No nation could ever hold Public Enemy back.
Proving its reign supreme, the rap legends will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on Thursday, one of only four hip-hop acts ever to make the cut.
The award will be presented by Harry Belafonte at a ceremony in Los Angeles, and brings Public Enemy into an elite selection of artists (including The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Beach Boys and Buddy Holly) who were inducted in their first year of eligibility.
Thus, it solidifies hip-hop’s imprint in music history.
It’s bigger than hip-hop
“It’s not ever really been about us, it’s about how we can actually forward the genre, so we take this very seriously,” Chuck D tells theGrio at a special event held by the Grammy Museum to commemorate the group’s honor. “I don’t think we’ve ever been popular. We’ve been kind of begrudgingly accepted. I tell people all the time, if we didn’t get a chance to get our passport in 1987 and leave this country, Public Enemy wouldn’t have lasted 26 years as a cultural group that set the stage. We come from Roosevelt, Long Island, that’s a lot of what this whole thing is about.”
In truth, Public Enemy strove to harvest the controversial. The group, which consists of Chuck, Flavor Flav, Terminator X, DJ Lord, and Professor Griff, was ill with a purpose, built on brutal honesty, anti-assimilation, and pro-black political crusades to decry public opinion.
When the government was silent, Public Enemy was blaring. When the public required sophistication, Public Enemy dictated in poetic verse. And when the youth sought novelty, Public Enemy was as fresh as graffiti on the side of their buildings.
“We represent a lot of things to a lot of people across the world, who are looking at these moments,” says Chuck. “The question is what do we do with these moments, and how does this better the environment that gave us a platform to be able to make changes in peoples’ lives with the gift of music?”
Gaining acceptance without the radio
Public Enemy first hit the mic with 1987’s Yo! Bum Rush The Show. Though they took awhile to gain widespread attention, they went on to release 14 albums, and were ranked 44th on Rolling Stone’s list of 100 greatest artists of all time.
Further attesting to their legacy, Public Enemy innovated the art of rap production. Through their producing team, The Bomb Squad, Public Enemy revolutionized sampling by expanding what was possible for scratch techniques.
Yet success always hinged on their ability to be heard.
“Spike Lee, our good friend, was able to take a Public Enemy song, which definitely wasn’t getting played on the radio, and had the audacity to put it in a movie,” Chuck points out. “Not only did Spike Lee put “Fight the Power” in Do the Right Thing, he put it in 50 times. He killed it.”
From there, people around the world began to raise their fists to Public Enemy’s bravado. Chuck admits however, they never looked for approval nor do they now, even from the most prominent of subjects.
“To expect [President Obama] to say he listens to Public Enemy is absolutely crazy,” he observes. “We don’t expect him to say anything about it. If they jumped on his ass about Common, that’s what that is.”
The 25th anniversary of It Takes A Nation…
On top of the Hall of Fame distinction, Public Enemy also celebrates the 25th anniversary of its most influential album, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, this month.
As a follow-up to their less recognized debut, Public Enemy released the record in April of 1988. This time around, they made sure that if music initially failed to notice them, it wouldn’t make the same mistake again.
The album charted for 51 weeks on the Billboard 200, and was certified platinum by 1989.
“When we first made it, we wanted to make a What’s Going On for rap music. We wanted to take it to high art,” Chuck remarks. “We wanted to be able to do something that actually wasn’t being done, and make it last for a long time for the art-form.”
Noting its current relevance, he adds, “Twenty-five years might be a long time in music, but it’s a short time in real life.”
Then hip-hop wandered astray
Expressing pride and frustration, Chuck describes a loss of integrity in hip-hop today, blaming not only artists but record labels as well.
“We’ve seen the disappearance of groups in hip-hop, we’ve seen the eradication of women,” he says. “There’s high art and there’s low art. Low art is no effort, no concern, maybe a little bit of selfishness to try and get money out of people and just call it hip-hop for whatever reason. There’s high art that moves people in ways that it touches your vibrations and your emotions in a way that you can find in yourself to do things… We’re proud to be part of the genre, proud to be part of the infrastructure, but very disappointed in how a lot of cats have dropped the ball.”
He stresses the significance of upholding the legacy.
“At the root of this [music] was probably a black person strumming a chord on the side of an old shack expressing themselves because they weren’t allowed to say anything to their slavemaster,” Chuck continues. “At the root of that is the blues, and at the root of that blues comes a certain attitude of a black man playing a guitar. In the same way, you have a black man on the turntable in the 80’s. You don’t see many black DJs anymore.”
The future of Public Enemy
Accordingly, Public Enemy will not let up.
The group moves forward on a mission to make music, tour, and encourage “raptivism” and black leadership. They even created a line of books to broaden the depths of their authority.
So, in other words, believe this hype.
Chuck comments, “We like to acknowledge and tip our hat to people who do things.”
Follow Courtney Garcia on Twitter at @CourtGarcia