
was released on Def Jam Records in 1987. Its spare beats and powerful
rhetoric were acclaimed by hip-hop critics and aficionados, but the
record was ignored by the rock and R&B mainstream. However, their
second album, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, was impossible to ignore. Under Shocklee's direction, PE's production team, the Bomb Squad,
developed a dense, chaotic mix that relied as much on found sounds and
avant-garde noise as it did on old-school funk. Similarly, Chuck D's rhetoric gained focus and Flavor Flav's raps were wilder and funnier. A Nation of Millions
was hailed as revolutionary by both rap and rock critics, and it was --
hip-hop had suddenly become a force for social change.
As Public Enemy's profile was raised, they opened themselves up to controversy. In a notorious statement, Chuck D
claimed that rap was "the black CNN," relating what was happening in
the inner city in a way that mainstream media could not project. Public Enemy's
lyrics were naturally dissected in the wake of such a statement, and
many critics were uncomfortable with the positive endorsement of black
Muslim leader Louis Farrakhan on "Bring the Noise." "Fight the Power," Public Enemy's theme for Spike Lee's controversial 1989 film Do the Right Thing, also caused an uproar for its attacks on Elvis Presley and John Wayne, but that was considerably overshadowed by an interview Professor Griff gave The Washington Times that summer. Griff
had previously said anti-Semitic remarks on-stage, but his quotation
that Jews were responsible for "the majority of the wickedness that goes
on across the globe" was greeted with shock and outrage, especially by
white critics who previously embraced the group. Faced with a major
crisis, Chuck D faltered. First he fired Griff, then brought him back, then broke up the group entirely. Griff gave one more interview where he attacked Chuck D and PE, which led to his permanent departure from the group.
Public Enemy
spent the remainder of 1989 preparing their third album, releasing
"Welcome to the Terrordome" as its first single in early 1990. Again,
the hit single caused controversy as its lyrics "still they got me like
Jesus" were labeled anti-Semitic by some quarters. Despite all the
controversy, Fear of a Black Planet
was released to enthusiastic reviews in the spring of 1990, and it shot
into the pop Top Ten as the singles "911 Is a Joke," "Brothers Gonna
Work It Out," and "Can't Do Nuttin' for Ya Man" became Top 40 R&B
hits. For their next album, 1991's Apocalypse 91...The Enemy Strikes Black, the group re-recorded "Bring the Noise" with thrash metal band Anthrax, the first sign that the group was trying to consolidate its white audience. Apocalypse 91 was greeted with overwhelmingly positive reviews upon its fall release, and it debuted at number four on the pop charts, but Public Enemy began to lose momentum in 1992 as they toured with the second leg of U2's Zoo TV tour and Flavor Flav was repeatedly in trouble with the law. In the fall of 1992, they released the remix collection Greatest Misses as an attempt to keep their name viable, but it was greeted to nasty reviews.
Public Enemy were on hiatus during 1993, as Flav attempted to wean himself off drugs, returning in the summer of 1994 with Muse Sick-n-Hour Mess Age.
Prior to its release, it was subjected to exceedingly negative reviews
in Rolling Stone and The Source, which affected the perception of the
album considerably. Muse Sick debuted at number 14, but it quickly fell off the charts as it failed to generate any singles. Chuck D retired Public Enemy
from touring in 1995 as he severed ties with Def Jam, developed his own
record label and publishing company, and attempted to rethink Public Enemy. In 1996, he released his first debut album, The Autobiography of Mistachuck. As it was released in the fall, he announced that he planned to record a new Public Enemy album the following year.
Before that record was made, Chuck D published an autobiography in the fall of 1997. During 1997, Chuck D reassembled the original Bomb Squad and began work on three albums. In the spring of 1998, Public Enemy kicked off their major comeback with their soundtrack to Spike Lee's
He Got Game, which was played more like a proper album than a
soundtrack. Upon its April 1998 release, the record received the
strongest reviews of any Public Enemy album since Apocalypse '91...The Enemy Strikes Black. After Def Jam refused to help Chuck D's attempts to bring PE's
music straight to the masses via the Internet, he signed the group to
the web-savvy independent Atomic Pop. Before the retail release of Public Enemy's seventh LP, There's a Poison Goin' On..., the label made MP3 files of the album available on the Internet. It finally appeared in stores in July 1999.
After a three-year break from recording and a switch to the In the Paint label, Public Enemy released Revolverlution, a mix of new tracks, remixes, and live cuts. The CD/DVD combo It Takes a Nation
appeared in 2005. The multimedia package contained an hour-long video
of the band live in London in 1987 and a CD with rare remixes. The
studio album New Whirl Odor also appeared in 2005. The "special projects" album Rebirth of a Nation -- an album with all rhymes written by Bay Area rapper Paris -- was supposed to be released right along with it, but didn't appear until early the next year. The odds-and-ends collection Beats and Places appeared before the end of 2006. Featuring the single "Harder Than You Think," How You Sell Soul to a Soulless People Who Sold Their Soul??? arrived in the summer of 2007.
Public Enemy then entered a relatively quiet phase, at least in terms of recording, releasing only the 2011 remix and rarities compilation Beats and Places in the next five years. Then, the group came back in a big way in 2012, releasing two new full-length albums: the summer's Most of My Heroes Still Don't Appear on No Stamp and the fall's Evil Empire of Everything. Public Enemy
also toured extensively throughout 2012 and into 2013. Their second and
third albums were reissued as deluxe editions the following year. In
the summer of 2015, the group released its 13th studio album, Man Plans God Laughs; not long afterward, Def Jam released the concert set Live from Metropolis Studios. Chuck D joined a supergroup called Prophets of Rage (named after the PE song), debuting a live set in June 2016 with three-fourths of Rage Against the Machine and Cypress Hill's B-Real. In 2017, PE
celebrated the 30th anniversary of their debut album with Nothing Is
Quick in the Desert, a free self-released full-length.
Whether we’re talking hip hop or politics, Public Enemy was
revolutionary. Their blend of politics, philosophy and rap changed the
game for the better.
Biography
“No one has been able to approach the political
power that Public Enemy brought to hip-hop,” Adam Yauch of the Beastie
Boys told Rolling Stone in 2004.
“I put them on a level with Bob Marley and a handful of other
artists—the rare artist who can make great music and also deliver a
message.” Public Enemy brought an explosion of sonic invention, rhyming
virtuosity and social awareness to hip-hop in the 1980s and 1990s. The
group’s high points—1988’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back and 1990’s Fear of a Black Planet, stand among the greatest politically charged albums of all time.
Public Enemy—Chuck D. (Carlton Ridenhour), Flavor Flav (William
Drayton), Terminator X (Norman Lee Rogers) and Professor Griff (Richard
Griffin)—came together in 1986 at Adelphi University on Long Island.
Ridenhour was studying graphic design and working at the college’s radio
station, WBAU. He became friends with Hank Shocklee and Bill Stephney,
and they would stay up late into the night, discussing politics,
philosophy and hip-hop. Ridenhour rapped over a track that Shocklee
created called “Public Enemy No.1.” He then began appearing regularly on
Stephney’s radio show, calling himself Chuckie D.
Rick Rubin, of Def Jam Records, heard “Public Enemy No. 1” and
contacted Ridenhour. Soon, the pair hatched an idea that involved
Shocklee as producer, Stephney as a marketer and DJ Norman Rogers on
turntables. They then added Richard Griffin to work with the backup
dancers who were called the Security of the First World (S1W) and
William Drayton to rap along with Ridenhour. Calling themselves Public Enemy, the group released its first album, Yo! Bum Rush the Show, in 1987. The album garnered some positive reviews, but it was their second album, 1988’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back,
that made Public Enemy a household name. The album reached Number
Forty-Two on the pop chart and Number One on the R&B chart. The
album, which included the singles “Don’t Believe the Hype” and “Bring
the Noise,” was hailed as a hip-hop masterpiece and went on to sell more
than a million copies. The Village Voice voted It Takes a Nation of Millions the best album of the year in the paper’s Pazz and Jop Poll.
In 1989 the group recorded “Fight the Power,” which was the theme song for Spike Lee’s film Do the Right Thing (1989). The following year, Public Enemy returned with Fear of a Black Planet.
The album became the group’s first to reach the Top 10. Songs such as
“Burn Hollywood Burn” and “911 Is a Joke” examined white racism, while
“Brothers Gonna Work It Out” urged African-Americans to unite.
Chuck D—routinely rated as one of the greatest rappers of all
time—pushed the art of the MC forward with his inimitable, rapid-fire
baritone, as he connected the culture of hip-hop with Black Nationalism
and the ideas of Malcolm X. His counterpart, Flavor Flav, brought humor
(in the case of “911 Is a Joke,” pointed humor) and a madcap energy to
the songs. Along the way, they brought a new level of conceptual
sophistication to the hip-hop album and a new level of intensity and
power to live hip-hop, inspiring fans from Jay-Z to Rage Against the
Machine.
Public Enemy’s next album, 1991’s Apocalypse 91…The Enemy Strikes Black,
reached Number Four on the charts and included the hits “Can’t Truss
It” and “Shut Em Down.” Another track, "I Don't Wanna be Called Yo
Nigga,” is about how the urban culture uses the n-word outside of its
usual derogatory context. The album also included the song "By the Time I
Get to Arizona.” That song and its accompanying video dealt with the
fact that some states did not recognize Martin Luther King Jr.'s
birthday as a national holiday. But perhaps most noteworthy is the fact
that the album included a new version of “Bring the Noise,” recorded
with the thrash metal band Anthrax. Chuck D. said that upon the initial
request of Anthrax, he "didn't take them wholehearted seriously,” but
after the collaboration was done, "it made too much sense.” The
collaboration between the two bands bridged the gap between heavy metal
and hip-hop, and brought hip-hop to a much wider audience. The song,
which also appeared on the Anthrax album Attack of the Killer B’s (1991), was ranked Number Twelve on VH-1’s 2006 list of the 40 Greatest Metal Songs.
In 1992 Public Enemy and Anthrax hit the road for a joint tour,
closing each show with a joint performance of “Bring the Noise.” Public
Enemy also opened for U2’s Zoo TV tour. Then in 1994 a motorcycle
accident shattered Terminator X’s left leg, and in 1998 he decided to
retire from the group. Eventually, Public Enemy added DJ Lord as their
full-time DJ.
Public Enemy has continued to record and tour up to the present. In 2005 the band released New World Order, and in 2007 the group issued How You Sell Soul to a Soulless People Who Sold Their Soul? That
album included the single “Harder Than You Think.” In 2009 Public
Enemy’s song “Fight the Power” was ranked Number One on VH-1’s The 100
Greatest Hip-Hop Songs. The group returned with the album Beats and Places in 2011, while in 2012 Public Enemy issued two albums, Most of My Heroes Still Don’t Appear on No Stamp and The Evil Empire of Everything.
The group has also been a major influence on artists and bands in
almost all genres of rock and roll, from Nirvana's Kurt Cobain to Björk,
from Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails to Ben Harper and on and on.
Inductees: William Drayton a.k.a. "Flavor Flav" (born March 16,
1959), Richard Griffin a.k.a. "Professor Griff" (born August 1, 1960),
Carlton Ridenhour a.k.a. "Chuck D." (born August 1, 1960), Norman Lee
Rogers a.k.a. "Terminator X" (born August 25, 1966)
‘The hood was on its own, abandoned at every level. Fight the Power was the anthem of the streets’
Hank Shocklee, producer
During the disco boom, the money was flowing so crazy that even the
messengers were riding in limos – and then the business crashed. Bands
couldn’t afford a drummer or a bass player and that’s how rap was born:
we’d build tracks from samples of records. But even when we were bigger
than R&B and rock groups, we could barely get our videos shown –
just once a week, on Yo! MTV Raps. Rap was a dirty word. Radio stations didn’t want to play it, the Grammys didn’t even acknowledge it.
It was a time of huge racial tension, too. Hip-hop
culture was just starting and no one understood it. Kids would be out
on the streets chilling, shoelaces untied, hats on backwards, and they’d
be getting harassed by police. The economy was fucked up and crack was
hitting the black community hard. Everyone had a friend or relative on
crack, who was stealing from them. We had our cars broken into so many
times, when we were up late in the studio. The hood was on its own,
abandoned at every level – government, county, city. We had to overcome
everything. Fight the Power was going to be the anthem of the streets.
We made the track for Spike Lee’s 1989 film Do The Right Thing. Spike originally proposed a rap version of a negro spiritual, Lift Every Voice and Sing,
to be produced by someone else and with just Chuck D rapping. I was
like: “No way.” We were in Spike’s office on DeKalb Avenue in Brooklyn,
by a busy intersection. I pulled down his window, stuck his head out,
and was like: “Yo man, you’ve got to think about this record as being
something played out of these cars going by.”
The drums had to feel like African war drums, but instead of us going to war, it had to be like we were already winning
So I worked on reinterpreting what Spike
meant. My brother Keith had this drum beat with a couple of percussion
loops. It had an energy, an urgency, but not to make you mad. It felt
uplifting. But how do you evolve that into a song using only samples?
The track had to have a sense of camaraderie, while also being a call to
arms – and it had to come from a Public Enemy perspective. The whole PE
culture was about disruption. That’s where the guitars come in. I
wanted a Deep Purple
kind of energy, but with melody. Rock’n’roll guitar wouldn’t work, too
much edge. This needed to be softer, though still with the bite of
angst.
The drums had to feel like African war drums, but instead of us going
to war, it had to be like we were already winning the war. It needed
less sustain on the bottom end, because too much would put it into a
different space: a mad mood. This needed to say: “I’m angry, but I’m not
mad to the point where I want to destroy everybody. Instead I’m charged
with the energy of overcoming something.” Me and Chuck then built up the track. It was a totally different
process from today, when cats listen to a finished track then put rhymes
on top – that separates emotion and content. All the samples have to
work with Chuck’s emotion. We’d have to find something from all our
hundreds of records to fill a second, and it all had to be done by ear,
without computers or visual aids.
It’s easy to make a dope beat, where the kick and snare are keeping
the groove together. But Fight the Power doesn’t have that. You can’t
tell what the kick and snare are doing. They’re creating a backdrop, but
it’s not pronounced, it doesn’t swing. It’s more of a head-bob,
reminiscent of a Black Panther rally,
a put-your-fist-up kind of vibration. If a song has swing, if it makes
you move from side to side, that’s a different emotion, all about
celebrating something. That’s what set Fight the Power apart: it wasn’t
trying to be groovy. The groove couldn’t be so hypnotic that you’d get
lost in it, since then you’d lose what the song was about. It would be a
good song, but not an anthem.
The record’s almost like an Easter egg hunt. Kids wouldn’t just
listen to the lyrics, they’d try to identify all the little samples in
there (such as Funky Drummer by James Brown, Sing a Simple Song by Sly
and the Family Stone and I Shot the Sheriff by Bob Marley). It went back
to the “digging in the crates” culture. That’s what gave the records
their appeal on a street level, a feeling of: “Wow! I didn’t know you
could put all that in there – and where did it all come from?” Getting the final mix right was just as important as finding all
those other elements. The song could have gone a lot softer, a lot
neater, a lot tighter – but it would have lost the chaos. When something
is organised and aligned, it represents passivity. But any resistance,
any struggle to overcome, is going to be chaotic. So the hardest part
was making sure the track wasn’t monotonous. Lots of the samples appear
only once, and a lot of stuff isn’t perfectly in time. I didn’t just
want white noise and black noise – I wanted pink noise and brown noise!
Chuck D, vocals
I wasn’t the first person to write a song called Fight the Power. The Isley Brothers
did that in 1975. They talked about how we needed an answer to
government oppression. I just built on that. If the government dictates
who you are, then you’re part of the power structure that keeps you
down. We were going to fight that and say: “Look at me as a human
being.” The government wanted rap to be infantile, to have us talk about
cookies and girls and high school shit. I was like: “Nah, we’re going
to talk about you.”
My skin has been seen as more hostile than anything I could say. Black people, our skin is noisy
We came up with the rhythm, then started adding samples. You might
hear a collage of 25 or 30 different sounds and words all at once,
blended into a concise line of thought and feeling. We didn’t leave any
space empty. Why would you have someone rap over just a bassline? Just
as Bo Diddley played the guitar like a drum, we played samples like a drum. We were piecing together a quilt of noise.
Minimalism in rap came later, because people couldn’t afford the
samples, and it became the norm. Is it more exciting now? Probably not.
Because the sampled musicians were the greatest of all time. If you’re
picking something from the 60s and 70s, you’re picking magic. I once
told the Rolling Stones: “I’ve stolen everything I can off of you!”
Some of my lyrics were controversial: “Elvis was a hero to most but he never meant shit to me.” I never said Elvis
was wack, but it’s a racist notion to say he’s an icon – the King –
when rock’n’roll started before him. But my skin has been seen as more
hostile than anything I could say. Black people, our skin is noisy.
Movement … Chuck D, right, with Professor Griff and
Terminator X, and members of the S1W crew in the background. Photograph:
Jack Mitchell/Getty Images
The record was cool, but it was enhanced by a video, and it also had a major film
attached to it. There was a movement behind it too: New York had a lot
of issues and needed an anthem. Today you have hit records that need
financial help because they have nothing else to hold them up: rap music
is dictated by big business. It’s totally lawyer-driven and everyone’s
looking for a jackpot. Back then, though, it had a political movement to
support it.
But the lives of black Americans haven’t got better since Fight the
Power. We’re more disconnected as a people, we’re duped by the
government’s illusions. Anything good that comes out of the people is
kept from the people. Public Enemy were ignored by American TV and radio
right after Fight the Power. We weren’t going to get a fucking TV show,
we weren’t going to be NWA. We refused to lose to stereotypes.
Songs are like little earthquakes: after Fight the Power, the fucking
world shook, and then it went back to the way it was. Law is the only
thing that makes everything change. Revolution alters laws and, yes, a
song can spark revolution. But songs now strike individuals one by one:
some hear them now, some next week, some never. We’re far removed from
the days when everyone heard something at the same time.
Fight the Power connected wherever we went. I remember being told Croats and Serbs were singing it together, back when they were at war.
Art liberates human beings, but governments want to keep them apart.
When people ask if I’m American, I say no, I’m a fucking Earthling.
Fighting the power … Public Enemy’s Flavor Flav, Professor Griff,
Terminator X and Chuck D and a member of the S1W troupe in 1988.
Photograph: Michael Ochs Archives/ Getty Images
What made Public Enemy so different from their contemporaries,
according to Russell Simmons of Def Jam Recordings, was that “Public
Enemy didn’t rap about partying … Public Enemy talked about the state of
black America, and how every black kid in America was a public enemy.”
But leader Chuck D had yet to perfect his fiery blend of rhetoric and
polemic on the 1987 debut album Yo! Bum Rush the Show, which – the
storming Rightstarter (Message to a Black Man)
aside – often avoided explicit politics in favour of boasting about
their rides (You’re Gonna Get Yours), bigging up their crew (Too Much
Posse) and occasionally slipping into ugly sexism (Sophisticated Bitch).
Miuzi Weighs a Ton was the genesis of Public Enemy at their apex,
however, with Chuck’s extended machine-gun metaphor talking up the
firepower between his ears, while the stone age drum-machine beats and
sonic-boom scratches and samples were muscular and heavy. A sly tempo
change between verse and chorus, meanwhile, suggested that production
team the Bomb Squad – Eric Sadler, and brothers Hank and Keith Shocklee –
had ambitions beyond early hip-hop’s sparse, simple template.
Def
Jam dragged their feet getting Bum Rush in record stores, so by the
time it was released in 1987, Eric B & Rakim’s landmark debut single
Eric B Is President
had just pushed hip-hop a step further, leaving Public Enemy sounding
like relics by comparison. PE’s response was swift, with their next
track arriving six weeks after it was recorded. The B-side to the Bum
Rush single Your Gonna Get Yours, Rebel Without a Pause was the first
fruit of a new creative approach Public Enemy embraced on their second
album, with tracks taking shape in cacophonous, collaborative sessions
where Chuck, jester/hype-man/sidekick Flavor Flav, DJ Terminator X and
the Bomb Squad manned samplers and turntables. The result was dense and
disorientating, but held its nerve as it flirted with chaos: Rebel
Without A Pause keyed hip-hop’s tempo up to a breathless 109 beats per
minute, swapped 808 brutalism for an edgy beat razored from James
Brown’s Funky Drummer, and filled every millimetre of space between
beats with samples, skronky flourishes of turntablism and, punctuating
every bar, an urgent saxophone scream lifted from the JBs’ 1970 jam The Grunt. The track opened with the Reverend Jesse Jackson hollering: “I don’t know what this world is coming to!”
Chuck’s verses served up a reply, the 26-year-old “poet supreme”
serving as the solid anchor amid the sonic anarchy, spinning his
worldview with an ad man’s knack for wordplay. As Run-DMC’s Darryl
McDaniels observed, Chuck “wasn’t a preacher – he was a leader.”
In 1988, Glen E Friedman, whose photography chronicled the early days of hardcore punk, skateboard culture and hip-hop, took an unforgettable snap of Chuck and Flav
sporting T-shirts promoting punk band Minor Threat, whose
anti-booze-and-drugs anthem Straight Edge had possibly struck a chord
with Chuck. The PE frontman was similarly abstemious, and these blitzing
three minutes from the game-changing second album It Takes a Nation of
Millions to Hold Us Back offered Public Enemy’s take on the drug
problem, in particular the freebase frenzy that was about to give birth
to the US crack epidemic. The track’s titular callback to George A Romero’s zombie movie classic
is echoed by the lyric’s nightmare landscape of users left homeless and
living in their cars, “like comatose walking around” – though the track
is nuanced enough also to aim its state-of-the-ghetto rage at the US
government’s war on drugs. But it’s the drug dealers waging war in and
on their own communities that catch most of the flak. “The ones that
deal are the ones that fail,” spits Chuck, adding: “Shame on a brother
when he dealing / The same block where my 98 be wheeling.” Professor
Griff delivered the controversial sign off, scorning “kids who make cash
selling drugs to the brother man, instead of the other man”. The Bomb
Squad’s production, meanwhile, was the album’s most frenetic yet, a
hallucinatory, funky headspin of loops and samples: blaring horns,
tornados of percussion.
It Takes a Nation of Millions made an art form of its
overload of samples and full-pelt found funk, but the Bomb Squad
stripped back the noise to bare, powerful elements here, ceding the
foreground to Chuck’s voice spinning a tale of prison rebellion that
unfolds like an action movie. Over a needling, loose piano loop (lifted
from Isaac Hayes’s Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic), Chuck narrates
the escape of a prisoner serving time for rejecting his draft notice and
refusing to fight for “a land that never gave a damn about a brother
like me … I’m a black man / And I could never be a veteran.” The final
two verses are as gripping and expertly paced as an entry from the Die
Hard franchise, Chuck grabbing a sleeping guard’s gun and kickstarting a
mass prison break under heavy retaliatory fire. The cool disdain of the
track’s deathless opening couplet – “I got a letter from the government
the other day / I opened and read it, it said they were suckers” –
remains one of Chuck’s most famous lines.
Originally
recorded as the theme for Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing, Fight the
Power might be Public Enemy’s greatest anthem of all. “I wanted it to be
defiant, I wanted it to be angry, I wanted it to be very rhythmic,” Lee
told Time magazine, explaining why he chose PE. The Bomb Squad ran a
library’s worth of soul and funk – including five James Brown/JBs
tracks, classics by Sly Stone and Syl Johnson, and even the Isley
Brothers’ own 1975 stormer Fight the Power
– through the blender to create the track’s frenetic, frenzied,
fractured funk, while for the movie version Hank Shocklee sliced up
three different sax solos Branford Marsalis had recorded especially for
the track (“One funky solo, one jazz solo, and one just completely
avant-garde, free-jazz solo,” he later told Rolling Stone)
and added them to the stew. Chuck’s lyric nodded to Malcolm X and
invoked Martin Luther King as he addressed the PE faithful as his
“beloved”, imploring them to get down to the business of revolution. “It
was written to be an anthem,” Chuck explained, “and it was written at a
particular time that needed an anthem.” Its most controversial lyric
drew on one of the movie’s key scenes, where activist Buggin’ Out stages
a boycott of Sal’s Famous Pizzeria because its owner won’t allow
pictures of black celebrities on his “wall of fame”. Fight the Power
suggested a similar boycott: Chuck noted that “most of my heroes don’t
appear on no stamp”, and declared “Elvis was a hero to most / But he
never meant shit to me,” adding that the departed king of rock’n’roll
was “straight-up racist … simple and plain.” In later interviews, Chuck
would make a more nuanced argument, suggesting that Elvis represented
the racism of a music industry that oppressed black artists while making
stars of white artists who played “black” music, but was not actually
racist himself. “It was the first time every word in a rap song was
being scrutinised, word-for-word, line-for-line,” he later commented. “A
lot of people will tell you that controversy is good. I didn’t ask for
the controversy at all.”
