I am one of the few people that I know who actually look at their Spotify feed to see what other people are listening to. I’ve found that it can be a great resource to finding new music, or, legitimizing my dislike for an artist name that I’ve seen trending. However, lately it’s been making me aware of something completely different: The complete lack on legendary and iconic Hip Hop group, Public Enemy being blasted by speakers across the country. Sure, perhaps this is commentary pointing out my lack of diversity of my “friends” list that I’ve chosen to follow on Spotify—I’ll admit to some of that. After all, most of the people I follow are those I just hurriedly followed when I first arrived on that scene. Nevertheless, whether your friends are listening to Public Enemy or not, I thought that it wouldn’t hurt to bring P.E. to the spotlight on a day of “independence” during such times that we are currently living in.
I should first quickly talk about my relationship with the 4th of July, as it has constantly shifted throughout my life. As a child of the suburbs in the 80’s, it was simply a time to sit on the roof with the family and enjoy fireworks. In my teens, I began to actually listen a little bit in school about why we celebrate 4th of July, but still not really caring too much about the meaning. As an adult—post high school (when I really started my education)—I began to slowly piece things together. Through conversations with friends and acquaintances, I began to hear other sides of stories, different recollections of history and form my own conclusions and opinions. This was no exception to the 4th of July.
When I began to realize that there was a different, unwhitewashed version of history that taught the very real and embarrassingly ugly origin story of America, it started to become more challenging for me to go out to that "BBQ party that Johnny was throwing down the street.”
It’s been easy to say, “Well I’ll go to Johnny’s party, but not because I’m celebrating America. I’m just using it as a reason to hang with friends.” Look, I get it. It’s hard to stay at home when everyone else is saying fuck it and celebrating. It’s also hard to go out and party when in the back of your mind you’re telling yourself your partying on the backs of raped and murdered indigenous people and African slaves, both of which peoples have more to do with the formation of this country than any of our forefathers (fight me if you disagree—verbally of course). But hey, this is the hypocritical American paradox we were all born into—all we can do is our best in navigating through the shit show. So I’m not necessarily saying not to celebrate our country because hey, there are a lot of things that are great about it—but if you’re going to celebrate it, let’s also talk about the atrocities of the American process that has led to you slip ’n sliding in Johny’s backyard with a rack of ribs in your mouth and a “Bud” in your hand.
So I offer a last minute and easy suggestion to helping you celebrate with just a little bit more intention this holiday: Public Enemy.
As I was drawn to blasting Public Enemy’s critically acclaimed, ‘Fear Of A Black Planet’ on the way to the store today, I wondered why I haven’t been hearing any of their music during the times of Black Lives Matter. I have a few theories on this: One, the majority of protestors have been younger people who tend to not know much of pop culture before their time. Two, perhaps millennials only know of Public Enemy from the various questionable antics of group member, Flavor Flav, and his questionable but hilarious reality tv stardom of the 00’s. And finally, perhaps their message was simply missed by Gen X amongst all of the gansta and sex raps of the late 80’s and early 90’s. Well I’m here to tell you, it’s okay if you find yourself in any of those categories—no judgement. Let’s start fresh and dive into the Public Enemy repertoire.
So in 1987 I began my official love affair with Hip Hop. From about 1987 through 1993, pretty much 90 percent of the music I listened to on a daily basis was Hip Hop. My favorite artist was Public Enemy, which is saying a lot during a time that was dominated by gansta rap, sex rap and new jack swing radio friendly R&B. I loved all of those genres, but for some reason, Public Enemy really spoke to me. Initially, I think it was the energy of the music and production and yes, the vaudevillian antics of Flavor Flav—but it was also the superb voice and attack of lyricist and MC, Chuck D that grabbed me as well. I’ve always been drawn to aggressive music in one way or another, especially when I was young: Metal, Rap and Punk were all staples of my childhood and formative years. However, little did I know that this aggressive and at times, militant sounding music coming from my boombox was actually just a gateway to Chuck D’s eloquent way of reaching me and millions of white kids and teaching us “Real history—not his-story”. At first, some of these things I was hearing Chuck preach about (Malcom X, Louis Farrakhan) was confusing me because it tended to contradict some of the things that I heard come from my father’s mouth as a child. As far as I knew, these historical figures hated white people, and I couldn’t understand how someone could hate me for who I was, especially since I had no say in the color of my skin. Of course, it was this way of thinking that eventually helped me see things better from an African-American’s point of view, in questioning underserved bias towards skin tone.
Well, thanks to Public Enemy, this led me to watching films from, Spike Lee, and television shows like, ‘In Living Colour’—both of which helped me further embrace my fellow black Americans, which of course led to further interest in personal education on the subject of race in America—and of course, led me to listening, researching and understanding Chuck D’s lyrics on a deeper level. Suddenly, instead of just memorizing lyrics from insistent over play, I was memorizing lyrics because I was fascinated by their meaning and backstory. Hearing quotes of Dr. King and Malcom X in P.E.’s songs suddenly had substance and meaning for me, therefore eradicating those earlier ignorant comments from my father.
Note: Let me just say, my father is a loving man and would never intentionally say or act on hate. It’s just unfortunate that he comes from a generation that was white washed and failed to inform it’s youth of truth. In my opinion, there is a difference between ignorance and blatant racism—but damn if this isn’t a difficult subject for me personally to conclude on.
So as I’ve been listening to Public Enemy during these Black Lives Matter times, Public Enemy’s message has never rang truer, or to have the potential to be highly educational and impactful.
