Recent Public Enemy, with guest stars What are you going to do when the network goes down? is undoubtedly the greatest album ever made by a 35-year-old hip-hop group – this is almost certainly the only album in that category so far. That distinction aside, it’s genuinely excellent in itself, with Flavor Flav – whose status in the group seemed obscure for the time being – totally in the mix, and an energized Chuck D leading the way.
Chuck D talked about making the new album (which largely brings together songs released as singles in recent years) and looked back to the birth of his group’s masterpiece in 1988, It Takes a nation of millions to hold us, in an interview also used in part for our 500 Greatest Albums podcast, presented by Brittany Spanos and done in partnership with Amazon Music.
How do you think about making albums differently now compared to the 80s?
So, if I had the option of listening to 10,000 songs, why would I stay with an artist until 10 or 14? What would be what really made me stay with that artist?
And what is the answer?
Nothing! I mean, it’s different. We always think like Iron Maiden or some metal band, unlike some rap group, because hip-hop was still a medium for singles when we started. You needed to have two or three hits to get an album, which was no different than the ’60s, if you want to talk about Motown or Stax Records. And we just released albums. So, we had to think conceptually, from the beginning.
Now, people have less attention span, whether they are old or young. You could tell the story of an entire album on five tracks. You can do as the Doors did in 1968 and close an album in less than 25 minutes. You could make a movie in 15 minutes for this season.
You always look like yourself without looking old-fashioned. How do you approach rap now, after the styles have changed immeasurably since you started?
Well, you know what it is and you know it isn’t. You know your skills and your limitations. I wouldn’t mind trying something that could end up with an ugly result, or I would fail. Part of the Public Enemy mantra is, try something, never repeat yourself, but try something that can be crazy. I could live to regret it, for example, if I wore some crazy shit. But sound experiments? If it doesn’t work, I won’t cry about it.
The biggest thing that made us different from other situations that we don’t care about being loved. I mean, Rick Rubin chased me for two years [to sign Public Enemy]. So it changes your whole attitude of how and what you are going to deliver. We really didn’t care about being loved and loved. So I think that maybe it was a little punk. But regardless of what anyone thinks of me and Flavor, you can’t ignore us. You can’t help but hear us.
You and Ice-T get along very well on “Smash the Crowd”, from the new album. His rap career started just before yours; how is your relationship?
Well, Ice-T is in the air. I think when Ice recorded this song for the first time [in 2017], he was the only 60-year-old MC. I mean, there is Wonder Mike from “Rapper’s Delight”, but he hasn’t made any new recordings. I always tell him, you are the icebreaker that we must follow.
There is a great remix of “Fight the Power” on the album you made for the BET Awards. Is it a little tiring to know that music is equally relevant 31 years later?
So this is the second “Fight the Power” that we did in 1989 [P.E. borrowed the concept from the Isley Brothers’ 1975 song]. The Isleys’ music resonated for me when I was 15. So we decided to say, this is the feeling and this theme that Spike Lee wants [for Do The Right Thing]. But the quickest thing to realize is that, yes, it’s a long time, from 89 to 2020, culturally, but it’s a short time in real life. So you can’t go around saying, haven’t we been through this before? You are always attacking systemic racism, you will not say, “everything is cool now in white supremacy. And we could just relax. “
How did you get the surviving members of the Beastie Boys and Run-DMC to come together for “Public Enemy Number Won”?
I contacted them to say for my 60th birthday [in August 2020], I want to pay tribute to you. Let’s get on that line and bake it. Now I always work with the great DMC, but I was totally amazed and farklempt by Run also being excited about it. And also Mike D and Ad-Rock, breaking their code of not making a Beastie Boys album without MCA. They are the ones who really dragged me into the industry, holding me back to Rick [Rubin] and convincing me to [sign to Def Jam]. You dragged me into this thing, so I’m going to drag you back with this song.
Then, ‘It takes a nation of millions to hold us’ jumped to number 15 on our new list of the top 500 albums. There was a stylistic leap between that album and its debut, Yo! Bum Rush the Show. Was the change in your flow just by listening to people like Rakim?
Two guys helped me create a rhyme pattern that would help me with faster speeds. And that was Rakim, especially on “You Know You Got Soul,” and also KRS-One, particularly on the song “Poetry”. KRS-One and Rakim were able to get faster speeds and get the beats going for them. This was different than what Run-DMC and Schoolly D and Houdini and everyone were doing. They were rhyming with the beat and following the beat. And then people were able to discover faster beats. A guy like Big Daddy Kane was just phenomenal after he started playing faster beats too. But nobody was messing with our beat areas, like 109 beats per minute. So it was faster, it was stronger and it was aggressive. So, to this day, you can’t mix Public Enemy records with a regular DJ set. They are totally different attacks on music.