Controversy continued to dog Public Enemy
throughout work on their third album, Fear of a Black Planet. Griff had
been fired in 1989 after telling the Washington Times that “Jews are
responsible for the majority of the wickedness in the world,” while the
group had offered vocal support to the Nation of Islam leader Louis
Farrakhan (described by Anti-Defamation League chairman Nathan
Perlmutter as “black Hitler”). A direct response to all the controversy
and group turmoil, Welcome to the Terrordome was an uncharacteristically
personal track on an album that explored themes of global white
supremacy and black empowerment. As mutated wah-wah from Psychedelic
Shack by the Temptations rang out like a police siren, Chuck railed
against his foes and painted himself as a persecuted hero. Usually one
of rap’s sharpest rhetoricians, he clumsily invited further accusations
of antisemitism, wailing that “crucifixion ain’t no fiction”. But
Welcome to the Terrordome isn’t about coherent polemic – it’s all about a
cornered Chuck lashing out, a cyclone of paranoia giving a hint of the
group’s embattled mindset.
Chuck D needed his Flavor Flav to provide comic relief amid the
barbed polemic and righteous fury. But if Chuck was the teacher, then
Flavor was more than some wicked clown; he was the ordinary man,
fallible and human next to the superheroic Chuck. 911 Is a Joke saw Flav
focus his comedic spiel as protest, alleging that the emergency
services neglected black neighbourhoods and left African American people
dying on the sidewalk. It was Flav’s looseness that helped drive the
message home, less a lecture and more a hard-edged comedy routine (the
beat featured samples from an Eddie Murphy bit about getting knocked
down by a car in Bushwick, “where they never call the ambulance”.
The song doesn’t play its message too straight – the first verse closes
with Flav imagining doctors and paramedics butchering dead corpses for
kicks – but proves that Flav was up for more than just Cold Lampin’ and
inspired nonsense, and that he could land a punch almost as effectively
as his bandmate.
By the Time I Get to Arizona remains one of PE’s most incendiary
tracks. Evan Mecham had won the governorship of Arizona after
campaigning on the issue of refusing to recognise the national holiday
in honour of Martin Luther King Jr, revoking its status as a paid
holiday for state employees after taking office in 1986, and declaring:
“King doesn’t deserve a holiday.” Following racist comments and the
calamitous impact of his actions on Arizona’s tourist industry, Mecham
was impeached for obstruction of justice and misuse of government funds,
and left office in 1988; two years later, however, Arizona voters
rejected recognising Martin Luther King Jr Day, inspiring this
slow-burning broadside. The track opens with PE comrade Sister Souljah
announcing that, owing to Arizona’s “psychological discomfort in paying
tribute to a black man who tried to teach white people the meaning of
civilisation”, PE were heading out to combat “white supremacy scheming”.
Chuck trained his fire on the people of Arizona (“The whole state’s
racist,” he spits) and their erstwhile governor, “the sucker over there,
try to keep it yesteryear”. Even if he was no longer in office, Mecham –
who, among other lamentable acts, infamously defended using the word
“pickaninny” to describe black children – was a worthy target.
There was truth behind the unwieldy title of
the band’s fifth album, 1994’s Muse Sick-n-Hour Mess Age. The LP dropped
as gangsta rap hit its commercial peak, and Muse Sick reflected Chuck
D’s belief that rap glorified street violence and drug and alcohol abuse
to the black community’s detriment, and for the entertainment of a new
white audience. The finest of Muse Sick’s fiery tracks was this bravura
blast, and in particular its second half, where Chuck – having just
called out drug-dealing gang-bangers as Uncle Toms and daydreamed of
casting their gats aside and facing them down with his bare fists –
declares himself the “rhymer in the zone” and sets off on a breathtaking
150-second spiel with the energy of a freestyle but the focus of
Chuck’s finest verses. It’s a dizzying stream of consciousness, zipping
from anti-booze bromides to visions of neighbourhoods on fire, via
revolutions, revelations and an impossibly thrilling closing lap where,
as drummer Nathaniel Townsley III’s live beat winds tighter and tighter,
Chuck unleashes a final shoutout to his PE comrades and sets their
mission in terms of “right versus wrong, good versus evil, god versus
the devil – what side are you on?”
It was another four years before PE followed up Muse Sick with the
soundtrack to Spike Lee’s film He Got Game, during which time Chuck
recorded a solo album and penned an autobiography, Flav fielded charges
of domestic abuse and drug possession, Griff rejoined the fold and
Terminator X retired following a motorcycle injury. Before the century
was out, Public Enemy had left Def Jam and set up their own label, Slam Jamz,
to release subsequent PE output. And there was a lot of it: eight
albums between There’s a Poison Goin’ On (1999) to Man Plans God Laughs
(2015). This stormer from 2007’s How You Sell Soul to a Soulless People
Who Sold Their Souls is one of their finer late-period gems, Chuck
riding anthemic horns to restate their mission (“My soul intention / To
save my brothers and sisters”), hailing PE as “the Rolling Stones of the
rap game, not bragging” and taking bleak stock of rap’s lack of
radicalism in the 21st century (“spittin’ riches, bitches and this new
thing about snitches”). Adopted as the theme to the 2012 Paralympics,
the track’s bold, righteous swagger proved that, even if Public Enemy
no longer shook the mainstream with their “CNN for black culture”
broadcasts, Chuck’s muscular flows and Flav’s askew interplay could
still make for electrifying pop moments.
in New York City. Al Pereira/Michael Ochs Archives
/Getty Images
“We needed an anthem,” Spike Lee said. “When I wrote the script for Do the Right Thing, every time when the Radio Raheem character showed up, he had music blasting. I wanted Public Enemy.” The director may have asked for an anthem for his 1989 chronicle of
big-city racial tensions, but what he got was a salvo. A quarter of a
century has passed since Radio Raheem’s boom box served as a megaphone
to a generation, spreading Public Enemy’s rap reveille over and over again in the movie, but “Fight the Power”
has not lost an ounce of its revolutionary power or poignancy. Chuck
D’s lyrics praising freedom of speech and people uniting while decrying
racist icons still sound just as vital as anything Pete Seeger
wrote, and production team the Bomb Squad’s ultra-modern collage of
funk and noise for the track has never been replicated. The fact that
Public Enemy made multiple versions of the tune – including the Branford
Marsalis–infused, free-jazz cut for the movie and the more
straight-ahead approach on their 1990 album Fear of a Black Planet – only shows the versatility of the song’s message.
To celebrate the legacy of the tune, and its impact both in and out of movie theaters 25 years later, Rolling Stone caught
up with Lee, Marsalis and Public Enemy’s Chuck D and Flavor Flav and
the Bomb Squad’s Hank Shocklee and found out how they made an anthem.
Where does the “Fight the Power” story begin? Chuck D: Spike,
[producer] Bill Stephney, Hank and I had a meeting, and Spike simply
said, “Hey look, I’ve got this movie based on all this tension going on
in the New York area, the clashing neighborhoods, and I’m looking for an
anthem.” All I remember was Spike was saying, “I’m looking for an
anthem.”
Hank Shocklee: Spike’s original idea was to have
Public Enemy do a hip-hop version of “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” which
is kind of like a Negro anthem or spiritual. But I was like, “No.” I
opened the window and asked him to stick your head outside. “Man, what
sounds do you hear? You’re not going to hear ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing’
in every car that drives by.” We needed to make something that’s going
to resonate on the street level. After going back and forth, he said,
“All right, I’ll let you guys go in there and see what you guys come
back with.”
When did the “Fight the Power” concept come up? Chuck D: We like to work from titles down, so we came up with “Fight the Power” first. It was inspired by the Isley Brothers’ song “Fight the Power.” But the challenge was, could we make something entirely different that said the same thing in another genre?
Shocklee: We lived in the suburbs and were
sandwiched by nothing but white communities. It was like we were the
leftovers: We got what the white communities didn’t want to have, we got
their spillovers. So we always had to kind of fight this adversity. We
wanted to just make something that was going to say, “I’m mad as hell,
I’m not gonna take it any more – I’m going to fight the system.” So that
song that the Isley Brothers did, “Fight the Power,” resonated, but
their version was a little soft. It didn’t resonate as deeply as I
thought it should.
Chuck, at what point did you write the lyrics? Chuck D: I was getting ready to head out on a European run with Run-D.M.C.
in the fall of 1988. I remember writing a big chunk of it on a plane as
we were flying over Italy. And D.M.C. was probably in the chair next to
me. So I had the aftereffect and the glow of Run, D.M.C. and Jam Master
Jay to inspire me, so to speak, in the writing of some of the lyrics.
“Freedom of speech is freedom of death” is a line that has always stood out. What prompted that? Chuck D: A lot of that stuff like that line is like Bob Marley
or Frederick Douglass: “There’s no progress without struggle.” There
are a lot of things like that that I was able to incorporate it in
there Why did you pick out Bobby McFerrin’s 1988 single “Don’t Worry Be Happy” as a negative thing? Chuck D: Because”Don’t
Worry Be Happy” doesn’t apply to protests. If you’re not worried and
you’re happy, you’re like, why protest? Not everybody’s gonna feel like
that. What inspired the line about Elvis and John Wayne being racists? Chuck D: [Comedian]Blowfly had a record called “Blowfly’s Rapp”in
1980. And there was a line in there where one of the characters in the
song was a grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, and basically he had a
lyric, “Well, I don’t care who you are, motherfuck you and Muhammad
Ali.” Why did you pick Elvis Presley and John Wayne, specifically? Chuck D: Elvis
and John Wayne were the icons of America. And they kind of got
head-and-shoulder treatment over everybody else. It’s not that Elvis was
not a talented dude and incredible in his way, but I didn’t like the
way that he was talked about all the time, and the pioneers [of rock
& roll], especially at that time, weren’t talked about at all. When
people said “rock & roll” or “the King,” it was all “Elvis, Elvis,
Elvis, one trillion fans can’t be wrong” type of shit. But as far as “motherfuck him and John Wayne”… yeah, fuck John Wayne to this minute [laughs].
John Wayne is “Mr. Kill All the Indians and Everybody Else Who’s Not
Full-Blooded American.” The lyric was assassinating their iconic status
so everybody doesn’t feel that way. “Fight the Power” and the Best Summer Songs of All Time Is that also how “most of my heroes don’t appear on no stamps” came about? Chuck D: That
came from the fact that Spike also discussed how there was a wall in
the movie with people we respected as heroes on it. So “Most of my
heroes don’t appear on no stamps,” was saying, “You know what, we’ve got
heroes on the wall, too.”
Flavor, how did you end up getting the John Wayne line? Flavor Flav: A
lot of the songs that Chuck D has written, I took parts. I’d say, give
me this part, give me that part. And I’m very grateful for the lines he
gave me. I ain’t gonna lie, because those are the most memorable parts
of the record. See Where Questlove Ranked “Fight the Power” on His Top 50 Hip-Hop Songs of All Time Was “Fight the Power” the first song considered for Do the Right Thing? Lee: That wasn’t the first song they submitted. It was not “Fight the Power.”
What was it? Lee: Not “Fight the Power.”
Shocklee: It was “Fight the Power.” He got the
preproduction version. It was a sparse outline of the idea of the song.
Spike, with all due respect, is not a rap guy, so he’s not gonna
understand where it could go until it’s a finished production.
Chuck D: [Laughs] Spike misconstrued it as
being a different song. It was a song in a rough stage with different
elements brought up to the front. But Spike used it, because he
had to present the film to a bunch of different investors. I remember
checking out a screening with Hank in Brooklyn, and Spike had put in the
rough draft of the song, and every time he played it, I was sinking in
my seat, because I was like, “Oh shit. The song is not complete. It
sounds like shit to me. And he’s going to put in the movie this many
times? What the fuck!” I was like, “Man, we’ve got to come better than
that.”
Hank, what was your goal when you were putting together the music for the track? Shocklee: I wanted you to feel the concrete, the people walking by, the cars that are going by and the vrroom in the system. I wanted the city. I wanted that grittiness, the mugginess, the hot sticky, no-air vibration of the city [laughs].
How did Branford Marsalis get involved? Branford Marsalis: I
think it was Spike’s idea. I don’t feel at that the time that P.E. or
Hank would have been suddenly compelled to use a saxophone.
Shocklee: I wanted to have a sax in the record but I
didn’t want it in a smooth, melodic fashion; I wanted someone to play
it almost like a weapon, and Branford was the guy. He came in the studio
and he was incredibly gracious and very humble. He treated us as if we
were musicians just like himself.
Marsalis: Hank did something that I’ll never forget.
He made me do one funky solo, one jazz solo and one just completely
avant-garde, free-jazz solo. And I said, “Which one them are you going
to use?” And he said, “All three of them motherfuckers,” and he threw
all three up. And the shit was killer. You had this Wall of Sound come
in and the saxophones came in, and it was a Wall of Sound to accompany a
Wall of Sound.
Branford, coming from a jazz background, what was it like playing over a Bomb Squad track? Marsalis: It was not a normal chord progression. If it was C minor then it went to A-flat 7. It has the same sensibility as a James Brown
tune, which is completely where they got it from. If you listen to when
they go, “Fight the Power” and you hear that voice that goes, “Aahh,”
that voice is not in the same key as the other shit. A musician would
never do that. But it works. It unwittingly helped me expand my brain in
a way.
Did you think you had a hit? Chuck D: No, but when I heard Spike Lee put it 20 times in the movie, I was like, pssh. We realized early that film was probably going to be our outlet to deliver shit. We couldn’t rely on radio.
Marsalis: They had the greatest marketing tool in
the world. They had a movie that people were going to see two and three
times, that was going to be all over the world and it scared white
people half to death — which ensured that it was going to sell.
Flavor Flav: When “Fight the Power” was being
created, all I did was just come in, lay down my lyrics and I was out. I
didn’t know that the record was going to be as big as it turned out to
be. I just wanted to make a great record and keep it moving. And next
thing you know, this phenomenal record was being played on the radio
over and over and over. I’m like, wooow. This is crazy.
Chuck D: For all the talk about “Fight the Power,”
there was always resistance to Public Enemy. It really got no higher
than 16 on the R&B/black charts, which just goes to show you how
much help black radio and urban radio gave us. It didn’t even crack the
Top 10. It’s crazy, because in hindsight when they talk about the Number
One rap record that meant something, “Fight the Power” is always at the
top of those charts.
The B side to the original 12 inch features a hilarious meeting between Spike and Flavor. How did that come together? Chuck D: They’re having a conversation – about what? Who the fuck knows. Flavor won’t remember it [laughs].
Flavor Flav: I don’t remember the B side.
What did you think of the movie’s opening credits, when Rosie Perez shadowboxes to the song? Flavor Flav: It was just incredible, man, hearing my voice in a movie [laughs].
It was buggin’ me out. It was like the first time I ever heard “Public
Enemy Number One” on the radio. It gave me that kind of feeling. Then
also hearing my voice all throughout the movie – because that’s the only
record that they really played in that movie, [actor Bill Nunn’s
character] Radio Raheem would play nothing else but “Fight the Power” on
his box, man. It was just an incredible feeling.
Chuck D: It was cool, because I thought I could get away with not doing a video [laughs].
Marsalis: I dug the song. I thought it was a hit
from the get. I mean, Rosie wasn’t my favorite dancer necessarily, as
someone who had a relationship with the arts that was rather broad. But
it was cool. It was great to see. You know, Rosie was fine as hell so I
didn’t object to that.
Shocklee: The track intensified the story. When
Radio Raheem was with the boom box playing that song, that’s what was
happening at that time, exactly. You could have walked out the theater
and into a pizza shop, and that would have happened at that moment.
What do you remember about making the video? Lee: All
Chuck D and I wanted to do was reenact a march. So we had everybody
show up. We marched from a specific space through the streets of
Brooklyn and ended up on the block where we shot the film. We had to do
it there. The movie is shot on one block. Stuyvesant Avenue, between
Quincy and Lexington in Bed-Stuy. So we definitely wanted the
destination of the march was the block where we shot the film. The stage
was there. Perform.
Shocklee: That video was a really good thank-you
that Spike did for us. We didn’t get paid for using the song throughout
the film. It was the first big production budget that we’ve ever had for
a video. When I first got the treatment, I thought it looked very
simple. It was just, “Hey, we’re gonna do this march, make it seem like
it’s a march on Washington, but we’re going to do it in Brooklyn.” I got
to the set around 5:30 in the morning, and people were lined up. It
looked like the Million Man March.
Spike, how did you get so many people there? Lee: We just put the word out: “Public Enemy video.” People showed up. The police were scared though.
Why? Lee: That many people? They
always get scared. But there was not one incident. It was great. And
the police were not a problem. As long as you’re done by 6, we’re all
right.
Chuck D: It was like a rose really sprouted in
Brooklyn. It was seriously a black movement of just being able to stand
up and demand that the systems and the powers that be don’t roll you
over. And this was a threat to America and it was a threat to the record
companies at the time. That video was really powerful.
Chuck, what inspired the video’s intro, where you talk about the Civil Rights March on Washington from 1963? Chuck D: I
remember coming on in the video saying that the whole concept of the
march in Washington wasn’t complete, but my words weren’t as sharp as I
would like them to be, so I ended up saying, “That’s some nonsense.” And
the way it was cut, I sound like I’m out of my damn mind [laughs].
Flavor Flav: That was one of the most craziest days
of my life. But it was so amazing. It was my first time ever really
doing a video shoot. And with that many people at my video shoot, it was
crazy. Not only that but we had Jesse Jackson there, Al Sharpton was
there, Tawana Brawley was in the video, too, as well. And the whole of
Bedford-Stuyvesant. We had a good time that day, man. I would give
anything to live that day one more time, that day was so amazing.
Flavor, who is the little girl you’re holding at the end of the video? Flavor Flav: That was my daughter Shanique. She was three years old at the time. Now she’s 28 [laughs].
Lee: Chuck and Flavor just had so much fun. It was a
great day. VH1 named it the Number One hip-hop video of all time. Well
deserved. Rightfully so.
The version of “Fight the Power” on Fear of a Black Planet stripped away Marsalis’ solo and remixed the Elvis line. Why make different versions? Chuck D: “Fight
the Power” came out on Motown first, because of the soundtrack, but we
were with Sony. We had to pull some structural things in order have
“Fight the Power” on Motown as a single but also our own video on Sony
and then being on Fear of a Black Planet the following year as the final track.
Shocklee: Putting on the Public Enemy album, it just
didn’t make sense to have the same exact version. And I’m a big fan of
each. Each record, to me, should live in its own space.
Finally, now that 25 years have passed, how do you feel the song holds up? Chuck D: I
feel like Pete Seeger singing “We Shall Overcome.” “Fight the Power”
points to the legacy of the strengths of standing up in music. Spike
really made that record what it is. Because who puts a song in a movie
that many times? Who does that?
Flavor Flav: I think it’s one of the most amazing
things that Chuck has ever written. I’ve always looked at Chuck as one
of the most amazing writers and lyricists ever. And a lot of the stuff
that Chuck wrote was all accurate information. Chuck has been right a
lot of times and that’s why I always backed up my partner.
Marsalis: Come on, that shit is anthemic. And for
all of the people that love popular culture, there are a handful of
songs that are actually anthemic in hip-hop or otherwise. And that one
is one of them.
Shocklee: I think it was Public Enemy’s and Spike
Lee’s defining moment because what it had done was it had awoken the
black community to a revolution that was akin to the Sixties revolution,
where you had Martin Luther King or Malcolm X. It created such an
energy surge throughout the community that it became the template for
every artist, every filmmaker, every rapper, singer, and it also sparked
community leaders and teachers to understand the power of hip hop. And
it made the entire hip-hop community recognize its power. Then the real
revolution began.
The Ballad of the Boombox: What Public Enemy Tells Us About Hip-Hop, Race and Society
Thirty years after Public Enemy’s debut album, the group’s sonic innovation and powerful activism resonate powerfully today
Now on display in the museum’s “Musical Crossroads”
exhibition, the boombox is a striking symbol of the early years of
hip-hop.
(NMAAHC, gift of Public Enemy)
When Timothy Anne Burnside spent a day in Atlanta with Chuck D in 2012, the last thing she expected was for the Public Enemy rapper to send her home with the group’s prized boombox. The band bought it in New York in 1987, the same year as they finished their first album, Yo! Bum Rush the Show.
The boombox came on tour with the guys in the 1980s then again in the
2000s, providing music for their travels and acting as a stage prop
during their shows. For Burnside, a curatorial museum specialist at the
Smithsonian’s new National Museum of African American History and Culture, the boombox was an invaluable treasure.
It was also a cumbersome addition to her baggage on her flight out of Atlanta.
Delayed at security because she couldn’t check the boombox as
luggage, Burnside was the last one to board her plane. She was also
required to keep the newly acquired artifact within sight at all times,
which meant the bags already stowed in the plane’s overhead compartments
had to be shifted to make room for the boombox so that it was safely
secured directly above her seat.
“Everyone hated me,” Burnside remembers of the experience years
later. But that couldn’t diminish her joy over the acquisition. “That
boombox is very special to me. We had quite the journey together.”
Now on display in the museum’s “Musical Crossroads”
exhibition, the boombox is a striking symbol of the early years of
hip-hop—and Burnside’s own experience with exploring music. She started
her career at the Smithsonian processing jazz collections at the
National Museum of American History. With its roots in jazz, funk and
other early music styles, hip-hop was both part of a continuum and a
singular moment.
“Thinking about how hip-hop was creating things that were brand new
out of existing music was fascinating to me,” Burnside says. The
sentiment was shared by many of the other curators working on the
inaugural exhibitions at the new museum. “There was no battle to get
hip-hop included, it was always part of the conversation.”
And Public Enemy is an absolutely crucial part of that
conversation, says the museum’s Dwan Reece, curator of music and
performing arts. “If you talk about albums that set a genre on a new
course, Yo! Bum Rush the Show was the introduction to that new course.”
The album combined the vocal work of Chuck D (Carlton Ridenhour) and Flavor Flav (William Drayton) with drumbeats by Hank Shocklee and turntable riffs by Terminator X (Norman Rogers).
The Bomb Squad, led by Shocklee, was the soon-to-be-famous production
team that pulled the whole album together to create a distinct,
multi-layered sound. When it was released by Def Jam Recordings (a label
that included other notable artists like L.L. Cool J and The Beastie
Boys) 30 years ago, on February 10, 1987, it permanently changed the
course of hip-hop.
“The group did its rap homework well, because Public Enemy builds on some of the best ideas of earlier rappers,” wrote music critic Jon Pareles for his New York Times review.
“At a time when most rappers typecast themselves as comedy acts or
party bands, Public Enemy’s best moments promise something far more
dangerous and subversive: realism.”
For Reece, hip-hip comes out of community and acts as a voice for
people rebelling against their circumstances. The music, especially as
created by Public Enemy, was in dialogue with the social and political
issues of the day—of which there were many. “Despite all the advances
that the Civil Rights Movement gave us, there was still poverty and
disenfranchisement in our cities,” Reece says. For the members of Public
Enemy, who met at college on Long Island, the city of their focus was
New York. Dramatic, violent clashes characterized New York City in the years leading up to the release of Yo! Bum Rush the Show. In September 1983, graffiti artist Michael Stewart was
beaten and arrested by Manhattan police officers, leading to his death.
In October 1984, an elderly and mentally disturbed woman named Eleanor Bumpers was shot to death by
police officers attempting to evict her from her Bronx apartment. In
December 1984, a white man named Bernhard Goetz shot four
African-American teenagers on the subway after one of the boys
approached Goetz for money. None died, but all were severely wounded. In
his confession, Goetz said,
“I wanted to kill those guys. I wanted to maim those guys. I wanted to
make them suffer in every way I could… If I had more bullets, I would
have shot them all again and again.” The jury found that Goetz acted in
self-defense, guilty only of charges related to his possession of an
unlicensed firearm. And in December 1986, just two months before Public Enemy’s album
was released, three young African-American men whose car had broken down
were attacked by a gang of white teenagers in the predominately white, middle-class neighborhood of Howard Beach. One of them, Cedric Sandiford, was severely beaten by his assailants. Another, Michael Griffith, was beaten and chased into oncoming traffic on Belt Parkway, where he was hit by a cart and later died of his injuries.