P.E.’s first album, ‘Yo! Bum Rush The Show’, has them searching for an identity in a bourgeoning Rap scene. However, it’s their sophomore effort, ‘It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back’ where we really hear them adopt the educational, militant, yet eloquent sound and message they were known for. But wow, let’s talk about their third album, ‘Fear Of A Black Planet’. This is considered the absolute golden fleece of political, conscious, pro-black hip hop from that golden era.
Not only is the overall message taken to the next level, but the engineering and production level of music from The Bomb Squad—Chuck D, Eric "Vietnam" Sadler, and brothers Keith and Hank Shocklee—completely moved the bar of Hip Hop production to unprecedented levels. Chocked full of a mix of a ridiculous amount of samples and sequenced drum beats, it created something that had yet to be heard.
To elaborate on the message of this album: Although to me the overall message tends to focus quite a bit on whitewashed media, white and black ignorance, and overall pro-blackness—on this album they do a great job at micro-focusing on subject matter that falls under the umbrellas of what I have just described.
Not only were the lyrics of this album relevant 30 years ago, but are possibly even more relevant now during BLM. That becomes even more clear if you replace 1995 with 2020 (it’s almost frightening how relevant these lyrics are) while reading/listening to Chuck’s scarily prophetic lyrics on opening track, ‘Brothers Gonna Work It Out’. He very eloquently educates and points his community towards a healthier and more informed way of thinking during a time when gang violence was en vogue:
“In 1995, you'll twist to this
As you raise your fist to the music
United we stand, yes divided we fall
Together we can stand tall
Brothers that try to work it out
They get mad, revolt, revise, realize
They're super bad
Small chance a smart brother's
Gonna be a victim of his own circumstance.”
Then they move onto something that is perhaps the most relevant subject on this album: ‘911 Is A Joke’. Although Flavor Flav was arguably some good comedic relief to Chuck D’s informative “straight man” style—all while commenting on police negligence—I believe Flav does a good job here in bringing in the audience with comedy while still getting the point across: 911 is a joke.
‘Incident at 66.6 FM’ is a short track that highlights callers calling into a radio show that Chuck D was a guest on. It’s short but sweet in the way that it highlights the unfortunate ignorance of white America not being able to see the clear message. For example: A caller couldn’t understand the message of seeing “men on stage with Uzis in cages, so rather than try to understand the metaphor, he calls them and their fans, “scum”. It also highlights to what I said earlier: the plights of whitewashed American media.
‘Welcome To The Terrordome’ is just an absolute mastery of Poetry. Dig in, ya dig?
‘Meet The G That Killed Me’ is commentary on the hot subject of the time, AIDS and HIV.
‘Pollywannacracka’ is basically an instrumental spoken word piece about interracial issues that were really being brought to the forefront in media due to interracial relations inspired by an interest in Hip Hop at the time.
‘Anti-Nigger Machine’ (hated typing that word, but hey, that’s the title) seems to me about his personal experience with breaking away from stereotypes.
And speaking of stereotypes, ‘Burn Hollywood, Burn’ is a great uptempo (which was popular stylistically at that time) song that features two other hot artists of the time, Ice Cube and Big Daddy Kane. They each take their turn at riffing about the long, racist and stereotyping tradition of the film industry. If you’d like to see an extremely thought provoking black made film that very interestingly tackles race and stereotyping in an early American entertainment industry (minstrelsy) that eventually led into a stereotyping film industry—do yourself a favor and watch Spike Lee’s, ‘Bamboozled’. Fuck.
‘Who Stole The Soul’ will straight make you question going to that damn BBQ today.
The title track once again dives into interracial issues to great degree.
P.E. doesn’t miss a damn beat on subject matter here, done no better than with ‘Revolutionary Generation’. Here we hear Chuck take on the subject of sexism and the relationship between men and women—basically saying that women deserve all of the respect that men have given themselves and that there is no way of making progress without our beloved sisters (who make up the majority of our world population by the way).
Without making this a song for song album review, let’s just say that the rest of the album continues down a similar, uniquely educational masterclass that is aggressive and angry, but with an ironic sensitive informing of very difficult and misunderstood subject matter.
Of course, the album finished off with the iconic and sometimes unfortunately comedically misused term, ‘Fight The Power’. I first heard this song at the end of ‘Do The Right Thing’, right after a very powerful and frustrating ending of the film. Those emotions mixed with an undeniably militant angry message and musical production—made me feel anger for the first time towards the white communities I was brought up in. Although I didn’t realize it at the time, I look back now and realize that that was the defining moment for me as a young man in deciding to take the time to listen and to try to understand race relations in America from a different point of view. As I stated earlier, Hip Hop started as pure entertainment for me, but subtlety led me to being more aware and actually paying attention to the music and it’s message. Some of the lyrics from ‘Fight The Power’ again prophetically talk of the future (although this time on a personal level). Congrats Chuck, it worked on me:
“As the rhythm designed to bounce
What counts is that the rhymes
Designed to fill your mind
Now that you've realized the pride's arrived
We got to pump the stuff to make us tough
From the heart
It's a start, a work of art
To revolutionize make a change nothing's strange.”
I look back and realize that I was extremely lucky to allow myself to be educated on these subjects at such a young age. It also saddens me to see so many adults in 2020 not be able to wrap their minds around such obvious atrocities. With that said, Chuck D and Public Enemy seamlessly lead by example in showing that you can be forceful and educational in an eloquent, meaningful and artistic way without making it personal.
It’s our personal responsibility to be open to seeing things form a different point of view, listening, sleeping on it before you respond, and most importantly — swallowing our pride: “If you are willing then we are willing”.
How we make others open to these things is beyond me, honestly. I wish I had the answer, as I’m sure most of you do. All I know is that all of things I just stated are a life long commitment. If you ever stop learning, you’ve stopped living.
In the meantime: Fight The Power!