All these deaths, and the rampant discrimination and
economic disadvantages African-American communities faced, was the fuel
on which Public Enemy propelled itself to fame. Through music, the group
created a conversation. “Chuck D used to say they were the black CNN,” Reece says. “They
were really speaking out against issues like race and justice and
inequality.” In one song, “You’re Gonna Get Yours,” Chuck
D references the cop calling him a punk during a traffic stop. “Pull me
on a kick but, line up, times up/ This government needs a tune up/ I
don’t even know what happenin’, what’s up/ Gun in my chest, I’m under
arrest.” In another, “Rightstarter (Message to a Black Man),” the
lyrics go, “Some people think that we plan to fail/ Wonder why we go
under or go to jail/ Some ask us why we act the way we act/ Without
lookin’ how long they kept us back.”
“Hip-hop is activism and Public Enemy
really embodies that ideal,” Burnside says. It’s an ideal that continues
to resonate powerfully, even 30 years later. The issues Public Enemy
tackled, like racism and police brutality, have been repeatedly forced
into the public forum, with the deaths of Freddie Gray, Sandra Bland,
Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin and others. Rallying to the cause, hip-hop artists from Janelle Monáe to Kendrick Lamar have dug into the issues in their work, much the same way Public Enemy did. “Amidst everything that’s been going on in this country in recent
years, there’s no denying the relevance of anything off their first
albums,” Burnside says. “The message stands today and the sound stands
today and it’s this amazing combination of sonic identity with a much
larger, more resounding impact on popular culture and music.” What better to represent such heavy ideas than a boombox? The
boombox, as Burnside says, is a universal symbol for claiming your
space. It was the portable music player before portable music players
were also solely personal; unlike compact CD players or iPods, the
boombox projects its music out to the world and stakes its territory.
The same idea applies to Public Enemy, their use of sampling and their
music itself. “Public Enemy is in a place where it shouldn’t be, and so it’s a
representation of black communities not belonging,” Burnside says.
“Public Enemy and The Bomb Squad were not just inserting themselves into
an existing sonic space, but creating a new one. At the time it was
uncomfortable for many listeners, but it spoke to many communities who
didn’t have a voice or hear their own voices.” Public Enemy’s boombox as well as other performance pieces, such as costumes and banners can be viewed at the National Museum of African-American History and Culture.
Public Enemy Talks 'It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back' on Its 30th Anniversary
by
Ron Hart
June 30, 2018
Billboard
For Keith Shocklee of the legendary hip-hop production crew the Bomb
Squad, it was the artistry of Marley Marl that inspired the intensity
that defined Public Enemy's classic second LP It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, released 30 years ago today. “If
you really want to know who inspired us to speed it up,” replied Keith
in regards to that distinctive blend of quickness and loudness that
defined the beats and rhythms of the album’s 16 tracks, “It was Marley
Marl. And Marley was the one who changed the tempo of rap with those MC
Shan and Roxanne Shante records. The Bomb Squad was always about
striving to achieve that level or better. Marley was our drive, from my
perspective, to help us move it to the next realm with Nation. Meanwhile, we needed a whole team of us to compete with this one man!” His
brother, Hank Shocklee, also cites pioneers within his own artform as
the primary inspiration for the production technique they honed with
their partner Eric “Vietnam” Sadler that would first be heard in 1987
with Public Enemy’s debut LP Yo! Bum Rush the Show. Only for
the elder Shocklee, it was an inspiration that existed somewhere between
the record player at his family home and the parties he rocked in high
school growing up in Roosevelt, Long Island. “I come from a jazz
background,” he tells Billboard. “All of my early upbringing came from a
jazz influence played in the house, be it Ornette Coleman or Sun Ra or
Pharoah Sanders or Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, Miles. We could go on
for days about the jazz influence on me. And one thing about that
influence that had the most profound effect on me was how everybody was
playing at different time signatures and even different key signatures
as well and made it all work together. I was an avid DJ fan as well, and
when I was in high school I was following guys like Grandmaster Flowers
and DJ Ron Plummer and the Sound Twins, because they built their own
sound systems and they played live. And there was times when they would
all set up their sound systems at Riis Beach near Coney Island and have
all four systems going at the same time. I would find a spot on the
beach where I could hear the cacophony of all these elements at the same
time. And there would be moments where all the frequencies jelled and
became one sound.” There’s a line on the fourth track of It Takes A Nation of Millions,
“Don’t Believe the Hype," where Public Enemy’s powerful frontman Chuck
D decries how “writers are treating me like Coltrane, insane.” But what
was happening across the soundscapes of such key album tracks as “Louder
Than A Bomb,” “Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos” and “Rebel Without A
Pause” could be construed as jazz-like in its freewheeling abandon. “Me and Chuck were both modern art fans as well,” Hank admits.
“Especially when it’s that Jackson Pollock-ish, Basquiat-esque style.
Forget about the discipline or the textures. Don’t try to create a
landscape, but rather delve into an area where it’s almost noise. That’s
the area, to me, that was most intriguing, and what jazz represented.
It represented that true freedom. These guys like Cecil Taylor and
Albert Ayler, they created their own tones, their own language, their
own vibration. And so this is what inspired me when going into the
studio when it was time to do It Takes A Nation of Millions.” Nevertheless
Chuck D had no time for ne’er do well rock critics trying to
whitesplain Public Enemy’s music by referencing a bunch of obscure punk
bands. “Hype,” for one, went after Village Voice music editor Robert Christgau, despite the fact that his writing about Nation was largely celebratory. “I wonder if Chuck read what Christgau wrote at length,” mused Bill
Adler, the veteran music publicist who ran the PR wing of Def Jam at the
time of Nation’s release. “Chuck moved quickly, and he’d get
the flavor from a headline and he’d react off it. Christgau was never
going to write a blowjob, but he was a heavy advocate of and champion
for It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back from the very beginning.” “Christgau
was from another time,” Chuck asserts. “He’s open to some things, but
closed to others. He holds his ground. He also knows he’s a rock critic
god, and when guys know that sometimes you gotta open the door and bring
some light in (laughs).” John Leland, now a veteran Metro reporter for The New York Times, wrote a review of Yo! Bum Rush the Show for Spin and quickly became a target of Chuck’s lyrical ire on Nation’sbiggest
song, “Bring The Noise,” which originally appeared on Def Jam’s vastly
underrated soundtrack to the 1987 film adaptation of the Bret Easton
Ellis novel Less Than Zero. “The headline on my review
was Noise Annoys, the title of a Buzzcocks song, and Chuck D was
offended by that,” Leland explains. "I'm always up for the
give-and-take, and was especially game for argument back then, so their
reaction didn't bother me. 'Bring the Noise' is a brilliant song, and Nation of Millions lived up to the adulation that the first album generated. The group
complained a lot about the press, but the rock press at the time loved
them. But they planted their flag on being the public enemy, so that was
how they presented themselves.” There was another call out on “Bring the Noise” as well when the group’s
hype man, the indomitable secret genius of Public Enemy Flavor Flav,
proclaimed “wax is for Anthrax!” on the song’s epic third verse. The
shout-out to the Queens, NY, thrash kings stemmed from a mutual
admiration that existed between the two groups, both of whom were
regulars at Def Jam’s original location in the Village. “We had heard from a friend of ours at Rush Management that Chuck D
was putting us in one of their songs, and I think he mentioned it was
‘Bring the Noise’ actually,” remembers Anthrax drummer Charlie Benante.
“And we were just so excited to hear it, and when we first heard ‘wax is
for Anthrax’ we were all like, ‘What does that mean?’” I wasn’t updated
on my hip-hop lingo at the time, but I thought it was great. I still
don’t know what it means, though (laughs).” “We were sharing the
same area in SoHo,” Chuck remembers. “And Rush Management at the time
was also working with groups like Biohazard and Slayer as well. And Bill
Adler would always have the inside scoop from England from back when we
the Beastie Boys toured Europe. He’d always have the latest copies of NME and Melody Maker
on his desk. And one time while thumbing through I saw a photo of Scott
Ian wearing a Public Enemy shirt at the Donington Park concert. And
when I wrote ‘Bring the Noise,’ I wanted to convey there was no bias
between the music forms. It all came from the same seed. So when we say
how wax is for Anthrax and the beat is for Sonny Bono and Yoko Ono and
Eric B., it’s all the same feel. There’s no difference. And you might
call it noise, but it’s all noise and we’re gonna bring it and make you
thank God for the music.” When you couple the Anthrax shout-out
with the sheer brute force of the Bomb Squad’s production -- which also
included a mash-up of Slayer’s “Angel of Death” and James Brown’s “The
Funky Drummer” as the construct for “She Watch Channel Zero?!” -- it was
no surprise how much It Takes A Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back appealed
to the punk and metal communities. For a group who was so feared and
revered for its black militant stance, a bunch of suburban-dwelling
headbangers and skate kids found a kindred outlet for releasing their
adolescent hostility in hip-hop that gave them the same rush as their
favorite Bad Brains and Black Flag albums. That’s also not to mention
the extraordinary work of the group’s original DJ, Terminator X, whose
instrumental track “Terminator X On the Edge of Panic” finds the man
Chuck calls Norm taking the first few seconds of Queen’s “Flash Gordon”
on a collision course towards Planet Rock.
“You had magazines like Kerrang and Thrasher
putting PE on their covers,” states Adler. “Both of those publications
were fairly white and suburban; their music tastes were punk rock
leaning into thrash metal. But they heard something in PE they fully
embraced.”
“The energy of the music would have to take a backseat
to the simple art of not giving a fuck,” asserts Professor Griff, Public
Enemy’s controversial “Minister of Information” and leader of the
group’s community outreach faction S1W. “Those punk rock and metal kids
always did it their own way; speaking their own truth. And that appealed
to a lot of hip-hop cats, because we approached it the same way. In
many ways, punk and metal almost mirrored hip-hop in terms of that
energy and intensity each genre was giving off at the time.” “These
two cultures that socially seemed like they were separated were
actually the same,” adds Hank Shocklee. “Metal and punk never got any
radio play. It never was the establishment form of music in the '80s. It
was this backdoor, listen-with-your-headphones-so-nobody-would-know
force of nature. I was working in a record store at the time Public
Enemy had started that would deal primarily in metal and punk, and that
energy really inspired me to do something similar in hip-hop.” Three years after It Takes A Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back
was released, Anthrax and Public Enemy would join forces for a remake
of “Bring the Noise” that appeared on the metal group’s 1991 rarities
compilation Attack of the Killer B’s, followed by a joint tour with opening acts Primus and Bomb Squad protégés Young Black Teenagers. “It was great when Run-D.M.C. crossed over with that Aerosmith
project,” states Flav. “But when we re-did ‘Bring the Noise’ with
Anthrax, we took the game to a whole new level. And I think it was the
record that broke the racial barrier clean open.” “Anthrax had
done ‘I’m the Man’ and though it was a little parody, they knew what was
going on to a tee,” admits Chuck. “And then when they covered ‘Bring
the Noise’ it was deadly serious. The way Scott Ian handled that third
verse is amazing. I still kid with him to this day about it, how
impressed I was that he could take on a speed verse and jam on guitar at
the same time.” Yet despite all the crossover that It Takes A Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back
inspired in the zig-zagging worlds of rap and metal -- one that now
finds Chuck D teaming up with B-Real of Cypress Hill and members of Rage
Against the Machine in a band named after one of the album’s most
incendiary songs in Prophets of Rage -- the true glue which helped shape
this LP was the unbridled intensity Public Enemy brought to the masses. “Chuck, Hank and the rest of the Bomb Squad were really musical
geniuses,” reminds Brother Mike of S1W. “And historians, too. They
didn’t know just one side of music: They studied, played and understood
all different genres. I remember Kool Herc saying what DJs used to do
with breakbeats in how they’d find that most exciting part of the record
and then loop it by going from turntable to turntable. What the Bomb
Squad was able to do was the same thing across varying types of music
and find that unique, energetic, strange-at-times portion of any
particular record or records, mesh them together, flip them and turn
them into hits. Public Enemy created sounds that were unlike anything
ever. There was nothing before or after that matched The Bomb Squad beat
science.” “Punks and metalheads related to the crew's aggressive sound
and stance – ‘Middle finger for all,’ as Chuck D rhymes on the first
album,” proclaims Leland. “But a difference with PE is that they kindled
the romance of revolution. They weren't nihilistic, and their noise
wasn't the roar of the broken or powerless. They came on as the
oppressed fighting back, and in 1988 they made it possible to believe in
change. Who knew how far it could go. Not that they had a blueprint.
But they had a cause and a romance, and a lot of political music lacks
one or both. Some people heard the album and got involved in radical
politics. Others just thought revolution was cool. For a brief time,
Public Enemy brought them all together and convinced them that there was
strength in numbers. Even a nation of millions wouldn't hold them
back.” https://www.spin.com/2015/04/public-enemy-fear-of-a-black-planet-chuck-d-interview-1990/
[This article was originally published in the March 1990 issue of SPIN. To coincide with the 25th anniversary of Fear of a Black Planet, we’re repromoting this feature, which looks at the Chuck D’s life at the time of that album’s release.]
Public Service: With their third album, Fear of a Black Planet, about to be released, Public Enemy proclaims the death of European predominance. Pop goes Afrocentric for the ’90s.
Black tardiness in the hour of chaos. For a man who once said to me,
“The black race needs order and discipline if it’s going to prosper,”
Chuck D’s life seems in turmoil.
It’s 10:00 pm at Greene Street recording studios in New York’s SoHo,
and everything is put on hold as Chuck D hurriedly scribbles in his note
book, desperately trying to finish a lyric for a track off Public
Enemy’s forthcoming album Fear of a Black Planet. The “media
devils,” as he calls them, have been hard on his trail all week in the
wake of renewed charges of anti-Semitism which Public Enemy’s latest
single “Welcome To the Terrordome” have stirred up. Newsweek
wants to put him on their cover, and Chuck’s wife is growing
increasingly tired of fielding calls from reporters looking for juicy
quotations. The previous Sunday, from the stage of New York nightclub
the World, Chuck had rhymed: “Once they didn’t give a fuck about what I
said / Now they’re listening and they want me dead.”
Tonight, Chuck is in no mood to deal with the press — not even a
‘media angel’ like myself, someone who has known him since before the
release of PE’s debut album Yo! Bum Rush the Show. “Fuck SPIN,”
he says. “This is more important.” Days later, he apologizes and
proceeds to make amends with a dazzling interview, refusing to get off
the phone even when I plead that I’ve already got more than enough for
the article.
Branded a racist by the tackier elements of the mainstream media and
denounced as a ‘sell out’ for his refusal to condone Professor Griff’s
anti-Semitic remarks – by the holier-than-thou elements of the black
press – Chuck D is in a no-win situation. But as he raps on the opening
lines of “Terrordome”: “Got so much trouble on my mind / Refuse to
lose.”
“I saw this interview on Canadian television with this white girl who
was asked how she related to Public Enemy’s music,” Chuck says,
explaining the idea behind Fear of a Black Planet. “She replied that ‘deep down everybody is black.’ That was some deep science.”
“The whole concept is that there is no such thing as black and white.
The world is full of different complexions. The difference between
black and white is set up by people who want to remain in power. This
black and white thing is a belief structure, not a physical reality.
There is nobody on this planet who is 100 percent black or 100 percent
white. This is not news to black people – black people know they’re
mixed. The only reason that Public Enemy promote Afrocentricity and Back
to Black is that we live under a structure that promotes whites. At the
moment, we got to hold onto our blackness out of self-defense. The
bottom line is that white comes from black – the Asiatic Black man – and
Africa isn’t the third world but the first world, the cradle of
civilization.”
What is Public Enemy’s much awaited third album, Fear of a Black Planet, really
about? A lot of things. It’s about the so-called minorities of the
world recognizing that they are in fact a majority, rising up to
overthrow Eurocentric types with their cultural claim to guide and
instruct the non-European. It’s about deconstructing European
philosophical edifices or as Chuck D puts it: “hitting at the whole
belief structure of the Western world with its white world cultural
supremacy.”
It’s about promoting a dynamic Afrocentricity – not some
simple-minded search for lost roots, some nostalgic back-to-Africa jive.
Chuck D even respects the limited Afrocentricity of N.K.O.T.B., because
they “genuinely love hip-hop. I also respect the New Kids because
they’ve refused all offers to dump their black manager Maurice Starr.
People are still saying ‘get rid of the nigger.’ But the Kids are like,
‘Yo, man! Maurice was here from day one when we were nothing, and we’re
gonna stick with him.’ I can’t knock that. I wish I could say that about
some so-called black acts.”
Fear of a Black Planet is also about “re-building the black
man” — something that “Revolutionary Generation” from the new album
addresses with its hope that the black man is about to be reborn with a
new appreciation of the black woman. And it’s about how American mass
culture, especially in music, is disproportionately influenced by blacks
and yet how little of the profits blacks actually keep. (Check out “Who
Stole The Soul” off the new album.)
But most of all, Fear of a Black Planet is about music – this
is a hip-hop record after all, not a political manifesto. Or, more
accurately, it’s an Afrocentric view of music making as opposed to the
traditional Eurocentric way of making music, (Is it pleasing to the
ear?). Afrocentric music always involves some sort of social function.
This is what Chuck D was getting at on New Year’s Eve at the World,
where he said: “’Welcome To The Terrordome’ is a black male
correspondent’s view of how we looked at 1989. I don’t look at Ted
Koppell or “Newsline.” I’m not going to look at 1989 like the New York Times
is gonna look at it. I’m not going to look at 1989 like motherfuckin’
MTV is gonna look at it. I’m looking at 1989 like a brother on the
motherfuckin’ block to see how 1989 affected me and black America.
That’s what ‘Welcome To The Terrordome’ is about.”
Another striking difference between Eurocentric and Afrocentric music
evidence on the album is the emphasis placed on rhythm and repetition.
Public Enemy still remain one of the finest dance bands this planet has
ever seen (thumbs up to PE producer Hank Shocklee), producing a
state-of-the-art dislocated mix of breathless, polyrhythmical raps and
slamming, densely-compacted grooves that would enliven the deadest, most
zombified ass. All this despite the fact that Chuck D still remains one
of the un-sexiest front men in contemporary black pop.
But Chuck is unsensual for a reason. Blacks have been traditionally
valorized for their physical grace and their supposedly more “natural”
relationship with their bodies. In practice this has often meant that
black mental agility has been vastly under-rated. “We know how to
dribble a ball and dance and all that shit,” he says. “Now let’s develop
our minds. Let’s be the complete 360-degree motherfucker because at one
time in history, before the slave holocaust, we were the complete
being.” Chuck D may not be a traditional intellectual — “People think I
read a lot of books. I don’t.” — but possesses a fierce intellect. His
song titles encapsulate complex political and cultural feelings in a
sharp, accessible slogans that must make Madison Avenue ad executives
green with jealousy – “Don’t Believe The Hype,” “Fight The Power,” “Fear
Of A Black Planet,” “Bring The Noise,” “Black Steel in the Hour Of
Chaos,” “911 Is A Joke,” “Who Stole the Soul?.” If you’d never heard a
note of PE’s music, you’d still get the general idea from just reading
the track listings.
Tell me about the concept behind Fear Of A Black Planet. This shit started with Frances Cress Welsing, a doctor from the
Washington, DC area who shows that what prevents black and white coming
together is a racist belief set up hundreds of years ago that the white
race is somehow pure, and that that purity will diminish as it mixes in
with other races, until the so-called white race becomes extinct. She
calls it the white genetic annihilation theory.
Most of the world is made up of people of color, so why do so-called
whites think their shit is pure? And why do they think that imagined
purity entitles them to rule the planet? It’s like this whole
aristocratic thing with kinds and queens — if you poison their bloodline
they think their family tree is dead. Some white men think if they
don’t marry a white woman and produce a likeness of themselves, then he
is dead. In this country, they’ve got this law that one drop of black
blood makes you automatically black. To this day we’ve got a law that
upholds this white racist standard of purity. Let’s kick that apartheid
shit out of here. What laws like that say is that if you’re white you’re
pure, if you’re black you’re wack — some sort of poison in the
bloodstream. Why are they treating human beings like aliens?
Fear Of A Black Planet is not only the title of the album it’s also a track on the album. What are some of the lyrics? Oh, yeah. Like “Man, you ain’t gotta worry about a thing / About
your daughter, nope, she’s not my type / But, supposed she said she
loved me / Are you afraid of the mix of black and white? / We’re living
in a land where the law says the mixing of race makes the blood impure /
But she’s a woman, I’m a man / By the look on your face I can see you
can’t stand it.” And in the bridge it goes “Excuse us for the news / You
might not be amused / But did you know white fomes from black? No need
to be confused.”
But aren’t as many black people against race mixing as white people? I’m thinking of a recent edition of Ebony
about white male/black female couples. The reader response was amazing.
Without exception all the women said go with it if it’s from the heart.
While all the black men uniformly condemned bi-racial couples saying
things like “don’t black women who go out with white men realize that
white men raped black women during the days of slavery?” You gotta understand something. The black man was taught prejudice and racism by the white man.
That makes me think of a quotation from Minister Louis Farrakhan:
“The black man loved the white man more than the white man loved
himself.” Now that’s some deep shit. Right. It’s not that whites have a problem with blacks or that
blacks have a problem with whites: it’s that whites have a problem with
themselves. White people have a problem with themselves, their culture,
their history, their beliefs. They’re unsure. They don’t know how to
accept anything that comes that differs from the beliefs they’ve been
taught and are used to. They have a problem with their religion. They
have problems with authorities, their power structures. They have a lot
of problems with themselves and the structures that their forefathers
have created for the benefit of themselves and at the expense of others,
which ends up being at their expense, too, in the long run.
Can you relate what you were saying about Fear Of A Black Planet
to what’s been happening at “Yo! MTV Raps” recently? There were all
those rumors about cancelling the weekday show despite its big success
in the ratings. Fear of a black MTV perhaps? You’ve got “Yo! MTV Raps” with Afrocentricity pouring out of it,
making all the other programming look timid, weak and pale by
comparison. It’s a top-rated show, it’s bringing in the dollars, and yet
the heads of MTV are saying “Man, we gotta lessen it’s power, because
we didn’t think it was going to be this powerful.”
“Yo! MTV Raps” is incorporating black life into white American
suburbs. White kids all of a sudden are finding black heroes without a
white middle man involved. Little Johnny in Nebraska is saying these
days “Man, I wanna be like Eazy E.”
I guess you could call it the emergence of the new black super-hero.
The real black super-hero — different from a ball player because a ball
player can only do physical things, say a few words and leave. With the
new black hero, I’m always going to be in your face and you’re gonna
remember what I said — you’re gonna remember what’s in my mind, not what
my body does. White America is finding out about black America, and the
powers that be are scared of that. White kids are finding out for the
first time how black kids think and live. Before, it was like “Johnny,
don’t go in that neighborhood because these people are like that.” Rap
is teaching white kids what it means to be black, and that causes a
problem for the infrastructure.
What do you think of white rappers like 3rd Bass? 3rd Bass is a good example of people just being people. MC Serch and
Pete Nice were brought up in the middle of racism and yet they said,
“No, man. I’m not down with that.” Serch is not going around pretending
he’s black — he’s saying brothers is kicking it, and I’m out there
kicking it with them. I respect Serch for his ability to understand the
black situation and his ability to look past all that. He must know he’s
going to get it from both sides — a white boy doing rap — but his inner
strength comes from his awareness of what life is like on both sides.
Most black people, just to keep our heads over water, must know how
the white structure operates, and we must know how our own structure
operates. We have to know the white thing, because we’re getting it
pumped to us daily – in the schools, on TV, and in the newspapers. But
white Americans generally know little about how black Americans feel.
American life doesn’t exactly nurture inter-racial contact. But that shit is changing with people like Serch. Serch is a good
example of someone who understands black sentiments but is still
himself.
How seriously do some white kids take the message in your music?
It’s quite possible that those Italian kids in Bensonhurst who murdered
Yusef Hawkins were big PE fans. Without a doubt. You probably got a lot of drug dealers who like PE,
but they still go on selling drugs even though PE come out against
that. You’re always going to get people who ignore the message and are
just into the music for the slamming beats. As long as the majority get
the right message.
How effective have PE been in turning people’s heads around? Very. You were the first journalist to interview us, and I remember
how we talked about gold chains and the “cold getting dumb attitude”
that was prevalent at the time. Look around and see how things have
changed in the last three or four years.
So you don’t have a problem with whites dabbling in black musical styles? Not at all. There’s always going to be white structures that say to
the individual: “White boy, it ain’t good for you to think black because
you’re gonna stay there.” It’s like they said in the slave days: “Those
caught harboring the nigger will be reduced to the status of negro.”
But what you got to understand is that all levels of hipness start with
the black community. They then cross into the hip whites and then into
the mainstream.
It’s like Air Jordans. It starts [Chuck takes on a homeboy accent],
“Yo! Air Jordans is a black thing. This shit is crazy hype.” Then you
hear hip whites say [adopts downtown trendy accent], “Yo, man! Michael
Jordan’s incredible.” Then it goes mainstream [adopts preppie accent]
“Yo! Michael Jordan is the greatest in the world.”
I’m not making fun of white people picking up on black things: all
I’m saying is that black people should get paid when this shit goes
mainstream. It’s important that what we create, we control. We can’t
even poing to all the things we created thousands of years ago, because
they’re all chopped up in museums and in rich people’s homes. Where are
all the profits from the slavery holocaust? You can’t repair the human
damage of slavery, but where did all the money go? Capital doesn’t just
disappear. It’s liquidated in some form or another – in banks or schools
or government institutions.
It’s like I rap on “Who Stole The Soul”: “40 acres and mule, Jack /
Why’d you try to fool the black / You say it wasn’t you / But you still
pledge allegiance to the red, white and blue / Sucker stole the soul.”
How come PE haven’t been on “The Arsenio Hall Show?” Every other rapper of note seems to have been. Spike Lee told me it was because PE and him are a posse, and Arsenio
doesn’t like Spike. But I think that deep down the fact is that Arsenio
is just plain scared.
Does Arsenio fear a black planet? I don’t know if that’s true because I think his planet to him is his
whole ego. He’s just playing it safe. He’s doesn’t want to put us on
his show because he’s scared to lose sponsors. Now the media have tagged
us as racists, it’s the only excuse he needs.
What about Griff? It seems to me that he deserved the whole media
shitstorm about his anti-Semitic remarks. But what was lost in the furor
was that Griff’s fundamental project — to construct a non-Eurocentric
version of black history — is very sound. It’s just his scholarship
credit was shit — citing sources that had long been discredited. Most journalists are like, ‘How can I fault this guy on a slip?’ You
might say 30 positive things, but the one negative thing means you lose
the game. The negative thing is all you hear about.
This is a headline country: headlines rule this country. If the
headline say that PE are racist, then that’s what most people believe.
Does bourgeois black America fear a black planet as much as white
America? I noticed that, in the tape of your recent conversation with
Spike Lee that you let me listen to, you talked about the way Ebony and Jet hardly ever mention your music. Well I suppose they do if they got interests and stakes in a white structure that does
fear a black planet. Whether a black planet or not, it’s nothing
offensive: it’s actually safe. What it means is that the Afrocentric
point of view actually will be respected and looked at, and we will get
our stake in this planet that we have to get in order to be a force that
everybody has to deal with on an economic level.
In the same conversation with Spike, you said that fighting the
power isn’t about guns and violent revolution: it’s about networking and
business. We’re not taught to be tied into the networks like white people are.
The schools don’t work that way for black people. It’s just a matter of
controlling what we create — how much comes into our community and how
much leaves our community.
Comparing your debut album Yo! Bun Rush The Show
to your latest, these days you seem to have moved from local concerns
to more global concerns, talking about the planet and such. At the end of his life, Malcolm X moved to a more global type of
struggle. When you talk about a global struggle, you get out of the
narrow borderlines that America has set up in this racist type of
structure. People of color are being oppressed, but there are a lot of
factions involved in it. What Malcolm was getting at was that American
blacks have to take a more global approach to politics and understand
that in each and every place the struggle is the same, but each has a
different twist. Since that first interview with you, I’ve been around.
I’m able to see parallels with the American black struggle and what’s
happening in Israel and Northern Ireland.
That’s exactly what happened to Malcolm X. It’s when Malcolm
started to travel that he saw that the struggle of the American black
wasn’t unique.
Exactly. You can’t just see one place, you gotta see a lot of places
to get a grasp of the real situation happening in the world.
What happened during you recent meeting with Farrakhan? We talked about the situation and what’s to be done and what’s the
best way to handle it. And Minister Farrakhan also pointed out where
Professor Griff went wrong: you know, knowing that you have the right to
say the thing. Things that he said afterwards were also in a
self-defensive type situation, where they cane hammering down on him for
no reason. So, then afterwards, if you’re caught up in a fight, you’re
going to swing back.
Farrakhan had the same situation in early 85, maybe about 15
different Jewish organizations clammering down on him all because a
newspaper wanted to put out a headline that was not in context — that
tried to destroy the Jesse Jackson campaign after Farrakhan came to the
defense of Jackson after Jackson’s life was threatened. You think
Minister Farrakhan asked for any of that? He said the last thing he
wanted to get into a whole run-in with Jews. He said that’s not the
objective.
Hasn’t the anti-Semitism issue obscured what is important about Public Enemy? Somebody out there wants it to be that way. Hey, fuck that, obscure
their objective and them get them caught up in another situation that
they have to fight their way out of. That’s the situation in this
culture: people always want to divide by setting up some kind of
devices. It’s getting to be the case that any time a black person
mentions the word Jew, he’s accused of racism.
The song “Pollywanacraka” on the new album — what’s that about? It’s about race mixing. “Pollywanacraka” is a viewpoint from the
black neighborhood, not necessarily my viewpoint. For example, a lot of
black women in the neighborhoods are going to be fucking mad if a black
man is with a white girl. “As soon as a black man gets some money, he’s
with a white girl. White girl can’t do nothing for him.” But the black
male might say: “Well shit, I’m with this white girl because it’s a
person thing. I just love this girl. And thing, these sisters can’t do
nothing for me ‘cause they only want my money.”
And the other way around. A black girl with a white guy — brothers be
like, “Oh man, that bitch went out and fucked with this white boy, only
looking to get his fucking money ‘cause she don’t think niggers is good
enough.”
I try to tell my people there shouldn’t be any hatred for opposite
races. But no man is God: God put us all here, but the system has no
wisdom. The devil split us in pairs and taught us black is bad, white is
good and black and white is still bad. That’s why every time I turn
around, all the people in the neighborhood is looking to get mad at
interracial couples and that’s what “Pollywanacracka” is about.
One final question: How does music function differently in a black life from a Eurocentric Life?
In Africa, music was day-to-day communication. That’s a trick that
white world supremacists haven’t managed to steal from us today.
A
recurring theme in the theorizing of documentary film is the nature of
the relation between image and reality. This article deals with reality
effects and documentary aspects in reality rap, focusing on Public
Enemy's album Fear of a Black Planet (Def Jam, 1990). Specific
attention is given to the use of samples from `real life' locations, the
inclusion of mass media debates and the use of sonic montage. The
article discusses the exchange of music and reality in Public Enemy's
music, arguing that the musicalization of reality both enhances the
expressive power of their music and makes it possible to produce new
meanings in an informational sense.
White Heat Can’t Melt Black Steel: Public Enemy's Nation Of Millions Revisited
by David Bennun
June 11, 2018
The Quietus
30 years on, It Takes a Nation of Millions to
Hold Us Back is artistically unsurpassed. David Bennun looks at how
Public Enemy’s masterpiece also remains politically vital
Writing about the past is a free hit. You don’t have to risk anything. You know how it turns out. At any rate, you used to think so. Lately, I’ve been unable to read books or watch documentaries about
recent European and American history with the same dispassionate
fascination I once did. The comfortable sense I had that its worst
horrors were safely in the past, its best lessons well learned in the
present, has dissolved into vapour, into anxiety – into, often as not,
dread. Yet at least, when it comes to the past, popular culture, popular
music, remain solid enough. When, for instance, I settle down to begin
one of these anniversary pieces, I invariably have a clear picture in my
mind of what my subject is, what it stands for, where it fits. This
will invariably alter in the writing, as it should; but I know where to
begin, and I will discover where to end. Not here, though. Not with this one. For so many reasons. And those
reasons are intimately and intricately connected both with the greatness
and the significance of the work at hand, and with the grotesque and
straight-up terrifying state of things. In particular, the state of the
nation of millions. It’s a damn shame that Public Enemy’s second album
still matters so much. Or at least that it still matters so much in the
way that it does. Chuck D indicated as much to tQ on the record’s 20th anniversary:
“Yeah, it’s [still] radical politically. The message is radical today
because it’s not really being said a lot. You want it to not be radical,
but it is...” On the face of it, what Chuck D meant is that it
remained radical within hip hop, because radical hip hop remained
relatively scarce: “...because it’s totally different from Soulja Boy,”
is how he concluded that thought. There is another, broader and equally
applicable interpretation, which is that you wanted it not to be radical
because you wanted radical hip hop, 20 years on, to no longer be such a
necessary and urgent reaction to the way things are. That, 20 years on,
It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back should not still
have been so applicable to the lives of black Americans. That the long
arc of the moral universe, bending towards justice, should have rendered
its righteous fury redundant; should have relegated that aspect to its
own time, left the record to be valued for its stunning artistry. And that was ten years ago. When America was months away from electing a black president. On its 30th anniversary, Nation Of Millions
feels even more relevant than it did then. Perhaps even more relevant
than it did in 1988. As much as that testifies to the album’s
brilliance, it testifies even more to the abysmal realities of 2018. In making Nation Of Millions, PE set out with the conscious aim of making their own What’s Going On
– an album that, in keeping with their conception of rap as “the black
CNN”, would communicate both widely and directly with black America;
that would echo Marvin Gaye’s “Talk to me” plea not only in taking it to
the streets, but taking it from there in the first place, acting as a
conduit, a means to cohere, articulate, analyse and disseminate that
reality. They far surpassed this ambition. Which is not to say that Nation Of Millions
is necessarily the better album – although as a political piece, and a
polemical one, it is in another league, one of its own making. Rather,
that they created a new category; a thing that was sui generis. Nation Of Millions was not an updated or even upgraded version of something else. It was
something else. Nobody had ever heard anything like it, because there
never had been anything like it. PE approached hip hop as science, and
made it into astounding art. As it goes, PE’s next album, Fear Of A Black Planet,
would come much closer to being a rap iteration of Gaye’s record. It
also happens to be my favourite album of theirs, the one I find most
musically satisfying as a whole; but there is no question in my mind
that while Black Planetis also a masterpiece, Nation Of Millions
is much their most radical and important work. I can think of no rap
albums that could challenge it on those counts, and very few of any
other genre, either. It is one of the indisputable peaks of popular
music. To understand how Nation Of Millions became what it was, it
might help to start with what Public Enemy themselves were. If you go to
see PE today, you’ll find a first-rate showband arranged around the
remaining duo of Chuck D and Flavor Flav. Which is enormous fun, and
also very far away from the group’s origins. PE did not conceive of
themselves – or perhaps it would be more accurate to say PE, the
collective, did not conceive of itself – as a hierarchy of priorities,
or a musical core with additions bolted on. It conceived of itself as an
organisation constructed to fulfil simultaneously a host of equally
necessary functions. PE was a device of interlocking parts. All its
components – the MCs, the production team, a security crew doubling as a
stage act, a “Minister Of Information”, a “Media Assassin” – were vital
to its operation. Granted, some participants might be more
interchangeable than others, but the roles were all essential to
delivering the message. Indeed, not just to delivering a message, which
any paperboy or postman could do, but to driving home a message. Public
Enemy set out to be unignorable, and by Christ did they succeed in that. Nation Of Millions was put together the same way the
organisation itself had been. It wasn’t simply a matter of setting beats
to rhymes, or vice-versa. Like the band, it was an entire machine that
had to be assembled, with both fierce commitment and meticulous care, to
do a job. They had in mind not only what the album itself would be, but
how they would perform it live; to which end they agreed it needed to
move relentlessly and at breakneck pace. It opens with a recording of
the band being introduced onstage at Hammersmith Odeon: what follows is,
it is implied, a show in itself. It might be very far from a live
recording, but it is very much an alive one. It is intended to feel as
if it’s taking place onstage in real time before your eyes as well as
your ears. Sometimes great records result from a singular vision, superbly
realised (or even mis-realised, but with wonderful results). At others,
they result from the happy situation of having exactly the right
combination of talents to bring them about. Nation Of Millions is
the Platonic ideal of the latter. Effectively, it was created by six
people: Chuck D, the lead MC; Flavor Flav, the hype man and holy fool;
the members of The Bomb Squad (Hank and Keith Shocklee, Eric Sadler –
Chuck D was also credited as “Carl Ryder”, and Bill Stephney as
production supervisor); and DJ Terminator X. Chuck D’s voice was the
central element, as it had to be: when you have at your head the most
powerful and authoritative MC anyone’s ever heard, you’re going to make
sure people do hear him. Hank Shocklee, foreman of The Bomb Squad,
famously and unimprovably described his intention as making “the voice
of God” emerge from a “thunderstorm of sound”. Hank Shocklee’s peers are not so much the other great hip hop
producers as they are the likes of Brian Eno and John Zorn. Chuck D has
described him as a “daredevil” and an “antimusician”, and it’s hard to
overstate the importance of this to Public Enemy’s magnum opus, which is
as magnificent a work of sustained antimusic as any I know. The obvious
sources for PE’s sound, as for so much hip hop, may be James Brown and
fellow masters of the more rhythm-centric school of funk and soul. But
the spiritual forebears of Nation Of Millions are the
hard-boppers, the avant-garde- and free-jazzers; artists with the
imaginations and the chops to detonate black American music and
reassemble the atoms into novel and shocking forms. What PE had that
those artists did not was access to a sudden onrush of revolutionary
technology that allowed them to turn the means of recording into their
most significant instrument. If anyone has ever capitalised more
brilliantly on such timing and opportunity, I can’t think who. The other Bomb Squad members were variously skilled at creating
rhythm, feel and movement, using vocal and instrumental samples as riffs
(while Flavor Flav played the drum machine track on ‘Rebel Without A
Pause’ by hand, giving it a live rather than looped feel; Liam Howlett
of The Prodigy later incorporated that kind of variation into his
programming to similar effect.) Hank Shocklee’s gift, or one of them, is
his ability to hear and arrange things in a mode that is not, to use
his own term, “linear”. One of the most extraordinary things about Nation Of Millions
is the way everything seems to happen at once. Not just the density of
the sound, which is itself astonishing, but the baffling, jaw-dropping,
pulse-quickening juxtaposition of chaos and coherence across the whole
album. If one thinks of it as a machine built for a purpose, at times it
seems that purpose is, as with Jean Tinguely’s mechanical sculptures,
to destroy itself in the most spectacular fashion imaginable. But at the
end, the work remains intact and it’s the audience that’s in pieces. A run-through of the tracks feels redundant here. Nation Of Millions
is one of the founding documents of contemporary left-field music and
its associated sensibility; there can hardly be a reader, a writer or
indeed a subject of tQ who is not closely familiar with it. It contains a
clutch of tracks – one hesitates to call them songs, because the word
doesn’t seem adequate to describe them – which one automatically files
among PE’s “hits”: ‘Bring the Noise’, ‘Don’t Believe the Hype’, ‘She
Watch Channel Zero ?!’ All of these are incisive, punchy, and feel
shorter than they are. But the track that has over time become most
emblematic of the album is the extraordinary ‘Black Steel In The Hour Of
Chaos’, a title which not only summarises its story, but also
encapsulates its sound. (It bears noting here, too, that Nation Of Millions
was intended to run for almost exactly one hour.) It’s an anomaly on
the album as a whole, slower and sprawling, thumping and twisting,
almost a blueprint for their next LP but one, the super-heavy, much
underrated rap-rock piece Apocalypse '91... The Enemy Strikes Black. Yet its narrative cuts right to the heart of the theme on Nation Of Millions,
as so concisely captured in the album’s own title: the intrinsic
alienation of black Americans from the country in which they live. It is
a fantasy, but not an implausible one, of unjust imprisonment, escape
and guerrilla warfare. It could be the story of Muhammad Ali’s run-in
with the draft, expanded to a more modern nightmare, and its essence is
certainly to be found in the phrase misattributed to Ali (although he
may well have shared the sentiment), that “No Viet Cong ever called me
n*gg*r.” That is, it categorically rejects the claim upon a black
person’s loyalty and service of a country that structurally oppresses
that person, and all of their race. All? Well, that depends on who you ask. Martin Luther King Jr’s
dream was that black people would become equal citizens of their own
country, and it was towards that end that the liberal impulses of Lyndon
B. Johnson’s Great Society were directed. With civil rights on the one
hand, and economic progress on the other, surely equality was only a
matter of time. It is a bitter lesson when the letter of the law is at
last wrested towards fairness, and prosperity (at least to some degree)
comes your way, yet equality remains a mirage. 20 years on from King’s
assassination, PE might have been seen as pessimists, or at least
extremists. True, black people were disproportionately represented among
the poorest; but was there not now a burgeoning black middle class?
(There was.) Did the nation’s laws not forbid the discrimination King
had led the fight against? (They did.) There was that arc of the moral
universe, duly bending. Who knows, maybe in another 20 years America
could have a black president. (It had.) So much for the pessimism; were PE not just fighting yesterday’s
battle? As for the extremism, well: PE were overt black nationalists.
Their figurehead, it was once noted, seemed never to have met a
conspiracy theory he didn’t like. They championed Louis Farrakhan, the
Nation of Islam leader whose noxious anti-Semitism (still prevalent in
radical and black power movements today, where, for instance, his
poisonous lie that Jews were the principal financiers and beneficiaries
of the slave trade remains in circulation) would soon be publicly echoed
by PE’s “Minister for Information”, Professor Griff. The irony is that Jewish people could have told black people this: it
doesn’t matter whether you climb the ladder economically and
politically. If you belong to a race of which there is widespread,
deep-rooted, longstanding fear and suspicion, it will never go away.
It’s always there lurking, festering, waiting until conditions favour a
resurgence. (Many Jewish people had themselves succumbed to the delusion
of security at that point, which would bring its own bitter lessons.
But that is another, parallel story.) And now, 30 years on, with an American president overtly supportive
of white supremacism, and a Black Lives Matter movement that, whether or
not one agrees with specific politics of its leadership, is
unquestionably born of dire necessity, the idea the Public Enemy were
overly pessimistic is liable to induce mordant laughter. If anything, it
feels as if they understated the matter. America is a country in which
even its wealthy black citizens understand very well that their skin
makes them – literally so – targets; that it puts their children in
jeopardy when they walk down the street; that status is no protection
from threats supported and often inflicted by its institutions. In its themes and its rhetoric, Nation Of Millions prefigures the thesis of Ta-Nehisi Coates, in his book We Were Eight Years In Power,
that slavery is America’s original sin, and can never be eradicated;
that white supremacism is not an aberration to be eventually fixed by
progress, but a structural foundation that will persist for as long as
that structure does. The American Civil War paid for slavery in blood,
yet the debt remained unsettled, because the compact America struck with
its white citizens is that, no matter how low they sunk, their
birthright would raise them above the nation’s black population. Coates’s writing on race in America has a despairing, nihilistic
tone, originating in those deep, dark waters where weariness meets rage.
The same may be said of ‘This Is America’, the horrifying and (in every
meaning) sensational tour-de-force song and video with which Donald
Glover, as Childish Gambino, delivered such a shock earlier this year.
Yet Glover is not PE’s direct heir. ‘This Is America’ is a righteous
gonzo howl hurled into the internet bearpit that is contemporary
American culture. PE, working in the pre-wired days, sought to create
their own communications system. Their fury was more than matched by
their focus. Nation Of Millions could probably have happened only
exactly when it did: at a moment when technology permitted its creation
and did not yet make redundant its conceptualisation as both medium and
message; and when Western societies by and large abided by the idea
that overt racism was somehow distasteful, and unrespectable – meaning
its better disguised forms required intense scrutiny. All bets are off
now, and polemical art feels like so much shrieking into a hurricane.
Which is no reason not to do it, but every reason to think it can’t
possibly have the impact for which PE plotted Nation Of Millions. There it is, then. The greatest, really the only thing of its kind,
and one of the greatest things of any kind. And here we are, sliding
down the chute to Hell, with those at the forefront braying to the rest
of us, dragged behind them, that paradise waits below. What so many
black people have long known about the world, perhaps the rest of us are
about to discover. Where nations of millions turn upon one or another
race, they will inevitably turn upon themselves.
Public Enemy’s 1988 It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back
opens with roiling crowd buzz from a live snippet recorded at London’s
Hammersmith Odeon. Then an air raid siren cuts through the din, a
keening wail that still meant something in a town where the Blitz was
well within living memory.
In his review from that summer thirty years ago, Greg Tate’s prose
rivals the sonic intensity of the album under discussion and informs us
up front that PE’s disk “demands kitchen-sink treatment.” And we get it —
every other sentence is pullquote-worthy:
¶ “Nation of Millions is a will-to-power
party record by bloods who believe (like Sun Ra) that for black folk,
it’s after the end of the world. Or, in PEspeak: ‘Armageddon has been in
effect. Go get a late pass.’”
¶ “Hiphop being more than a cargo cult of the
microchip, it deserves being debated on more elevated terms than as
jazz’s burden or successor.”
¶ “PE producer and arranger Hank Shocklee has the
ears of life, and that rare ability to extract the lyrical from the lost
and found.” Tate’s review agitates as much as the music: “PE wants to reconvene
the black power movement with hiphop as the medium. From the albums and
interviews, the program involves rabble-rousing rage, radical
aesthetics, and bootstrap capitalism, as well as a revival of the old
movement’s less than humane tendencies: revolutionary suicide, misogyny,
gaybashing, Jew-baiting, and the castigation of the white man as a
genetic miscreant, or per Elijah Muhammad’s infamous myth of Yacub, a
‘grafted devil.’ “To know PE is to love the agitprop (and artful noise) and to worry over they whack retarded philosophy they espouse.” Below are the original pages as well as the full text of the article.
And just for the fun of it, we’ve included the full-page ads between
the Tate opener and the jump page to capture the musical flavor of the
moment: Kiss at the Ritz and Stevie Wonder doing eight shows at Radio
City Music Hall.
The Devil Made ’Em Do It
by Greg Tate
July 19, 1988
Granted, Charlie Parker died laughing. Choked chickenwing perched
over 1950s MTV. So? No way in hell did Bird, believing there was no
competition in music, will his legacy to some second-generation
beboppers to rattle over the heads of the hiphop nation like a rusty
sabre. But when Harry Allen comes picking fights with suckers adducing
hiphop the new jazz, like hiphop needs a jazz crutch to stand erect, I’m
reminded of Pithecanthropus erectus, and not the Charles
Mingus version. B-boys devolved to the missing link between jazzmen and a
lower order species out of Joseph Conrad. “Perhaps you will think it
passing strange, this regret for a savage who was of no more account
than a grain of sand in a black Sahara. Well, don’t you see, he had done
something, he had steered; for months I had him at my back — a help —
an instrument. It was a kind of partnership.” Page 87.
Hiphop being more than a cargo cult of the microchip, it deserves
being debated on more elevated terms than as jazz’s burden or successor.
Given the near absence of interdisciplinary scholarship on the music,
the conceptual straits of jazz journalism, and hiphop’s
cross-referential complexity, the hiphop historian must cast a wider net
for critical models. Certainly Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back (Def Jam) demands kitchen-sink treatment. More than a hiphop record it’s an ill worldview.
Nation of Millions is a will-to-power party record by bloods
who believe (like Sun Ra) that for black folk, it’s after the end of
the world. Or, in PEspeak: “Armageddon has been in effect. Go get a late
pass.” In Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made,
Eugene Genovese offers that the failure of mainland blacks to sustain a
revolutionary tradition during slavery was due to a lack of faith in
prophets of the apocalypse. This lack, he says, derived from Africa’s
stolen children having no memories of a paradise lost that revolution
might regain. Machiavellian thinking might have found its way into the
quarters: “All armed prophets have conquered while all unarmed prophets
have failed.” But the observation that blacks were unable to envision a
world beyond the plantation, or of a justice beyond massa’s
dispensation, still resonates through our politics. Four decades after
Garvey, the cultural nationalists of the ’60s sought to remedy our
Motherland amnesia and nationhood aversions through dithyrambs,
demagoguery, and a counter-supremacist doctrine that pressed for utopia
over reform pragmatism. Its noblest aim was total self-determination for
the black community. For PE, that, not King’s, is the dream that died. The lofty but lolling saxophone sample that lures us into the LP’s
“Black Side” could be a wake up call, a call to prayer, or an imitation
Coltrane cocktease. Since we’re not only dealing with regenerated sound
here but regenerated meaning, what was heard 20 years ago as expression
has now become a rhetorical device, a trope. Making old records talk via
scratching or sampling is fundamental to hiphop. But where we’ve heard
rare grooves recycled for parodic effect or shock value ad nauseam, on
“Show Em Whatcha Got” PE manages something more sublime, enfolding, and
subsuming the Coltrane mystique, among others, within their own. The
martial thump that kicks in after the obligatto owes its bones to
Funkadelic’s baby years and Miles Davis’s urban bush music. But the war
chants from Chuck D and Flavor Flav that blurt through the mix like
station identification also say, What was hip yesterday we save from
becoming passé. Since three avant-gardes overlap here — free jazz, funk,
hip hop — the desired effect might seem a salvage mission. Not until
Sister Ava Muhammad’s tribute-to-the-martyrs speech fragments begin
their cycle do you realize Public Enemy are offering themselves up as
next in line for major black prophet, missionary, or martyrdom status.
Give them this much: PE paragon Farrakhan excepted, nobody gives you
more for your entertainment dollar while cold playing that colored man’s
messiah role.
PE wants to reconvene that black power movement with hiphop as the
medium. From the albums and interviews, the program involves
rabble-rousing rage, radical aesthetics, and bootstrap capitalism, as
well as a revival of the old movement’s less than humane tendencies:
revolutionary suicide, misogyny, gaybashing, Jew-baiting, and the
castigation of the white man as a genetic miscreant, or per Elijah
Muhammad’s infamous myth of Yacub, a “grafted devil.”
To know PE is to love the agitprop (and artful noise) and to worry
over the whack retarded philosophy they espouse. Like: “The black woman
has always been kept up by the white male because the white male has
always wanted the black woman.” Like “Gays aren’t doing what’s needed to
build the black nation.” Like: “White people are actually monkey’s
uncles because that’s who they made it with in the Caucasian hills.”
Like : “If the Palestinians took up arms, went into Israel, and killed
all the Jews it’d be alright.” From this idiot blather, PE are obviously
making it up as they go along. Since PE show sound reasoning when they
focus on racism as a tool of the U.S. power structure, they should be
intelligent enough to realize that dehumanizing gays, women, and Jews
isn’t going to set black people free. As their prophet Mr. Farrakhan
hasn’t overcome one or another of these moral lapses, PE might not
either. For now swallowing the PE pill means taking the bitter with the
sweet, and if they don’t grow up, later for they asses.
Nation of Millions is a declaration of war on the federal
government, and on that unholy trinity — black radio programmers, crack
dealers, and rock critics. (“Suckers! Liars! Get me a shovel. Some
writers I know are damn devils. From them I say I don’t believe the
hype. Yo Chuck, they must be on the pipe, right?”) For sheer audacity
and specificity Chuck D’s enemies list rivals anything produced by the
Black Liberation Army or punk — rallying retribution against the Feds
for the Panthers’ fall (“Party For Your Right To Fight”), slapping
murder charges on the FBI and CIA for the assassinations of MLK and
Malcolm X (“Louder Than a Bomb”), condoning cop-killing in the name of
liberation (“Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos”), assailing copyright law
and the court system (“Caught, Can We Get a Witness?”). As America’s
black teen population are the core audience for these APBs to terrorize
the state, PE are bucking for first rap act to get taken out by
Washington, by any means necessary. Were it not for the fact that Nation is the most hellacious and
hilarious dance record of the decade, nobody but the converted would
give two hoots about PE’s millenary desires. Of the many differences
between Nation and their first, Yo! Bum Rush the Show, is that
Nation is funkier. As George Clinton learned, you got to free Negroes’
asses if you want their minds to bug. Having seen Yo! Bum Rush move the crowd off the floor, it’s a pleasure to say only zealot wallflowers will fade into the blackground when Nation
cues up. Premiered at a Sugar Hill gala, several Nation cuts received
applause from the down but bupwardly mobile — fulfilling Chuck D’s
prediction on “Don’t Believe The Hype” that by treating the hard jams
like a seminar Nation would “reach the bourgeois and rock the
boulevard.” But PE’s shotgun wedding of black militancy and musical
pleasure ensures that Nation is going to move music junkies of all
genotypes. “They claim we’re products from the bottom of hell because
the blackest record is bound to sell.”
PE producer and arranger Hank Shocklee has the ears of life, and that
rare ability to extract the lyrical from the lost and found. Every
particle of sound on Nation has got a working mojo, a compelling something other-ness
and that swing thang to boot. Shocklee’s reconstructive composition of
new works from archival bites advances sampling to the level of
microsurgery. Ditto for cyborg DJ Terminator X, who cuts incisively
enough to turn a decaying kazoo into a dopebeat on “Bring the Noise.”
Putting into effect Borges’s rule that “The most fleeting thought obeys
an invisible design and can crown or inaugurate, a secret form,” PE have
evolved a songcraft from chipped flecks of near-forgotten soul gold. On
Nation a guitar vamp from Funkadelic, a moan from Sly, a growl
abducted from Bobby Byrd aren’t just rhythmically spliced-in but
melodically sequenced into colorful narratives. Think of Romare Bearden.
One cut-up who understands the collage-form is PE’s Flavor Flav. Misconstrued as mere aide-de-camp to rap’s angriest man after Yo! Bum Rush
he emerges here as a duck-soup stirrer in his own right. Flav’s solo
tip, “Cold Lampin With Flavor,” is incantatory shamanism on a par with
any of the greats: Beefheart,
Koch, Khomeini. “You pick your teeth with tombstone chips,
candy-colored flips, dead women hips you do the bump with. Bones.
Nuthin’ but love bones.” Those who dismiss Chuck D as a bullshit artist because he’s loud,
pro-black, and proud, will likely miss out on gifts for blues pathos and
black comedy. When he’s on, his rhymes can stun-gun your heart and
militarize your funnybone. As a people’s poet and pedagogue of the
oppressed, Chuck hits his peak on the jail-house toast/prison break
movie, “Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos.” The scenario finds Chuck
unjustly under the justice (“Innocent/ Because I’m militant/Posing a
threat/ You bet it’s fucking up the government”). Chuck and “52 Brothers
bruised, battered, and scarred but hard” bust out the joint with the
aid of PE’s plastic Uzi protection, “the S1Ws” (Security for the First
World). Inside the fantasy, Chuck crafts verse of poignant sympathy for
all doing hard time. (“I’m on a tier where no tear should ever fall/Cell
blocked and locked I never clock it y’all.”) His allusion to the Middle
Passage as the first penal colony for blacks is cold chillin’ for real.
Chuck’s idea of a lifer, or career soldier, is also at odds with
convention: “Nevertheless they could not understand that I’m a black man
and I could never be a veteran.” As much as I love this kind of talk, I got to wonder about PE’s thing
against black women. And my dogass ain’t the only one wondering —
several sisters I know who otherwise like the mugs wonder whassup with
that too. Last album PE dissed half the race as “Sophisticated Bitches.”
This time around, “She Watch Channel Zero!?” a headbanger about how
brainless the bitch is for watching the soaps, keeping the race down. “I
know she don’t know/Her brain be trained by 24-inch remote/Revolution a
solution for all of our children/But her children don’t mean as much as
the show.” Whoa! S.T.F.O.!* (* Step the Fuck Off!) Would you say that to your mother,
motherfucker? Got to say, though, the thrash is deadly. One of those
riffs makes you want to stomp somebody into an early grave, as Flav goes
on and on insinuating that women are garbage for watching garbage. In
light of Chuck’s plea for crack dealers to be good to the neighborhood
on “Night of the Living Baseheads,” it appears PE believe the dealers
more capable of penance than the sistuhs. Remember The Mack?
Where the pimp figures it cool to make crazy dollar off his skeezes but
uncool for the white man for sell scag to the little brothers? This is
from that same mentality. And dig that in “Black Steel in the Hour of
Chaos,” the one time on the album Chuck talks about firing a piece, it’s
to a pop a female corrections officer. By my homegirl’s reckoning all
the misogyny is the result of PE suffering from LOP: lack of pussy. She
might have a point.
Chuck D Lecture (Barcelona 2008) | Red Bull Music Academy: VIDEO
TOPICS:
1:06 – Musical foundation
17:23 – Early hip-hop
36:44 – The Public Enemy sound
48:20 – It Takes a Nation of Millions…
1:02:17 – Hip-hop goes mainstream
1:43:19 – “Fight The Power”
MUSIC:
46:27 – Public Enemy – “Public Enemy No.1”
Chuck
D needs no introduction. As the lead voice of Public Enemy, he has
repeatedly made hip-hop history and possesses one of the best-known
voices in the genre.
In this extended lecture at the 2008 Red Bull Music Academy in Barcelona, he talked about the making of the seminal album It Takes a Nation of Million to Hold Us Back, his path to fame, the changing nature of the music industry, politics, art, and plenty more.
Please, won’t you join me in welcoming Mr Chuck D.
[Applause]
Yesterday, all these participants came in on their
first day and introduced themselves, talked a little bit about their
personal journey to get here. I wondered if you might share your journey
to get to music, because it really wasn’t part of the game plan
originally, right?
Chuck D
No. Number one, my personal journey to get here
yesterday was kind of f---ed up by London Heathrow and then Iberia
Airlines, they just took all damn day and they lost my bag. So I
couldn’t make you a really righteous CD, I just pulled something off
what I call a Vamp player, which I’ll show you later. My personal
musical journey came by accident because I grew up as a big sports fan.
In New York, where I was born, in Queens, I was a big fan of baseball,
which is the New York Mets, and basketball, which is the New York
Knicks, and American football, which is the New York Jets. And around
the time, I was eight or nine, they all won their championships, so that
threw me further into fanaticism. I just wanted to be a sports
announcer, listening to sports talk shows.
Music was always in my household. My mother was into
Motown, Stax, Atlantic in the ‘60s, my father played jazz and some
James Brown. I listened to music quite casually, but then in the 1970s I
listened to a lot of AM radio – big AM radio fan. WABC was the radio
station in the New York metropolitan area. It played top 40, pop radio,
but what I thought was exciting were the DJs, the jocks, and the way
they used to come on, [affects voice] “WABC, Dan Ingram.” I
just loved the voices, and I wanted to become a sports announcer. And
there was one guy who bridged the gap, George Michael.
Jeff “Chairman” Mao
The Sports Machine, not the George Michael you may all know from “Careless Whisper.”
Chuck D
Not that George Michael. He was a DJ on WABC, so
when he flipped over into sports, I thought that was a cool thing. The
music bug bit me around ‘76/’77. I wanted to play ball all the time and I
went to this place called Higher Ground, named after the Stevie Wonder
record. Half of the place was basketball, half was music with this thing
they called a “DJ.” Now, we always thought a DJ meant a discotheque
guy, and they would wear silk shirts and be behind this gigantic
foundation platform. So, we would walk a mile to this place in the
wintertime to try to get our ball on. But they only had two rims, and
everybody wanted to be at this place that was open to the kids, so
you’re looking at two basketball rims with 100 brothers waiting to play.
So, who got next? This shit’s gonna take forever. But as you’re sitting
there, knowing damn well you’re not going to play, on the other side of
the gym was this DJ, wearing a silk shirt as all of us just had these
tank tops or whatever. Before, music and sports were totally different
things. So, we were over on one side, trying to look hard, just nodding
our heads.
This is when disco was just coming in from the “over
funk” period – when funk got played out because everybody was trying to
do it. Once David Bowie did “Fame”, it was like, “OK, I’m tired of this
shit.” Disco came in, and it started off quite funky, because you had
The O’Jays and “I Love Music”, a lot of the Gamble & Huff sort of
stuff, strings and orchestral arrangements and The Stylistics and Thom
Bell. They’d upped the tempo and changed the beat, and that’s how disco
came in, and it was very cool in the beginning, around ’75/’77.
So, the DJ was playing this record from the group
War, who’d suddenly upped their tempo. A lot of the funk groups upped
their tempos: Mandrill, War, better-known groups like Kool & the
Gang, when they did “Ladies Night” two years later. We’re watching this
DJ as we’re waiting to play some ball and the DJ is playing “Galaxy” by
War. So I’m sitting there and I liked how the song sounded on the radio,
it would start out on WWRL – which was a soul station in New York with
incredible DJs, Hank Spann and Enoch Hawthorne Gregory, Gerry Bledsoe –
and they had the best voices in the world. [Affects voice] “Welcome to WWRL, the Super 16 (because it was 1600 on the AM dial), here’s a song by War, ‘Galaxy.’” And it would come in [does the beat and sings], you can Google it, Limewire it, in case you think I’m tripping.
This DJ played the same record, but the words never came in. He was like, [does “Galaxy” beat over and over],
and I couldn’t understand why the words couldn’t come in. He extended
it for about 10 to 12 minutes. This shows you how people didn’t
understand anything about DJing, and I’m from New York, because
automatically people think cats from New York are just, “Yeah, yeah. It
always was like that…” No, we’re country as a motherf---er, man,
especially in Long Island, which is only 15 minutes out. I was like,
“How is he making the record go like that?” You couldn’t really see two
turntables, you had no idea what he was doing behind the DJ stand, he
was just moving like side to that side, he had a light in his face. I
said, “That record must be about this big [holds arms out]. How
can it be that it still hasn’t stopped!” That was my first introduction
to the technical aspect of DJing, I totally did not understand how one
record could be extended into another. That bit me.
Later on, tapes were going out and people were
making pause tapes off the radio stations. One tape that got me was DJ
Hollywood’s son, DJ Smalls. The Jacksons... how many of you know Michael
Jackson? How many of you know the Jacksons were produced by Gamble
& Huff in ’75/’77? How many of you know Gamble & Huff? OK…
Gamble & Huff were Philadelphia International, which was signed by
CBS Records, which really they were distributed by them. They were the
in-house producers, and they were hot producers, so they were producing
everyone in the CBS soul tank. They had just picked up the Jackson 5
from Motown in 1975, but they couldn’t use the “5” because Berry Gordy
had sued CBS for use of the name. So, the Jacksons without Jermaine were
just called the Jacksons. And on the album Goin’ Places, which
had all the Jacksons moving, going forward, Michael included – because
Michel Jackson’s a bad-ass motherf--er, I don’t care what anybody says –
they had this song called “Music’s Taking Over,” which starts off with
this groove [sings], and this is the break part [does the beat].
I heard it on the tape, and once again the record was really short
intro then boom into the record, but this groove was going on forever.
And I was hearing Michael Jackson’s voice “Let’s, let’s, let’s, let’s.”
And I was like, “Why is Michael doing that shit?” Then “Let’s dance,
let’s dance, let’s dance.” So, I went to the store to buy the 45, and it
started off, went into the song and faded out, because it was a 45. I
was like, “This ain’t the shit I heard.” That’s what really bit me.
To make a long story short, the technical aspect of
what DJs were bringing to the music is what started hip hop; the
curiosity of taking something that was given to you as a recording and
flipping it, whether it be at a party or a tape. And cassette tapes were
new then, they were developed in ’64, but they hit the hood when people
could afford to make pause tapes with cheap players. That’s why it’s no
secret that the holy trinity of hip-hop are Kool Herc, Afrika
Bambaataa, the Master Of Records, and Grandmaster Flash. That’s the holy
trinity, it starts right there because their influence with the
recordings, taking them and flipping them in their three different
circles, went into other areas – and you’ve got to talk about Pete DJ
Jones, guys like Maboya, and the big soundsystem DJs who came with the
Jamaican aesthetic of two turntables and really manipulating disco/soul
records. A lot of people didn’t dig into funk and soul at first, but as
disco went forward with more computerized shit, people went back and the
guys from the streets started to dig back even more, finding things
like James Brown “Sex Machine,” and all those obscure records, like
“Apache” and “Seven Minutes Of Funk.”
Jeff “Chairman” Mao
I guess, at that point you were on Long Island.
Chuck D
Yeah, you take the bus to Jamaica and the E and the F
train to the city. The thing about it is, everyone from the city had
moved to Long Island, so Nassau County and Suffolk County are the only
places in New York where you had people from everywhere in the city.
Before that, people in Brooklyn had no reason to go the Bronx,
absolutely no reason. You ask a person from the Bronx if they want to
Brooklyn, they’d say, “For what?” Harlem in Manhattan was the center
point, so a guy from Brooklyn would go to Manhattan and that would be
the end of that, or they would stay in the planet of Brooklyn. Same
thing with the Bronx, they’d stay in the Bronx or they would come to
Manhattan. You wouldn’t find a person from the Bronx coming to Queens.
People in Queens would venture into Manhattan and possibly the Bronx. So
this migration in the ’70s was very important for figuring out the gigs
and the DJ, the music, all that’s intertwined. RL was the soul station,
but they can’t front and say WABC wasn’t an influence. You ask guys
like Biz Markie and Bambaataa, and they’ll tell you: “Hell yeah,” that’s
where their exposure to people like Steely Dan, Aerosmith and all that
came from.
Jeff “Chairman” Mao
When did you get exposed to things like the Cold Crush tapes – were those passed around at school by kids from the Bronx?
Chuck D
No, because when I graduated from high school it was
’78 so those tapes weren’t running around like that. They were more
like ’78, ’79, ’80. I was in college and in some other things. When you
got into college you quickly severed yourself from all high school
activity. When people talk about the parks, “Yeah, I was in the parks!”
Yeah, because you couldn’t get in the clubs. The whole key was to get in
the clubs, and the DJs excelling in the clubs were Eddie Cheeba and DJ
Hollywood – they just totally dominated the club scene. I’m 18 years
old, and I’ll make no secret about it, I’m trying to get into a club
that’s 18 and over so I can get with a girl, I ain’t trying to get into
no high-school shit. I’m trying to get into club, college, and whip out
as much ID as I can and these are the DJs that were dominating up in
there. You had to dress up, which I didn’t like to do, and the parks
jumped off in the summertime, where you could be casual because you were
outside. You can’t be outside in January. So, before my exposure was
before Cold Crush, it was to the DJs who were making tapes. The first
street DJs to penetrate to me – other than me just following Hank Shocklee
and Spectrum in ‘76-77, because they would bring Long Island and Queens
with Infinity Machine and King Charles – they had a big terrain and I
would follow them.
Jeff “Chairman” Mao
So, these were the mobile soundsystems in Long Island doing big parties?
Chuck D
Not only were they mobile but you had to be mobile
to catch them. The thing that’s different from the Bronx or Brooklyn, is
that people waited for things to come to them. In Long Island you had
to go and check it, you got in your car and you went to the Bronx and
Brooklyn and Queens, you drove there because you wanted to find the
jump-off. That was key, and these are some of the things that are
underwritten in the formation, because you talk about the New York
metropolitan area... People are surprised that the first rap record –
and we’re not going to talk about “King Tim” and The Fatback Band, who
had a recording contract knocking out things for Spring [Records], which
I thought was incredible – but people were surprised that the first rap
record came from guys from Jersey. You must understand the physical
logistics of Inglewood, New Jersey – it’s right across the bridge,
everybody’s got the same radio station. So before tapes, the radio was
dominant, the clubs were dominant, but also the parks and the streets
were dominant. So the first street cats, who really cut across and
ventured out and who I was impressed by, were Grandmaster Flash and
Melle Mel; those guys blew me away. That was in 1979.
Jeff “Chairman” Mao
When did you first encounter them?
Chuck D
Live in ’79, because they were able to bleed into what was happening at the club level, and also at the college level.
Jeff “Chairman” Mao
Because they had records out at that point?
Chuck D
No, this was before that. There’s nothing in hip-hop
– and I’ve been in front of stadiums of 75,000 people – I can’t even
explain the atmosphere in hip-hop and rap music before the first record.
From January ’78 to October ’79, when the first rap record came out, I
can’t even explain to you the intensity of rap music and hip-hop. It was
heading to a place where nobody expected it to go, no one knew where it
would go. If you’d told me in 1979 that there would be a rap record, I
would’ve said it was inconceivable, it was impossible, because it was a
whole party atmosphere type of thing. So, when Eddie Cheeba was going
around in 1979 – I remember it clearly like it was yesterday – “I’ve got
this new record, I’m going to break it for you.” And the place was
packed and the name of the song was “Good Times” by Chic.
People were used to dancing faster because Chic had brought you “Dance,
Dance, Dance” and then later “Le Freak.” They considered that a slowing
of the pace in ’78, but when they did “Good Times” it was waaaay down. I
found it hard to dance to. “What the f---, man! Gotta dance slow to
this shit.” But really, that was New York’s return to funk, which it
escaped from around ’73/’74.
That was the turning point because cats could rap on
that speed and cut to that speed. I remember very clearly in the summer
of 1979, they would have cats coming together, cutting up “Good Times”
with their sneakers. 1979, New York City was rap-f---ing-crazy. They
used to say, “Get that B-boy shit out of here!” But it was rap crazy.
But this was before the records, and everybody had a feeling something
was going to happen, but nobody knew exactly what. Eddie Cheeba would go
around saying, “Look out, y’all” – he broke the records, but he didn’t
make them – “I’m gonna put rap on a record soon” “What the f--- are you
talking about, how are you going to put rap on a record?” When “King Tim
III” came out in July ’79 , the Fatback Band had already been putting
out some hot funky, disco-tinged joints. They were from Brooklyn, they
would make songs people would dance to, so when they had King Tim III on
it, it was “Whoa!” It sparked something, it was the click in the
lightbulb. Then “Rapper’s Delight” came out in October, that was the dam
that burst, it was “Good Times,” it was the “Firecracker” break by Mass
Production. It was the two hottest songs on one record with street rap
on it, and that was the beginning of the dam breaking and people were
like, “Whoa, that shit’s a rap record.” Immediately, it went into the
era of the record and the tapes became less of a force – big, but less
of a force. It was about that record.
When “Rapper’s Delight” came out it was 15 minutes
long. A lot of you might think that was a long-ass record, but the irony
is, when it came out, it wasn’t how long it was, but how short it was.
Because to me and others, rap was a three-hour thing, and they got it
down to 15 minutes. This is what’s not really talked about because this
is old head’s shit, but I’m giving it to you straight from the horse’s
mouth, because I always looked at black music, rap music, urban music as
a science, as well as something to just enjoy, because I was a sports
fan. And anyone who knows about sports knows you can’t be a dumb
motherf---er talking about sports. How many of you here like sports?
See, that’s why you’re music people. You go in a sports circle and don’t
know what the f--- you’re talking about, they’ll tell you to get the
f--- out of here. I like people to think in music terms the same way as
people talk about sports.
Jeff “Chairman” Mao
So, when rap records came out, that’s when you
thought you had something to devote your life to. But it wasn’t the
music, right?
Chuck D
No, I was going to college and I got kicked out in
my freshman year, I worked at a job, then I went to some other classes. I
got into college as a graphic design phenom. I turned down a
scholarship for architecture at New York Tech. I was really good… as a
matter of fact, I thought I was too good, but I had no direction. “OK,
you’re good but what the hell are you gonna do?” So, when rap records
came out, everything just kind of clicked for me. “Wow, rap records –
that means covers, that means graphics. I could use my graphics to work
in an art department at a record company as records get bigger.” So,
that made me go back to school and finish, because I wanted to work in
the art department of a record company, doing covers and stuff. That
pushed me through school. I loved the fact you could apply your art to
the music.
Now, I wasn’t a big graffiti fan. I would be going
into work looking at the graffiti thinking half of it is wack, in fact,
90% of the graffiti I saw back in the day on the subway was just
terrible to me. I was about getting really graphics to the point. I was a
critic and thought I could do better. Just because you’ve got a marker
and a spray can, doesn’t mean you’re right to be marking up shit. “This
dude should’ve left his marker in his pocket instead of marking up this
train, because this shit is wack.” But there were 10% of cats out there
that were brilliant, I just thought there should’ve been some kind of
zone for them.
So, I just saw the graphic/music connection, and
that’s why I went through college. At college there was a radio station,
WBAU, which I went on because I was a big rap fan. I got on the
microphone because I thought back in the day 80% of all MCs were
terrible and they would be on top of a DJ who was terrible. You’d be
trying to get your dance on with a girl. you’d get the courage to ask
the girl to dance, and then all of a sudden, she’d stop and look at the
DJ and say, “I don’t think I wanna dance no more,” so you’re mad at the
DJ too, because he’s terrible and the MC is terrible. I’m like, “Man,
you’re f---ing my game up.” So, then I started to get on the mic to
rhyme to sit the wack MCs down. If you’re in a long line and you let the
first three MCs go and “Love Is The Message” comes on, all of a sudden,
just because someone’s from the Bronx they get on the mic too, “Yeah, I
know what this is.” Terrible. Then it was my turn, and the line behind
me would disappear, because they would be like. “Well, I can’t do that
shit.” That was my main reason for getting on the microphone – to sit
the wack MCs down so I could enjoy dancing to the music with some chick
out there.
Jeff “Chairman” Mao
Hank Shocklee from the Bomb Squad, and, before that,
Spectrum City [soundsystem], says there was some jam at college and all
the MCs were terrible, and then you got on the mic to make some
announcement, and he went, “That’s the guy.”
Chuck D
Back in the day it wasn’t about your rhymes. You had
to sound good because most systems were inferior. I would be, “One,
two, one, two.” Then someone else would come on, “[Weak voice]
One, two, one, two.” “You ain’t cutting it, sit your ass down.” When I
get on the mic I know no one’s going to be louder, and all I have to do
is be clear, and put some words together. Everyone else is sitting down
because they’re not loud and clear and rocking the music like that.
Later on, when people talked about flows, you’re talking about enhanced
systems, studios which balance out the sound… but, when it comes down to
it, you’ve either got the pipes or you haven’t. People who sing in
front of a hall, you’ll say, “Wow, they’re really cutting through.”
Someone who sounded great in the studio might not sound great live
because some people need help and some don’t. Melle Mel was the first MC
to blow me away because he didn’t need a mic. [Puts mic down],
You’d hear him clear and be like, “Damn.” But the next person would
need the mic and amps and he’s complaining to the sound person, “Turn me
up, turn me up!” Then Melle Mel would grab it and be like: “ONE, TWO,
ONE, TWO.” I heard that. So the whole thing about microphone kings,
masters of ceremony, was that the MC had to cut through because systems
were wack, and if they were scratchy and you already had the DJ in the
back [makes beat with mouth], “ONE, TWO, ONE, TWO!” – that’s
gonna grab your attention. That’s why when we talk about up-to-date
things... Today when we talk about MCs in a whole different way, we’re
talking about studio-enhanced to bring all the nuances out. I remember
one time someone told me a story about the blues, a harmonica guy Sonny
Boy Williamson… He was over in the UK and they were asking him, “What do
you do to get the microphone that way? What’s the technique?” They’re
checking out engineers and that technical bullshit. Sonny said, “It’s
right here [gestures to mouth].” Some things you have, some things you don’t.
Jeff “Chairman” Mao
What finally gave you the confidence to make records?
Chuck D
It wasn’t a confidence thing, it was something that
was worth my time. I loved doing the radio, and I still love doing the
radio. You don’t have to be seen, just heard, you can be behind the
scenes. We made our first record, “Check Out the Radio,” so we could
sell our shows. I was a big fan of Mr. Magic, Afrika Islam, the Zulu
Beats and the World’s Famous Supreme Team.
Jeff “Chairman” Mao
These are all pioneering radio DJs in New York City.
Chuck D
I know we’re talking about a load of stuff before
you were born, way back, but it’s very important. If you say you love
the music, you’ve got to pick up on some of the reasons why some of this
started in order to be able to innovate and take it to 2012 and 2010.
And also at Red Bull Music Academy, you want to separate yourself from
someone else who does what you’re doing, just because they like it.
Separate yourself from someone who might say, “I do that shit that you
do, I don’t need no school.” All this is important, and since I was
there and I was able to retain that surrounding, then it’s important
that I spread it. What good is an old head like me, if I can’t drop some
jewels for you to pick up and use yourself?
Jeff “Chairman” Mao
Radio was important because it was also the foundation of being part of a community, something beyond music.
Chuck D
That’s correct, because we talked directly to our
community and they were able to see us. That was a beautiful thing about
radio back in the days of R&B, by which I mean Reagan and Bush. So,
we talked directly to the people in the laundromats and bus stops, and
that was very important. When people ask me about rap music today, I
tell them the rappers do a load of things, the producers do a load of
things, but the radio is terrible. It’s never been worse – they give you
nothing, they give you no information and they don’t innovate, no sense
of history. What they think is good, they only judge themselves, not by
a higher order. The people who are supposed to bring it to the public,
they’re no good. Not the rappers, not the producers – although even some
of the producers need to know more, because it’s not just about taking
the sound, it’s about knowing the dynamics behind and the mentality of
why it was created in the first place.
DJ – [to participant] what’s your name again? [response inaudible]
– he was finding a Mobb Deep sample on the Stylistics album from about
35 years ago. Before you even get into saying Mobb Deep took this
sample, you have to get into the dynamics of the musicians that made it
[in the first place]. Thom Bell was part of the Gamble & Huff team,
so he would orchestrate The Stylistics and The Spinners, and so his use
of horns and strings was immaculate, he was a perfectionist. His grooves
from the Philadelphia Orchestra that Gamble & Huff also used, all
of this is part of the science of why the music was made the way it was
in the first place, which led me to think it’s groove is funky and it’s
made to extend into a sample or even manipulate. You’ve got to go into
the mind of the musician or the goal of what they would try to do. The
Stylistics were there to hold you, make you swoon, so you think, “This
is a love ,” but it’s also there to get you on the floor to sway a
certain way or to relate a certain way. That movement is still there in
the musicians’ mind and their chops. It’s not just about, “I’m gonna
snatch a sound and make it the way I want it to make it.” That’s half
the answer. But the other half is saying, “Why was it created in the
first place?”
That’s why they call people like Afrika Bambaataa “The Master of Records”; Grand Mixer DXT, a master of records; Questlove
from The Roots, a master of records. Not just to understand the record
but the musicians and the engineers who made the recordings. You can’t
get into the science of some of that hot Atlantic Pretty Purdie,
James Gadson beats, without understanding Tom Dowd as an engineer, and
not just whether he engineered that record or not, but his influence on
that sound and other engineers. Or the influence of James Brown or Clyde
Stubblefield. What’s the engineering technique, what are the David Matthews’ arrangements, which led to the James Brown funk section, but his arrangements on top of Fred Wesley’s.
You’ve got to be able to understand this to be able
to say, “We’re going to make some more incredible music for 2012, or
incredible mixtapes, or whatever.” And I just don’t think the radio
stations and jocks, they don’t have it in them to take it to the next
phase, no Isley Brothers pun intended.
Jeff “Chairman” Mao
Well, you speak about arrangements and production.
What motivated you and Hank and Public Enemy to make the sounds you
made, which were very distinct and pretty much unprecedented?
Chuck D
We didn’t make the sounds, we wanted to be able to
make a new arrangement of the sounds. Because we had a knowledge of the
records and we had a respect for the records and the different genres,
our thing was trying to make it all work. We didn’t know where R&B
was in the mid-’80s. We thought the worst thing that ever happened to it
was the use of synthesizers, or rather that synthesizers started to use
the musician. Stevie Wonder would pimp the hell out of a synthesizer,
but synthesizers and drum machines started to use the producer. So, you
would have this corny-ass [makes beat with mouth] that we
wanted to rebel against. Our whole goal was, “We’re going to destroy the
music business’s concept of music with music.” We wanted to eradicate
every bit of smooth R&B that was made off the face of the earth,
also English pop. Most of the music made from 1979 to 1986, except for
rap records and a lot of organic types of music, most music was
terrible, just wack. Our goal was to wipe that shit off the face of the
musical map, that was Public Enemy’s goal as sonic assassins.
Jeff “Chairman” Mao
By the same token, when Public Enemy came out, there
was resistance from within hip-hop as well. Maybe this is a myth, but
you guys performed at Latin Quarter and reputedly Melle Mel and others
heckled you.
Chuck D
Melle Mel heckled us because he thought we were part
of the contingent that dissed Mr Magic. Scott La Rock and KRS-One were
launching into Mr Magic – “You’re gonna respect us” – so our association
with Doctor Dre, I mean Andre Brown from Yo! MTV Raps, not Dr. Dre from
the West Coast. Melle Mel was a friend of Magic’s and Melle Mel could
be heard on top of the music. So he was like, “Get those motherf---ers
off the stage!” We’re performing, we’ve got a soundsystem and you can
hear this dude in the back. We’re from Long Island, he didn’t know
anything about our history, but those were our chops coming through.
Jeff “Chairman” Mao
And that was at Latin Quarter which was a very, very famous hip-hop venue in the ‘80s.
Chuck D
We had songs you couldn’t dance to that
automatically set off some kind of zone inside the average b-boy that
they could not dispute. That was “Public Enemy No. 1,” which was a tape I
made for WBAU in ’84 that automatically set fire and which made Rick
Rubin want to sign me in the first place. Our thing was not to make
music, it was to make un-music. We knew all the hot records… that were
out at the time. So, I wanted to make something that actually stood out.
When I made “Public Enemy No 1” at the end of 1984, I was living at the
end of Roosevelt, next to a busy street. We would monitor the radio
show by how many people wanted to make tapes from it. So, when a car
goes by you can usually hear a car go by [makes booming noise],
it could be anything. I used noise because I wanted to be able to take a
real good survey. We knew it was hot when a car would go by and the
beat would go [makes booming noise again followed by noise],
and that’s how we knew “Public Enemy No 1” was hot. And it was hot for
two years before it became a record, and that’s what made Rick Rubin
say, “I want to sign this guy.”
Me and Flavor [Flav] were driving trucks, delivering
furniture and I was making this tape and “Blow Your Head” by the JB’s
was always a record I liked... There’s a whole other story behind me
getting that record, which involved me going over to some chick’s house
and asking her for the record after I didn’t get what I came for [laughs].
“OK, baby, whatever, can I have this record?,” and I took the record, I
was blown away by it. It was a record that was always played in the
roller rink, but the DJs didn’t have enough skill to extend the break,
it’s a tough break, it’s [imitates “Blow Your Head” synth intro], and I thought, “If someone would keep this shit going…”
It wasn’t until you had machines like the Emulator II, and guys like Marley Marl
made it hot, and happening, and, later on, the Akai, that we were able
to extend that song. But the truth is, I made the first demo by pausing a
cassette, like people made the old pause mixtapes, just by going over
and over two tape decks [imitates intro], so there were a
couple of glitches because it wasn’t perfect timing, but I could rhyme
over it and the rhyme connected the pieces together seamlessly. When we
tried to make it in the studio for our first Def Jam release, we were
able to make this song and duplicate it. But Hank and I considered it
too clean, because the breaks in the pause tape gave it that funkiness
of feel and direction, that’s what made it a totally different thing. So
when we made “Public Enemy No 1” it was a two-inch tape cut by Steve
the engineer , and we made a natural loop around the mic stand going
back into the Studer heads, so it had that feel of a band [imitates “Public Enemy No 1” intro],
so that’s how it was made to capture the feel of the original demo
tape, which had a lot of funky feeling and dirt and grime in it.
So, we realized we were going to make some noise by
bringing the noise and we were going to bring some different records,
and make some abrasive records. The goal was to make some music that
your girlfriend was going to hate [laughs]. That was definitely
the goal for me, because my girlfriend, who later became my wife, I
knew if she doesn’t like it, then we’ve got some hot shit here, because
she was into Luther Vandross and all that other shit. I was like, “I’m
making some shit that makes you say, ‘Turn that shit off.’”
Jeff “Chairman” Mao
Let’s listen to a couple of seconds of that.
Chuck D
You can download that original demo on Slamjamz.com,
I’ve still got it up there. It’s the original from ’84 where I say, “I
can go solo like a Sugar Ray bolo.” Sugar Ray Leonard was dominating
boxing at the time, so when I had to make the record it was, “I can go
solo like a Tyson bolo,” so it went from Sugar Ray to Tyson. I went from
welterweight champ to heavyweight champ. But I know y’all are going to
say Chuck is talking about all this and we haven’t got past 1986.
(music: Public Enemy – “Public Enemy No. 1”)
Chuck D
People got into making structured rap records –
eight bars here, counting in four bars – we felt that could lead to
burn-out for the audience. You might offer different sounds, but if
every song you deliver is three-and-a-half to four minutes, and they
begin the same way... People talk about hot 16, but why can’t it be a
hot 17 or a hot 13-and-a-half? Because people are afraid to go outside
the structure they’re comfortable with. Our whole thing is, how can we
present something that will make you feel uncomfortable? Don’t deal in
comfort – and don’t deal with a Mac so close to water, Jeff [laughs and moves water away from the laptop].
Jeff “Chairman” Mao
So was that the record Mr Magic smashed on the air?
Chuck D
Yeah, Magic smashed it because he thought we were
dissing him out with Dré and Scott La Rock. Scott La Rock and KRS-One
were going after him for some other beef, and they came out to talk to
Dré on WBAU and he considered us down with the whole posse, which we
were, but we had no time to go after Mr Magic like that, but we got
dragged into it. When he heard that, he thought Dré was involved in it,
which he had, but we weren’t coming after Magic like that. I still feel
happy to be associated with the “Blastmaster” KRS-One to this day, so it
was pretty good.
Jeff “Chairman” Mao
So, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back – often cited as the greatest hip-hop album of all time, how do you feel about that?
Chuck D
When we first made the album, it was after a year of
touring, and I noticed one thing rap artists seemed to be victimized by
– slow tempos. They worked well on record, but not so good in live
performances. When you go into a live arena, people are amped up to see
you. That’s why bands usually play their music five to ten BPM faster,
because everyone’s all amped up. That’s why records stood out more than
the band. A perfect example is the Ohio Players. On the record you hear:
“[Sings in mid-tempo] Skin tight, skin tight.” Then you check them out in concert it’s: “[Fast tempo]
Skin tight, skin tight.” Damn, slow their ass down! But they’re amped
up, bands are amped up. We realized, when we went into a performance,
the crowd was amped up and you can only pitch a record up so much. So we
thought we’ll make faster records.
It comes out of doing “Rebel Without a Pause” at 102
BPM. BPMs meant a lot to us because we were DJs, and Hank had these
digital Panasonic turntables. “Bring The Noise” was 109 bpm, at the end
of 1987, for the Less Than Zero soundtrack. That was like going
into light speed. We had faster songs than that, like “It’s Like That”,
125 bpm, but that was a different double speed. But 109 meant: rap on
it, take the fast beat, ride it like a saddle and get this crowd
throttled up. Right in the middle of the days of crack, we made a fast
record for the time. Crack was the type of drug that wouldn’t slow them
down, they’d be like, “Yo, yo, play that shit again for real!” Cats
would be all nervous and fast, and the speed we took it to matched the
drug of the time for people who were around the hip-hop circle. The
songs on It Takes A Nation… were 112, 110, 113 bpm.
Sonically, it said all the things we grew up with in
the ’60s and ’70s, all the voices from that time that were forgotten in
the ’80s. In the ‘80s, Hank and I were hanging a flyer on a pole of
Malcolm X looking out the window with a rifle, defending his house –
which is a famous shot later used by KRS-One – and some guy came by and
said, “Who’s this Malcolm the Tenth?” Me and Hank said, “Shit, we need
to let these people know in the middle of Reagan and Bush where we come
from.” That had been forgotten, and it was only 10 or 15 years prior, 20
years prior to him being killed. That’s what gave the meaning to Public
Enemy even further. So, sonically, meaning-wise, performance-wise and
even rap-wise, It Takes a Nation of Millions was the juggernaut
that established us. It was something where we said to ourselves, “This
is our thing: jack up the noise, rap fast and strong, bring some noise
and be powerful with it.” I tell people all the time, “We’re the Rolling
Stones of the rap game.” You might find better flows, more individual
achievements, but you won’t find power and speed like PE present it.
Some people might say, “Cool, but I don’t want power or speed, I want
the smooth, funky shit, the lyrics to be hitting tight.” No, this is
power and speed, it’s Metallica and rock & roll – get the f--- out
off the way, this is gonna run you over.” That’s why for years Public
Enemy could go head to head with thrash metal bands and hold our own,
with turntables and then with some instruments – that’s the only thing
you can compare it to. It might not be nice, it might not be pretty, it
might not be digestible, but it’s gonna wear the f---ing place out. And
that’s what established us.
Jeff “Chairman” Mao
You guys performed the album in its entirety in concert this last year. How was it?
Chuck D
A lot of fun. Those records aren’t easy, like
someone standing in one place and singing, “Throw your hands in the
air,” and walking side to side. If you don’t prepare to do those
records, then those records will do you. “Louder Than A Bomb” is no
joke. It’s going on, “This style seems wild…” And, at the same time,
Public Enemy was never one of those things where you can just stand
there looking at the crowd, you’ve got to get it moving. It’s like punk –
that’s one of the things that separated us from the pack. There’s only
one MC, in my book, who could do power and speed, because his music was
jacked up and he could dance, do it all at the same time: Big Daddy
Kane. His voice comes like this (lowers voice), and he’s able
to do it fast and he’s able to keep moving. I tell people all the time,
“If you want to sit and smoke weed, this ain’t your thing.” Later on,
when Dre did The Chronic with Snoop Doggy Dogg, he developed a
whole different thing, slowed it down, because weed was the drug of
choice in rap music. If you did something 112 bpm in ’94, people would
be like, “Oh my god, get that shit out of there.” We understood that, I
just didn’t feel it as much, as far as me to do it.
Jeff “Chairman” Mao
I know you’re such a fan of hip-hop, do you concur
that it’s the greatest hip-hop album of all time? There have been panels
about it, there have been dissertations written about it…
Chuck D
I believe if you saw it performed, you’d say,
“Damn!” When we first set out to make it, there weren’t that many rap
albums out – maybe 20 in your hand. To me the greatest rap album that
signified rap as an album format in the marketplace was Run DMC’s Raising Hell. That signified to me power, and Run DMC being able to handle a stadium. When we made Takes a Nation, we knew what we were not going to make. I was setting out to make the What’s Going On
of rap music then. It has a lot of things going on – it had the sonic
changes, it was the first album that said we’re not going from
track-to-track – before De La Soul put skits in there, it was the first
album that broke the monotony of going track-to-track – it had the
meaning, the voices, the arrangement of samples. It was the first album
unto itself, the juxtaposition so it plays like a radio show. We wanted
to make it exactly 60 minutes, so it’s an hour of introduction into the
world of 1988.
Calling it the greatest rap album of all time,
that’s someone else’s call, but I know if someone was to see it
performed, they would understand. They would have to see it, feel it,
take it in and then say, “OK, watch someone else do an album.” That was a
thing I was critical of when I first heard the “Don’t Look Back” series
of concerts, when the promoter would tell the performer, “Do the album,
don’t do anything else.” I thought that sounds like a fan’s dream, it
doesn’t sound like an artist’s dream, but when we did it, and actually
played along with the Bomb Squad with Hank and Keith Shocklee, it was a
treat and a challenge. We stepped up to the challenge.
We’re going to play it all year long – we’re touring
in Germany, Greece, doing some more shows in the UK, then capping off
the tour in Australia. That will be tours number 63 and 64 for Public
Enemy. It’s fun to do, because we say we’ll do the album, then we’ll do
some other shit, which is another hour of showtime. It’s fun. What
wouldn’t be fun getting down next to Flavor Flav? He’s the greatest hype
man, because he invented the role – he’s brought so much to the game.
Young cats just think, “He’s a TV personality, what does he do?” They
asked what Flavor Flav did from the minute we signed and introduced him
to Rick, and said, “You’ve got to sign him too,” he said, “What does he
do?” “We don’t f---ing know, but you’ve got to take him.” He’s had many
imitators, never a duplicator, there’s nothing like him. What he brings
to the table, what Griff has brought to the table, what Terminator and
now DJ Lord brings, it’s a fun thing to get down with, like being in U2
or something.
Jeff “Chairman” Mao
I want to ask as a side note, when you and Flav
moved furniture for your dad’s business and imagined that you and Flav
did a TV show together…
Chuck D
That would be fun, but that was just work. He had to
work, I had to work. Looking back, people say, “Would you like to do a
TV show?” But I’m the kind of person who says, “Get that camera away
from my house, you’ve got five seconds.” I don’t like being
photographed, I never liked doing videos, I’m different when it comes
down to that. But Flavor is made for camera, you can’t take your eyes
off him. No matter what he does on TV, he’s going to obliterate
everything else. If he talks science or foolishness – and he does a
blend of both – you can’t change the dial because you’re just, “What the
f--- is going on with this guy?”
Jeff “Chairman” Mao
One of your famous quotes is about hip-hop serving
as CNN for black communities. What is serving that purpose now, if not
hip-hop?
Chuck D
Hip-hop is a worldwide cultural religion, simple as
that. It’s everywhere, it’s in more than 150 countries, and I think the
biggest misnomer about hip-hop is that people talk about hip-hop like it
has to have a New York state of mind. That’s been over since the ’80s.
People started asking if it’s a global scene in 1999. The first
statement on Nation of Millions is “Good evening, London.” We
were telling the US then, “This is already happening in London, so if
you aren’t up on hip-hop, and this is already happening in London, then
New York, Philly, you better get up on it. We’re letting you know this
is how much we’ve got going on. This is no bullshit.”
It was sort of like introducing the first live
concert element to hip-hop. People can say, “OK, you guys are making up
your own world, f--- the BPMs, all that crazy noise, you’re making up
your own shit, you’re believing your own hype.” Nope, this is London [imitates cheering crowd],
“I’d like to hear that from the people up top, check this out.” We’re
fans of music, like when Earth Wind & Fire came out with [the 1975
live album] Gratitude, it boosted their concerts, because you
had to become part of what the f--- was going on. Live, as far as ’70s
bands are concerned, they just dominated. So, OK, say what you want, but
this crowd is bananas, and you’re not used to hearing that recorded in
hip-hop, maybe in a club, but not in a stadium or enormous building.
Jeff “Chairman” Mao
I asked you about this yesterday, but PE were always
the biggest champions of hip-hop, always fighting for acceptance and
recognition for hip-hop because it was such an underdog culture for so
long. I remember seeing interviews with you back in the day, when you
were very proud because hip-hop had its own section in the record store.
Now, obviously, hip-hop has become mainstream, popular music.
Chuck D
Well hip-hop is bigger than the record store now [laughs].
Jeff “Chairman” Mao
Do you feel as though hip-hop has won that war, and at what cost?
Chuck D
Hip-hop hasn’t won any war, because if you talk
about it from a United States state of mind, people don’t realize that
they fell off a bit, politically. It’s like Michael Jordan in the 20th
century, like, “Oh my God, you won world wars, you’re post-Teddy
Roosevelt, beating everybody with your big-ass stick and you’re swinging
it like ‘What, what!’”
Cool, but it’s the 21st century.
The US must realize it has to work hard to be one of the top 20, not
that it dominates over the whole space. That has trickled down into all
culture. Look at basketball: started by a Canadian in the University of
Massachusetts to teach this sport to Americans, then it’s dominated by
Jewish and white Americans, then black Americans dominated it. And it
had its time, just like boxing – all the best boxers are coming from
Lithuania, the Ukraine, because, “[Affects East European accent] I come from nothing, I’ll kill you. I knock you the f--- out, I come from nothing.” So boxing has a different zone now.
The United States has been full of its own hype for
so long. But if you took the four elements and had an Olympics, America
wouldn’t get the gold, silver or bronze in graffiti, in breakdancing –
although it’s coming up a little bit – turntablism, not winning the
gold, silver or bronze for the last 20 years. So, that’s three of the
four elements. Then you have MCing. Now MCing is all subjective. I
explain to people in the US when they want to watch BET, or The Basement, formerly Rap City,
or watch hip-hop from a United States state of mind, hip-hop is all
over the planet, cats can spit three languages, sometimes in the same
verse. That’s super rapping. Now, you tell that to the average American,
they’ll say, “That don’t mean shit, because I’m an American and I’m
f---ing great, because I am.”
Same thing they did in basketball, “We’re the
f---ing NBA, we’re great because we’ve got marketing and contracts and
we’re rich.” You better work at that shit if you want to get the gold
again. You better work at the fundamentals, and throw all that ego shit
out. Hip-hop in the United States has been in the lazy zone for so long,
it thinks it can win because the record company says you win. Or you
think you’ve got a large demographic, you’re from New York, you can talk
like this, and swing like that and automatically you’re going to win.
Yes, you could’ve won in the 20th century, but 21st century is a
different way to win. If you want to characterize it as winning or
losing, you have to figure out what’s the global atmosphere of hip-hop,
what’s the global condition of people saying, “We have to live here
together and share.” The hip-hop state of mind is to unite and to
embrace.
Culture is the thing that brings human beings
together for our similarities, not for our differences. This is what
makes culture diametrically opposed to government. Governments like to
categorize, put people in groupings so they can take advantage of us.
That’s why when a government says it’s in charge of culture, you’ve got
to watch out for that shit. Culture and governments are diametrically
opposed. Governments are the cancers of civilization, all governments,
f--- a government. “What are you gonna do, Chuck? You need governments
to keep people in check.” Well, that’s government’s f---ing business.
The one thing that’s derogatory to human beings is that you need a
passport to travel to the place that God gave everybody. If we don’t
fall in line with the planet and take care of the species… If the
animals had a language they’d be talking crazy right now, they’d be
saying, “You human beings are f---ing this planet up. What’s going on
with y’all?” Anyone hear the story about the penguins who had to get
some help going back south because the atmospheric conditions have been
altered by the greed of humans and the audacity of our stupidity?
Hip-hop has this organic sense of trying to
culturally bring us together and try to figure this place and ourselves
out. Beyond hip-hop as a term, it’s the beauty of culture and the beauty
of music and art and expression, to say we’ve got to share this thing.
Americans have watched hip-hop through the portal of corporations have
actually accepted the cycle of greed. So, when you see hip-hop in the
States, it’s not the ability of the MC but the size of his watch that
makes people go, “Oh my god, look at that watch! Did you see that fur
helicopter? Oh shit!” It’s bringing the awe out of an audience in a
manner that’s got nothing to do with cultural expression, while the rest
of the world realizes it has to be able to at least exude some of those
qualities. It has to be within me, it can’t come from the outside of
me. You go to Brazil, you can’t be coming out of the favelas laced with
diamonds and shit; cats would be like, “We’re robbing this
motherf---er.” You’ve got to represent the people and global hip-hop has
stuck to this fundamental over the last 30 years. I’m not saying it’s
been a solid connection, of course, it might be shaky sometimes. Someone
coming from Spain or Italy might look at a video screen and be like,
“Look at this cat, he’s riding around and he’s got this big house, he’s
got all the women…”
The women never MC, there always just there, like
there are no women involved in hip-hop, which has also hurt hip-hop.
Women are the underdogs of hip-hop. The biggest vacancy is the lack of
[female] cohesiveness. Women crews, you could name five or six of them
in the ’80s. But if I asked you to name the women crews – meaning the
producers, engineers, remixers, DJs, MCs, the record company owners, you
know, women in a collective – it’s far and few. Even males, the males
are not groups anymore. The absence of collectives and groups is one of
the biggest problems right now. If you have a group, it’s going to make
any individual think, “I can take this solo, but I can’t do what this
group is doing.”
I have this all-women autonomous hip-hop unit on my
label called Crew Grrl Order, and I’m trying to get behind them without
being this male on top of them. They’ve got it mapped out for
themselves. I’m just trying to fight through all the testosterone to
help them make their statement and do their music and to come in a
hip-hop state of mind.
These are some of the things that are missing in US
hip-hop. America has been taught to be arrogant to the rest of the
world, to stick their heads above everyone else and say, “We’re always
better because we’re American,” which comes from that British state of
mind, anyway. And I think the last eight years of “son of a Bush” has
signified the ugly American. Once, black people had this ghetto card
from the US because we signified people going through that struggle. “Oh
yeah, black people from America, you’re the underdog, you were slaves
there, we accept you because we understand where you’re coming from.”
But they’ve co-opted that imagery, so you have the black American almost
seeming like he’s the arrogant American as well, so that whole ghetto
card has disappeared. You can’t just say, “I’m black, I’m from America,”
because people will say, “Oh yeah, you show off, you throw money at the
camera.” Because they’ve seen the videos from the ’90s when they were
throwing money, which ain’t worth the paper it’s printed on right now,
because it’s all collapsing. When it collapses, it comes down to
people’s insides instead of their outsides. That’s my belief.
Jeff “Chairman” Mao
Just to play devil’s advocate for a quick second: is there something wrong with aspirational motivation?
Chuck D
There’s nothing wrong with aspirational motivation,
as long as you have reality glued into it and as long as you can spread
it. If you spread a fantasy without answers for the reality, then you’re
bound to have side-effects. The side-effects that we’re witnessing now,
there aren’t enough therapists for. There aren’t enough therapists, but
there’s a growing prison-industrial system which houses more people
than any other country on the planet. America doesn’t brag about that.
When you talk about the percentage of people in the prison-industrial
complex, black people make up 12.5% of the population, but they’re 50%
of the prison population… Why isn’t that a story in the human rights
crusades that America claims they’re at the forefront of? OK, we want to
bring people to aspiration, but do we want them to aspire to greed,
rather than just being able to handle yourself? Maybe that’s hip-hop’s
motive, maybe it should be. But you just asked me about when hip-hop was
the underdog, when we were broke in the Reagan and Bush era.
Jeff “Chairman” Mao
It was the underdog, but if you look at an Eric B & Rakim album cover, and they’re very proud of their…
Chuck D
Fake gold. That real big thick gold chain is real,
real, fake and light. They were aspiring, but when we look at it, were
they really paid in full? No, it was a nice thought. Everyone can wish.
When they say that Jay Z is worth $300 million, I don’t know what that
means, or where it comes from, if it’s a weapon of mass distraction.
What does that do when someone is trying to learn their craft? “Wow, I’m
gonna be an MC because Jay Z’s got $300 million and Beyoncé.” If you
don’t get Beyoncé and the $300 million, are you still going to learn the
craft to make that feed your soul? And if a person says “No,” then, OK,
I can accept that. You’ve got to do something, either you’re awake or
you’re asleep. The beautiful thing about art is that it enhances you and
fills your time. If everyone here says, “F--- music, f--- that,” what
are you going to fill your time with?
Are you a creator or a consumer? How many of you
have friends who cannot get away from the PlayStation and are lost in
the video game instead of designing one? That’s a reality, too, you can
get lost in your zone. You don’t have to be a productive person, you can
get lost in your zone and that’s cool, too, I guess. But the beauty of
hip-hop comes from looking inside yourself and at the terrain and coming
up with something you think is brilliant, and trying to push that into
the forefront to entertain and inform people. Bottom line, people at the
end of the week, if they work hard… this place [that we’re sitting in]
used to be a textile plant. Do you think of that, how 20 years back
inside these walls they were working their ass off for 40 years, eight
hours a day, punching the clock? At the end of those weeks, people still
flocked to something that made them feel better, and that was
entertainment, that was art, that was music. There will always be room
for people to say, “I want to release myself from everyday work and
enjoy myself.” I think everyone in this room has the ability and the
love to create something that gives others a breath of fresh air in
their life. That’s the beauty of it – the release.
When you’re grown, pull out all the stops, your kid
days are over, you’re not 14 years old with a thumb in your mouth or a
lollipop like Lil Wayne. Seriously, it’s time to be grown, which means
what? You’ve got an apartment, gotta pay rent. You still live with your
mom? How long are you gonna do that? You’ve got a girlfriend or a
boyfriend, might have a baby. Who’s gonna take care of the baby? “Oh, I
was out there skateboarding, I broke my leg.” Got insurance? Mom and
dad, they passed away, who’s going to bury them? You get an introduction
into adult life that might not cater to your tastes, but somebody’s got
to do it. Welcome to adulthood, so you can be an adult, but you’re also
able to give people a break. This is the advantage we have as
producers, DJs, engineers, MCs. Because a lot of people don’t have your
abilities or your flexibility, and there’s a lot don’t have your
insight. So, always keep the music with you, because people will need it
more than ever, this year, next year, and in the years to come.
This isn’t a thing to give up because you can’t make
a living, just figure out how to parlay the tools: work in a textile
place, but still do your music. The minute the music gives you the
answers of where you spend your time, “Oh, I’ve got a chance to work in
this club, and I get to pay some of my bills.” You’ll see it, instead of
saying, “I’ll just not work and I’ll wait for the music to pay me.”
April 1st, 1987, our first tour with the Beastie
Boys, I worked at a job until that Friday. I wasn’t leaving my f---ing
job until I’d seen a clear answer, that I could make a living and
support my family doing rap. And I’d already made a record. I wrote Yo, Bum Rush The Show
while I was driving and working. I wasn’t waiting for music to pay me, I
better see it work. When I could see a little bit I put in my
resignation, worked until the Friday, and was on tour Monday. I had two
days from going to a job to my own business. There are only three
options: you have a job, you have a business or you ain’t got no job.
The only other option is death. I was a grown person when I made my
first record, and it had to be serious to me. For me, to do music full
time I had to see it. Last day of work, March 1987; my first day of my
business, April 1st, 1987. I’m not making kid-ass moves, I looked at
with a realistic approach. I was going to do music anyway, but I was
going to do it in my time around my life as an adult. I don’t know if
y’all can relate to that, but that’s my story. Everybody here over 16?
Everybody over 18? I don’t have to tell you where you are in your life
as adults. [Applause] I know I might have been running my mouth, and it’s 95 degrees up in here.
Jeff “Chairman” Mao
Maybe some questions.
Chuck D
Questions are good. And tell me where you’re from
and your name. The Red Bull Music Academy is one of the wonders of the
musical world, and you should realize that.
Audience member
My name is Michael and I’m from Tel Aviv, Israel.
I’m a hip-hop producer and MC, and I wanted to ask you, if Obama is
elected in November, how will it affect the world of hip-hop or black
culture?
Chuck D
Just him running changes the scape of how we think,
but that’s just how we think. How do we live and how do we act? Let’s
break this down. As a black man in the United States, I’ve never seen
anything like this, but history tells me if he gets in, day two, be
ready to work and to understand that the good and the bad is going to
happen, with people looking at it the wrong way. Although I’ll vote for
Barack Obama, I know there are things he’s going to do as president of
the United States that I definitely won’t agree with. People say, “He’s a
black president, what’s he going to do for black people?” No, he’s
President of the United States, so for black people as a collective,
because we’re judged by our characteristics rather than our character,
to be able to influence a decision that will help us as a people at the
bottom of the pit in America for a lot of different things – education,
health, all that – that must come up as a collective because we still
live collectively in our neighborhoods.
Barack Obama is a big opportunity for the planet.
Number one, you all know it’s the biggest reality show in the world.
Everyone’s looking at the US right now. Coming from George Bush to this,
how do we operate knowing what’s going to come out of the big bear? I
can’t tell you what’s going to happen in the next 24 days. If John
McCain gets in, you know the rest of the planet is going to be, “Oh
shit!” because he talks foreign conflict rather than foreign policy.
Number two, I don’t think he’ll be in the job for long. His first day
will be April, then by June he’ll be thinking “Man, I’m 73, this is a
crazy job, I introduce the world to the next President of the United
States, Mrs Sarah Palin.” That’s the reality. She’s like, “F--- that!
Bomb! [pushes button]”
So, Barack Obama is an opportunity for the United
States to adjust its image for the rest of the planet, to say we’ll find
ways to fit in, instead of dominating and beating your ass. I can’t say
what’s going to happen, I always consider myself a citizen of the
planet instead of the United States and I think this global picture has
to be looked at for the existence of the planet. They’re saying there
won’t be any ice in the Arctic next summer. What does that tell you? Do
you know what that means? That means if there’s war in the Middle East
over a whole bunch of resources, underneath that Arctic ice is the oil
of the future. The oil of now is oil. Already they call the G8 the G7,
because Putin’s Russia is renegading. They’re up in the Arctic with
Canada, with the US on Canada’s back saying, “Get out of the way.” We
plan to go into the Arctic to get that oil.
Then, the oil of the future is water. Canada’s right
up in there and the United Sates’ relationship with Canada will change.
All this for greed, and you’ve got the economic system shutting down
all over the place. Some people ask if artists should speak to this.
Yes, we’re in the days of MySpace pages, Facebook, all the social
networks for presenting your music. YouTube is a fantastic medium. I
never understood, if we’re in the audio-visual age… [To participants]
How many of you make your own videos? Making music has become easy,
shooting and cutting video is a bitch. To put yourself above everyone
else, how can you say you’re in the music business when you’re denying
the audio-visual dominance of music? Music is seen as much as it’s heard
today, and for the last ten years, so you better get into it… “Well, I
did this track.” So where’s the visual? “We don’t do videos.” You better
get into it.
You know what I do? Let me take this out [removes camera from bag].
I want you all to say, “What’s up Chuck?” This is my little Flip cam –
real simple, USB, goes right into a Mac or PC. First of all, say,
“What’s up, Chuck?”
[Audience responds]
[Speaking to Flip camera] I’m at Red Bull,
I’m one of the keynotes, this is the future of the music world, and they
are definitely doing it right now on tours, rhymes and life, with your
man Chuck D.
[Speaking to audience] You better be
multimedia, set up your own stations and your own networks. Making beats
and making music, cats have been doing that for 20 years. How many MCs
have we got out there? One, two, three, if you’re making eight tracks
for your album – you’ve gotta get out of the old idea. “Yo, I’m making
an album.”
[To participant] Say you’re making an album, how many tracks would you put on an album?
Audience member
There were 17 tracks on my last album.
Chuck D
So you’re making an album for 1992. Ask yourself why
there were that many tracks in the first place. Because there was an
appetite.
Jeff “Chairman” Mao
The format could only sustain a certain amount.
Chuck D
Right, but also you were being released once every two years, and the appetite for rap music was [nods]... There was more appetite than material, that’s why we released 16 tracks on It Takes a Nation,
because the appetite for it was there. Who said the album had to have
12, 13, 14 tracks, anyway? It was the major record contract that
specified you had to produce 12 sides – that’s 12 tracks. That was in
the ’80s; then the CDs took over in the ’90s, and that’s why people put
all their songs on an album. But, if you know your musical history, in
the ’60s you had albums that had how many cuts on it? Isaac Hayes’ Hot Buttered Soul, how many tracks on it?
Audience member
Four.
Chuck D
The Doors, how many tracks? Some of them had six.
But, in the ’60s, they’d release three albums in a year, because that
was the marketplace coming into the birth of albums and the
album-oriented marketplace had started to accept that. We’re in a
different marketplace now than the ’90s, so 17 tracks in the digital
world can be three albums. Who’s to say one album can’t be seven tracks,
one six and the other one four? You put your artwork and concept behind
it, and you can make a digital release of it.
Of course, you might have to put 17 tracks on a CD,
if you believe the CD is the format of the future. The CD is the format
of now, but blank CDs are the ones that sell most. So, get yourself out
of the ’90s way of thinking and develop your own way. Now here’s another
thing, if you do a four- or five-track album you should do a video for
every single album. What’s your standard of video? Doesn’t have to be
what you see on television. It could be that you’ve got a bunch of
stills going on and Mac has a program that lets you do that, but you’ve
got to present your music visually and audibly.
When I was growing up, you heard the music, then you saw it on television: Soul Train, American Bandstand, Ed Sullivan.
Seeing it reminded people of the audio presentation because people used
their imaginations more. Or maybe you heard it in the club and your
experience goes back to going to get that record because you had a great
time in the club. But in the audio-visual age, people see music first,
so when they hear music on the radio, it reminds them of what they saw
first. Imaginations work in a whole different way. I wouldn’t say it’s
better or worse, just different. So when it comes to making your music,
you have to also think from a visual state of mind and start cutting
vision as well as cutting audio. You’ve got to be equally skilled or
find a partner.
That’s how it works – if you can’t do it all
yourself, you’ve either got to pay for that service or collaborate with
someone that can do what you can’t. That’s why you have a team. With The
Bomb Squad, we had four or five individuals who were skilled in
different areas and came together as a team. One person cannot do it
alone. In the audio-visual age, you should be a person who can do it
all, but you’re not going to be the person who can do it all the best
all the time, but that’s a good way to look at your future. What
separates you at Red Bull Academy from someone who just happens to be
making beats in their crib and says, “I don’t need no school,” is your
collective study of this while you’re going to try to make a calculated
move for where you should be in the future. That’s a skill. When I say,
“How many people make music?,” a lot of hands went up. When I said, “How
many make video?,” only a couple. You know why? Because that’s a
hard-ass motherf---ing thing; if it ain’t hard, then... It should be.
Master it, figure it out, learn how to cut edit pro, take simple
devices, this is a simple device, only about $100, so that’s about €3 [laughter]…
It’s not how much you have, it’s what you’re willing
to take on up here. I got my degree in design in 1984. By 1990
everything I had learned was obsolete, because I learned how to do it by
hand, cutting and pasting. The 1990s was the beginning of computer
graphics, I had to learn Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator in the late
’90s, and it bled my f---ing brains. One of my buddies, the producer
Carl Jason, he was in the studio in the compound in Long Island, he was
learning Cubase and I was learning Photoshop. We’d be taking a lunch
break going, “[Head in hands] This is f---ing killing me.” But
when I got over the hump, I was like “Yes!” I don’t have to wait for a
person and try to guide that person, I know it. The advantage you guys
have is that you’re in a study collective, so you can learn under the
system, but you can buddy up with somebody to teach you the ropes.
That’s why a collective is important, especially in music which is still
renegade and unorganized.
Jeff “Chairman” Mao
Who else has a question?
Audience member
My name’s Reggie and I’m from Perth, Australia.
Chuck D
Perth, the most remote city in the world.
Audience member
That’s right. I make hip-hop beats. “Fight the
Power” is mostly everyone’s favorite. What was that day like, and what
was it like working with Spike Lee? It’s a hype video.
Chuck D
I can’t take credit for that because Spike Lee was
an innovative renegade filmmaker who dared to do in film like we dared
to do in music. He took Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, brought the movie industry
there, had the momentum of making a statement in a very politically
charged New York at the time, made the statement worldwide in Do the Right Thing.
He made “Fight The Power” what it was. He shot it first in film clips,
then followed it up with the Public Enemy version, which he extended. It
was signifying that hip-hop was visual as well as audible. It wasn’t a
song that was head and shoulders above what we did, but as far as “Fight
The Power,” its meaning, the film, Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, Spike Lee, New
York City, making a statement at that time, its meaning is well beyond
the sonics. And when we performed it live, we always stepped up to the
plate. Half of a song, beyond the lyrics and the sonics is the spiritual
meaning behind it. You can have lyrics that say one thing, but the
meaning is always something else. I always tell MCs not to stay locked
into what you think something is – gravitate into other spaces, because
that record is going to be there for the rest of time. When you come
back to it, you’ve got to feel it came from you. We can all make
excuses. There are songs I’ve made that I’m like, “Yeah, that’s hot at
that particular time.” Do you feel great about it? “No, but this is the
meaning of it…” But you want to make most of the songs in your career
represent where you’re going to be in your life because it’s an
extension of you and your soul. That’s “Fight The Power.” It was a
collaborative effort, it had a lot of help. Everything I’ve done in my
career has been a collaborative effort, even this conversation with
Chairman Mao.
Jeff “Chairman” Mao
Pass the mic along to the next person.
Audience member
Hello, I’m, Sarah from London. You said the current
state of American hip-hop is all about showing off. Is there any new
hip-hop you’re feeling at the moment?
Chuck D
Here’s another thing that doesn’t line up with new
questions, or rather old questions about new ways of taking on music.
The iPod comes out, and you can put 10,000 songs on an iPod. Someone
says, “What are you listening to at the moment?” F---, there’s 10,000
songs on my iPod. If I give you a top 20, do I give you the top 20 of
the last five minutes or the last year or month? But there’s a lot to
choose from. To answer your question, I think there are a lot of acts
who don’t get great exposure. MySpace has been a great vehicle and
moving into iLike will be a great vehicle for people who don’t have the
traditional record company representation. I like NYOIL, because he’s
saying things I’m familiar with at my age and stage. The Roots are the
epitome… they’re kicking into the second phase of their career, which
speaks to me even more. Questlove is going into that second zone of
confidence as a bandleader with hip-hop sensibilities and futuristic
thoughts, and a passion for the past and a legacy. He’s going to a place
that few people are venturing into.
Crew Grrl Order, being one of the few autonomous
female situations, I’m getting behind them this year, because I think
they speak to the unspoken and the voiceless. If you say women in
hip-hop, that’s the underdog. Another cat who’s coming out, “Yo, I’ve
got it rough today, I’m 18, I can’t figure out where it’s at.” I
understand, but a lot of MCs don’t listen to each other, so when they
come along and say, “Yo, I’ve got this shit you’ve never heard about,
son, for real,” it’s the reason why you’ve got 655,346 MCs saying
exactly the same thing, with exactly the same type of beats, exactly the
same beats per minute, exactly the same beginning and ending, with
eight bars or 16 bars, four choruses, and one break. Not to say it’s
bad, but there’s just a lot of similarity, so when I’m listening to
different things, an all-female group is going to spark me. A cat like
NYOIL, who reinvents himself, is going to spark me; a group like the
Roots, who take it from a band to a hip-hop aesthetic with Black Thought
riding these different waves, it’s going to spark me. But then, Big Joe
Turner is turning me out too, for some reason.
Music from the past is just as unknown to me as
music from the future. Now that you can have it on a device and say,
“Let me hear some James Moody and let me hear some Flobots.” The fact
you can go from James Moody to the Flobots, and let it fit into your
day, is a good thing, it widens your terrain. I would tell people in
London, there’s a lot of MCs coming out in London that need to relate to
their surroundings, whether it’s Sway or Dizzee Rascal,
I would tell them, “Don’t get strung onto New York, speak from a global
standpoint and you’ll swing into the United States, one way or
another.” Also, the US is not New York and LA. It’s 2,000 by
3,000-square miles on the lower 48, which most Americans don’t
understand. Americans are poor in history and geography. One of the
biggest things that shocked Americans was the number of black people
televised in New Orleans with Katrina. White people in Wisconsin were
saying, “I never knew there were so many black people in New Orleans.”
That’s because you don’t know your history and geography. History will
tell you it’s a slave port, geography will tell you it channeled people
and goods up the Mississippi, which goes from New Orleans up to
Minneapolis, where a bridge collapsed last year. You’ve got to keep
dumbassification in order to maintain the weapons of mass distraction to
get them to come out and vote for John McCain and [laughs]
Sarah Palin. You’ve got to keep the masses dumb. You know what they say,
take the masses and just move the “m” over, consider that the crowd so
you can pimp them out and control them. We hope music and culture goes
the opposite way to that.
Jeff “Chairman” Mao
Can you foresee anything like the Public Enemy, KRS-One era – which was a very unique time and place – happening again?
Chuck D
Things like that are happening right now. We’re in a
time we’ve never experienced, but is there time for people to corral
and navigate that to a popular understanding? Is it too big for people
to project it as they did back then?
Jeff “Chairman” Mao
Not that it doesn’t exist, but as the dominant cultural force like it was back then?
Chuck D
I think the technology is dominant, the hardware,
not the software. Serato’s the revolution, iPods have been a revolution,
before that Napster was a digital revolution. The software that rides
it is widespread, it’s vast. So, I think the revolution will come to
explain all these big-bang effects all around the scape. The information
to the masses about what’s happening has to be better. We’re having all
kinds of artistic explosions and vocal forwardness. You must agree with
me, radio tells you nothing, and although there have been small steps
in national satellite and an aspect on digital radio.
Even what you were doing as a writer and with Ego Trip and the Book Of Rap Lists,
you don’t see a parallel component of that explaining to the masses
what this shit is about. That’s a big problem, it’s like watching sports
with no broadcasting and no statistics. Sport is all about dates,
history, where it’s at now and in the future, stats every day, abilities
weighed, judgment, comparative analysis, and non-stop sportscasting. In
the US they have Sports Center, which shows the same one-hour
show six times in the morning before they get into the news of the day.
That means they’re giving you the chance not to be stupid, meaning you
can’t make shit up. We have nothing like that explaining music to the
detail that you are studying it or taking it in at Red Bull. That’s a
big thing that’s missing right now. The more you know about the music
the more you find yourself alone. Go up to some old lady, “Oh, my son’s a
DJ. What do you do? You make beats? He makes beats. And he’s 12.” [Laughs]
Audience member
My name is Vanise and I’m from Brooklyn, New York,
and I am a producer, representing that underrepresented section in
hip-hop. First, I want to say kudos for Public Enemy for adding such a
political twist, which is very important, and it’s something we’re
missing right now. I grew up on hip-hop, and was able to see the fun
part and the political part and really understand how important it was,
as life and a culture. When I do my live show, I try to incorporate more
political aspects because I realize how important music is as a
culture, even though in the States it’s become laughable. I believe it
has become a big corporate entity, where ego and greed is a huge
problem. There was a time when there were many political hip-hop groups,
and then suddenly you didn’t hear much about them. Do you think it was a
matter of taste in the audience, or was it a strategic move within the
industry to take away a powerful voice and to keep people stupid? Or was
it just focusing on whatever was making money? Was it something that
just happened, or was it a strategic move? I do believe everything, like
the mass media and the education system, everything in the States is
made to make us “sheeple.”
Chuck D
All of the above is accurate to the point, and it
becomes hard to discuss with the masses because it’s very detailed and
intricate and very easy for someone to put up a red flag and call it a
conspiracy theory, “Oh, so you think you know what’s going on?” Make no
mistake, corporations are in business to make money for themselves,
therefore they’re not talking about the quality of anything as opposed
to the quantity. Quantity rules the roost, especially in the major
corporations, at that time, where they actually have musical chairs for
the people at the top. So, they don’t worry about things long-term,
because they don’t even know when their term as president of Sony, or
this record company underneath one of the majors, will end. So their
whole job is to do numbers. So, in the ’80s, you got $10,000, you can
make a million off that, but if you don’t understand that it’s a
business, where you’ve got to watch out for diminishing returns, then
you can fall into a situation of not paying attention to the quality
that got people listening in the first place. That’s what happened to
hip-hop. More of it’s going to come, knowing you can put $10,000 in to
make a million, which is the story of Ruthless Records. Then you get the
situation where you put $1 million to make 10,000 records, which is
where it’s at now. It’s totally reversed, so it’s no longer based on
quantity. I’ve always thought if the community doesn’t support you, then
the [record company] is going to just place you in a record store and
sell you. Once you’re in the position of selling, then you fall victim
to all those capitalistic rules that put you in the same position as
mufflers. “We’ve got to move these mufflers, these loaves of bread,
these CDs, this music.” Once you’re in that model, then the spiritual
aspect of what you do goes out the window. It’s like, “If you don’t sell
these units, then you’re out of there.”
Audience member
People can’t support it if they don’t know it exists.
Chuck D
I don’t understand.
Audience member
You say if the audience isn’t there, if the music
you’re delivering isn’t heard. It’s different now, because the business
model is independent.
Chuck D
Because it’s never been supported by education.
Education is a system that supports books. When you were in the 7th,
8th, 9th grade, and ask, “Why am I reading Huckleberry Finn?
Why did the school system buy 336,000 books? Where does this money go
to, and why does it come from our budget? And why hasn’t black music
been a part of the curriculum ever?”
Black kids are part of the American system, so
American culture would be subsidized, wherever that money might go to.
So you could read Ethan Frome, or even Charles Dickens Great Expectations.
They’ve got to buy the books for you to read. All the music we’ve had,
let’s not sleep on it, it’s black music. Black people being involved
because all those other portals were shut to us, so we expressed our
story and our history through the music. All you’ve got to do to study
our history is study our music. You can go back to the first recording,
Thomas Edison, 1877, singing “Mary Had A Little Lamb,” and not far from
there are black people singing spirituals or whatever – music that will
tell you about that time, be it ragtime, blues, jazz, whatever. You get
this history by default. You get all the images of how you’ve got to
learn what you need to learn. But if you don’t include it in the
education system, you as a person bringing across something good for
people, well, it’s not included in education, so it ain’t in the
community.
So, you’ve got to sell yourself next to a bottle of
vodka. Yo, from nine o’clock until three o’clock in the morning, this is
our time, and you’ve got to sell your orange juice in a bottle of vodka
time. And at a party, the orange juice is only going to be used as a
mixer. So, the art is not supported by the community, by the education
system, so therefore it’s levied into companies and [is dependent on
them and] how they deliver art. And that’s an unfair comparison. It’s
like offering a little kid a choice between “Mary Had A Little Lamb” or
Playboy [laughs]. It’s the lowest-hanging fruit, and it’s easy
to sell “n---a” in America, because America’s built on the treatment of
black people as n---as. So, it’s more familiar than the upward
understanding of where we are in the world, because it’s been saturated
inside Americana. And whenever you come up with something that speaks
for blacks, education, women, human beings, it’s going against the
grain, because it has to be sold.
Really, it should be given away. If your music is
upwardly favorable – if that’s the right term – then the school system
should buy one-million CDs in the Brooklyn area and subsidies it so you
don’t have to sell it in HMV. “Oh, I’ve got to get this airplay, so the
community can hear I’ve got something good.” Why’s the community going
to get something better? Because on those airwaves, this is what moves,
the one that’s most familiar. That’s the one that’s going to get picked
up.
People say, “Why do they have these chicks in the
video, why’s it derogatory, why are they showing this?” Who can’t sell
sex to a 12-year-old kid? Who can’t sell the promise of a club to an
11-year-old? They can’t get in there, but ask if they know about it and
they’ll say, “Hell, yeah! I know about the club, I know about 50 Cent, I
know about Fiddy.” They’re six or seven years from getting in there,
but they can tell you all about it. You ask them now about a strip club,
and they can tell you about it, even though they’ve never been in one.
They can’t wait to get in one, because they’ve heard what it’s like.
These are the things that sell because it’s the lowest-hanging fruit.
It’s where young people want to have that vice side, and think they’re
finding their own identity.
The other side has to be given to them. Ask a kid if
he wants vegetables or ice cream. Ask a kid. “No, I don’t want the ice
cream. “I’ll take the asparagus, I’ll take the broccoli.” [Laughs]
That’s the same thing that’s happening in music and culture. Culture,
if it’s positive, has to be supported, but the community is already
spending its money on education. The structure in America doesn’t
consider black culture and black music as part of the education system,
because it doesn’t speak to everybody. That’s crazy, because black music
has spoken to everybody across the world. I go across the world, and
they know everything I’ve been doing, go back to my own block and they
don’t know who I am but an old man.
The reason it works in Europe and other places is
because of the contrast, the curiosity. Nightlife was triggered by being
broader than just, say, Germany only having German musicians. No, this
comes from the black musicians who started coming over after World War
One, playing and bringing some music. “Oh, that’s what you call jazz.”
Because culture brings people together automatically, there’s something
about the bite that you can’t fight. You have to be supported by a
system that hasn’t had its doors open universally. Corporations are
there to sell you and they’ve treated music like rims or hubcaps or
sandwiches. Right now, people feel that they can get their sandwiches
somewhere else. They don’t realize that before they were the only place
that made the hardware to play the software. Now you’ve already got your
hardware from computer companies and telephone companies, and now
they’re dominating the software.
That’s why the record companies are screaming, “F---
the phone companies, f--- Apple, f--- the PCs, we’re the record
companies, listen to us. You still want to sign with us, don’t you?”
Yeah, I’ll sign if you give me some money. That’s why people want to get
signed to a record company: money and exposure. But I’ll tell you this,
welcome to the terrordome. If you sign to an urban division of a major
now, can you wait for 24 months and then have them tell you what to do
with it? They ain’t giving big advances like they did in the ’80s.
“Here’s £10,000 to hold you off for 24 months until we figure out how to
position you in the marketplace.”
“Can I release my MP3s on my own, get my shit out there?”
“No, we don’t want that, we want exclusive rights to have you with us.”
So, say, it’s £10,000 or even £100,000 and you’ve got a group of five
people, all co-songwriters, is that going to last for 24 months split
among five and the making of the record? You might have made your music
for nothing and shot the videos, but you’ve got to split with five
people and figure all these other things into it. A lot of young people
are, “I want to buy my mom her crib.” That’s £40,000. So you’ve got
£60,000 left and it becomes a mathematical avalanche. That’s why it’s
been an obstacle for women and great art to influence, because those
areas are still closed.
Audience member
You were talking about…
Chuck D
Where are you from?
Audience member
Barcelona, I was born here. My name is David.
Chuck D
I’m always trying to be nosy and find out where
people are from, so I can take it back home and say there were from
Barcelona or Brooklyn.
Audience member
I got a Public Enemy record when I was 15. I didn’t
understand any English at all. You talk about the power of the music, I
want to ask about the power of the visual, too, the art and the design.
Also the information you got from a Public Enemy record when you read
the information on the sheet, lots of different bands. And the logo is a
powerful logo, one of the best in music history, and also the concept
of the organization, the shows. I want to know who came with the concept
of the logo and the albums?
Chuck D
We all came up with the concept, trying to present
ourselves visually, and putting as much information on the album as
possible. It was important because we didn’t have much time. This was
before they made videos, so we had to be able to explain ourselves. We
called it the “cereal box theory” – when you go in the store, and the
most you can do is read the box, then when you eat the food, you want to
read the box still, turn it around, read the ingredients on the back.
We wanted to be able to get everything out in the artwork, the
presentation. I designed the logo, I always liked to see the rock &
roll guys – they had logos, so why couldn’t it be the same in rap? I
wanted to make the music legitimate, as much as the other genres. Being a
fan of history, you take and borrow from all the things you’ve seen to
make a visual presentation. We didn’t make up anything, we just took and
borrowed from the visual aspects that we’d seen all our lives.
Audience member
My name is José, I’m from Brazil. You said you
started MCing because you went to parties and you were pissed off
because they were so wack. How did you become so political? How do you
feel about these other rappers who are just entertainment, no politics?
Chuck D
We were fortunate to come at another time, I was
born in 1960. When I was born I had “negro” on my birth certificate. The
Civil Rights Movement was 1965; Malcolm X was killed in 1965, I
remember that. Martin Luther King was killed in 1968, I was eight. The
Vietnam War was in 1963, all the way until 1971, I remember that very
clearly. I wrote “Black Steel In The Hour Of Chaos” after my uncle who
had an officer come to his house and told him he was drafted into the
Vietnam War. He opened the letter and just dropped it on the table, he’d
just graduated from high school. These are the things that are inside
me, as well as the music, like [“Say It Loud ¬– I’m Black And I’m Proud”
by James Brown, that said we’re black, we’re not colored or negro.
We’re black, we speak to the world because this is how we look. Curtis
Mayfield always spoke inspirationally. These are things that were inside
me because music was always in the house. So, when rap music came out
later on, you speak a lot of words and you speak where you come from and
what you know. People say I’m political, but this is where I come from,
and this is what’s inside me. I think a lot of the time rappers try to
copy a political stance that wasn’t inside them in the same way. They
may have been born in 1975 or 1982, with different things going on. You
can read back, but you can’t actually talk from your personal
experiences. That can help too, by reading back and talking to people.
Audience member
It’s not like living through the war.
Chuck D
But you’re watching it and reacting to people who
are talking to you. That’s why when Reagan and Bush were around in the
’80s, they knocked out plenty of opportunities, so people were
responding to having a lot of guns in the community from nowhere, drugs
in the community from nowhere. All of a sudden, it goes from weed to
cocaine in three years. How? So, you talk to people, but you also have
people in your family who were wiped out from these things so you can
comment on it.
Bill Clinton came along in the 90s, and it seemed
like people partied for eight years. P Diddy might have partied in
‘96/’97, because Bill Clinton was going around saying he was the black
president [laughs], so people kind of went to sleep and thought
they didn’t have to be aggressively important. Also, Clinton cut off
the rest of the world, he made America a focal point, so it was a party
time, but around the rest of the world, policies were enacted that were
very American-like. But it wasn’t reflected in the rap music, which was
celebrating the good times. One of the reasons why I think America
didn’t go for Hillary Clinton, but went for Barack Obama, is because
America is tired – you’ve had Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Clinton? “No,
we’ve had enough of that shit. We don’t want a dynasty.” That has
something to do with it. That’s a good point you brought up – it was
already inside of me, so I can’t ask someone who’s 10 years younger than
me to share that point of view, because I remember seeing these things.
Audience member
I’m Natalia, from Mexico. I would like to ask, once
you realized you had to deal with so many things around what you do,
which in the beginning was just music, how can you deal with your
inspiration? You have to do so many things and manage a lot of things –
what happens when you are on the stage and you have something to say?
Have you ever felt lost?
Chuck D
The thing that always gives you perspective is
studying other musicians and what they went through – that enables you
to see your surroundings a little bit better. When you’re making a
record and you’ve done 15 or 16 albums, you might think that’s a lot.
But then you realize someone like Duke Ellington has done 76 albums, and
wrote when he was 76 on his deathbed, on matchsticks or something. Or
someone was working on a plantation, then was finally able to record,
then had to go to prison – the Lead Belly story. I say study other
musicians and what they’ve gone through in the past, even in the
present, and the other artists around you, and you’ll get inspiration
from there. You’ll find there are artists that look at you and are
trying to get where you’re at. It’s key for artists to talk to other
artists. How do you do what you’re doing, how do you make it from A to
B, how do you work at the same time and raise your kids, play a club,
find time to be with your mother and father, wherever they might live?
There are people in this room who you’ll get the most out of.
I traveled here yesterday, got here late after a
long day at Heathrow, and I was knocked out. But I’m an old man, and I
don’t understand how you can stay up until 4 AM and be up at nine. I did
that for years, back when my kids weren’t grown, but I look back and
think, “How the hell did I do that?” But you just do it. When they were
single digits, I would go on tour, get back, I’d take them to school,
finish coming out of the studio at 5 AM, take them to school at 7 AM,
sleep for an hour, answer calls, do some interviews, pick them up from
school at 3 AM, feed them, go somewhere at nine, and then back in the
studio again. Then you’ve got to go the UK for three days, go to
California.
But there are 24 hours in a day. You can’t master
time, you can only manage it. Sometimes, you can’t share time, because
time is different to other people. Sometimes, it’s easier to look at
days as 24 hours and then break it down into minutes. Instead of saying
you did it for an hour, break your hour into 60 minutes, and dedicate
minutes to something, and break those minutes down to 60 seconds.
I tell artists to be fair to their fans, treat them
like family, so they’re not fans, they’re “fams”. If you have bodyguards
keeping you away, five people come to you, you’re keeping them away,
but you can spend two minutes, give them quality time and they’ll
remember it for a lifetime. You can spend ten minutes trying to keep
them away. It only takes six seconds to shake someone’s hand. It only
takes ten seconds to shake five people’s hands, look them in the eye and
say hello. A lot of things this industry tries to do, like bodyguards,
VIP sections, stay away – they spend more time and energy fighting
people to make them stay away, instead of engaging them to come in and
communicate. This industry has to work on better public relations, then
the audience and performer become as one and you have something that
lasts a long time which is some true respect. I see these people
surrounded by bodyguards and there ain’t no one trying to beat up on
this person. I could name some names, I’ve seen these people with
bodyguards around to protect them from what? Saying hello? So, that’s
how you guys want to treat them – your public is your relations. Look at
situations carefully and manage time, too.
Jeff “Chairman” Mao
So, on the subject of time, I think we’re out of time.
Chuck D
I also want to give out my email address, since I
have no cards. MySpace is Chuckdpublicenemy and my email is
mrchuck@rapstation.com. It’s been an enjoyable experience, thanks for
the opportunity, keep doing the music, keep knowing how much fun it is,
and keep that youthful spirit of knowing you’re cultural ambassadors, so
when you go home to your countries you understand the music and the
culture are the things that tie us all together on this very important
planet. Thank you.
This story is part of American Anthem, a yearlong series on songs that rouse, unite, celebrate and call to action. Find more at NPR.org/Anthem.
Huey
P. Newton, co-founder of the Black Panther Party, said, "The young
always inherit the revolution." That couldn't be more true of two songs,
released at two fraught times in American history, that share the same
title.
The Isley Brothers
spent the 1960s churning out hits like "Twist and Shout," "This Old
Heart of Mine" and "It's Your Thing." But the group's image underwent a
serious change in the '70s. It was a post-Watergate America, when trust
in government was perilously low. The energy of the civil rights
movement had cooled. And the country was recovering from a recession to
boot.
"Fight the Power, Pts. 1 & 2,"
released into that context in 1975, was a crossover smash for The
Isleys, charting in the top five. The funky beat made it a hit in dance
clubs. But there was also a rebellious message that took listeners by
surprise:
"I tried to play my music, they say my music's too loud I tried talking about it, I got the big runaround And when I rolled with the punches, I got knocked on the ground By all this bulls*** going down."
Carlton Ridenhour was 15 years old, and a lifelong Isley Brothers fan, when that song changed his life.
Ridenhour would later take the stage name Chuck D, as the leader of the pioneering rap group Public Enemy. In 1989, he wrote his own "Fight the Power" for the film Do the Right Thing.
The movie is set on the hottest day of the summer in a Brooklyn
neighborhood, where the temperature leads long-simmering racial tensions
to boil over in the street.
Writer/director Spike Lee told
Public Enemy he needed an anthem. The song the group created would come
to score the film's legendary opening sequence — and, later, cause the
plot to turn in a tragic way.
"Got to give us what we want Gotta give us what we need Our freedom of speech is freedom of death We got to fight the powers that be."
For the series American Anthem,
NPR arranged for Chuck D to sit down with Ernie Isley and talk about
their songs and their inspirations. See the full conversation in the
video above, and read on for an edited transcript. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Chuck D: The
"Fight The Power" that the Isley Brothers made in 1975 — I was 15 years
old, so it was ingrained in me, but it was a record that I thought
represented us. "I tried to play my music, they say my music's too
loud": That spoke loud to me. And I didn't even curse at the time, but
that was the first time I ever heard a curse on a record. Where was the
seed of that idea? Ernie Isley: Thing was, inspiration is all around us all the time. We were in California, Los Angeles. We had just finished recording the Live It Up
album. Our mother and wives, and my nieces and nephews, flew out to
L.A. after the record was finished, and we were gonna go to Disneyland
for the very first time. So, I was in a real good mood. I got
in the shower, and for some reason, I started saying, or reciting,
something like, "Time is truly wasting, there's no guarantee. Smile is
in the making, fight the powers that be." I was like, "Whoa." Soap went
this way, water went that way — I jumped out and grabbed a pad while I'm
dripping ... Chuck: You had to write it down? Ernie:
... and I wrote that down. I didn't tell the brothers about it right
away — it was like two or three months. And when I did, I said, "With
all this nonsense going down." And Ronald [Isley, the group's lead
vocalist] took that into account. When it came time to sing it,
I heard him say, "With all this BS going down." I went, "Ronald ...
you're not gonna change that?" He said, "Change what?" [Laughs] "No, I'm not gonna change it." Chuck: Was he hot that day, or mad at something? Ernie: No,
no, no. It was just, like, a matter of fact. And I said, "You know,
man, some people may not like it." He said, "Ernie, if you can say what
you feel, and it's embraced, wonderful. If you can say what you feel,
and it's not embraced, at least you said what you feel." And I was like, "Yeah. That makes sense."
Chuck: It was a serious time in the United States of America. For black folks in 1975, it was a serious, serious time of doubt. Because when white folks got it bad, there's a basement underneath that that got hell going on. Fourteen
years later, Spike Lee had asked us to come up with something that
signified this movie that he was making about unrest in Brooklyn, where
he was from, and seeing that same hypocrisy. And he said, "I need an
anthem." We were in the middle of R and B — that's Reagan and Bush. So I
said, "We don't want to sample from the record. What we want to do is
carry the torch of the meaning — to yell and scream back at hypocrisy."
Because they definitely say we play rap music too loud. And we roll with the punches, and we get knocked on the ground. And so it was like, how do we carry the torch? Ernie: When
you guys came out with your "Fight The Power," I was listening, and you
said, "Fight the power, fight the power, fight the powers that be." The
"that be" part is when it's manifested — like, what kind of
monster is it? Whatever it is, once it's manifested, then you know how
to begin your fight. You're gonna take all of it on courageously, and
with a sense of optimism. Chuck: I mean, we
made songs that were based on feeling. We didn't think it was one of our
strongest songs at all. It ain't as rough as some songs that we've
made, and crazy like some songs we made. But we were in pocket: This is
the groove, this is the feeling. That was something that really,
seriously drew the connection between what we felt in '75 and what we
had 1989. And Spike knew that record, too, so he didn't reject
that. "'Fight The Power,' Spike — that's the anthem you're looking for."
"And it doesn't sound like the 1975 version by the Isleys?" "No, it's
totally over here — but it's gonna say the same thing." ... Hip hop is
almost like its own archive museum.
YouTube
Ernie: It was a tremendous hit in its own right.
And it was important that you said what you said — [including] calling
out Elvis and calling out John Wayne. It was like, "Did you hear what he said?" Chuck: Now, you know, we give props. Elvis is in my household. But,
there's other records in the crates. So that was a takedown saying,
"The Isley Brothers are my heroes, not these people." ... Our history is
in our music. If you de-emphasize our music, the history is gone. You
could teach black history by default, just by teaching the music. Ernie: That's right. In some ways, you could teach American history. Chuck:
And households were our best educational systems, because it taught us
what the real deal was as we went to school. I mean, you and your
brothers was always like uncles and aunts in our crib, without ever
seeing you. Somebody's gonna play the record, and it's like, "Yo, this
part of family. This is not offensive, this is to learn you," as they
used to say. It'll learn you something by listening to these records. Ernie: It's
a wonderful way to be able to communicate with people. ... Thank God
that music is what it is. It's like an extension, you know? And it's
like an embrace, that all of us can connect through generations, through
lifetimes. They're gonna be listening to "Fight the Power" by y'all for
as long as they got ears. It'll be rediscovered. It'll be rehashed. Chuck: Makes us love, makes us fight. Thank you, sir. Ernie: Thank you. Chuck: Fight the powers that be. Ernie: That's right, man.
Daoud Tyler-Ameen contributed to the digital version of this story.
THE MUSIC OF PUBLIC ENEMY: AN EXTENSIVE VIDEO OVERVIEW, A CROSS SECTION OF RECORDINGS, MUSICAL ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY PLUS VARIOUS INTERVIEWS WITH PUBLIC ENEMY:
Kofi Natambu, editor of and contributor to Sound Projections, is a writer, poet, cultural critic, and political journalist whose poetry, essays, criticism, reviews, and journalism have appeared in many literary magazines, journals, newspapers, and anthologies. He has written extensively about music as a critic and historian for many publications, including the Black Scholar, Downbeat, Solid Ground: A New World Journal, Detroit Metro Times, KONCH, the Panopticon Review,Black Renaissance Noire, the Village Voice, the City Sun (NYC), the Poetry Project Newsletter (NYC), and the African American Review. He is the author of a biography Malcolm X: His Life & Work (Alpha Books) and two books of poetry: The Melody Never Stops (Past Tents Press) and Intervals (Post Aesthetic Press). He was the founder and editor of Solid Ground: A New World Journal, a national quarterly magazine of the arts, culture, and politics and the editor of a literary anthology Nostalgia for the Present (Post Aesthetic Press). Natambu has read his work throughout the country and given many lectures and workshops at academic and arts institutions. He has taught American literature, literary theory and criticism, cultural history and criticism, film studies, political science, creative writing, philosophy, critical theory, and music history and criticism (Jazz, Blues, R&B, Hip Hop) at many universities and colleges. He was also a curator in the Education Department of Detroit’s Museum of African American History. Born in Detroit, Michigan, Natambu currently lives in Berkeley, California with his wife Chuleenan.
/https://public-media.si-cdn.com/filer/d0/e0/d0e09666-9a81-44db-95c3-4cba599f057c/201314911001web.jpg)
[This article was originally published in the March 1990 issue of SPIN. To coincide with the 25th anniversary of Fear of a Black Planet, we’re repromoting this feature, which looks at the Chuck D’s life at the time of that album’s release.]
