Relive the hype

STAIRING CONTEST Chuck D stays cool while the music industry panics.

Hip-hop generates divisive opinions, but most fans can agree on one thing: 1988’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, the second album by Public Enemy, is a diamond. High- concept, urgently political and sonically courageous, the album featured producer Hank Shocklee and the Bomb Squad, DJ Terminator X, MC Chuck D and nattering hype man Flavor Flav using lessons from rock and soul to create a sound world that arguably has yet to be matched in pop music. This summer, the group will play the entire album live, headlining the Don’t Look Back series July 18 at the Pitchfork Music Festival. Not that PE is just resting on past laurels: The group released its 20th album, the excellent How You Sell Soul to a Soulless People Who Sold Their Soul, only last year. We caught up with MC, radio host and crusader against corporate culture Chuck D as he prepared for PE’s summer tour.

Time Out Chicago: Are you planning to change anything from the album for the live performance?
Chuck D: Y’know, this is an idea that came from the promoters, so I have a half-cocked interest in the concept. For us, there’s tempo changes and pitch changes in these songs and just the album is a whole different breed from a performance. But it will be a challenge and that’s one of the reasons I decided to do it.

TOC: As the face of Public Enemy, do you feel like Flavor’s acting career and reality shows have tainted the group’s legacy?
Chuck D: First of all, I’m the voice of PE. Flavor’s always been the face. He’s always been the visual and I’ve been the audible. Flavor has never wavered from his role from day one. People who are surprised [by Flav’s VH1 reality shows and sitcom] right now probably never really knew who we were in the first place. Even on Yo! Bum Rush the Show, our first album, on the track “M.P.E.,” he’s like, “When I get to the beach, the ground’s so sandy / Girls on my jock like ants on candy.” [Laughs.] Y’know? Now, if I get caught in a bordello and shit, I can see people saying, “What the fuck you doin’?” That doesn’t line up with my principles. But not Flavor.

TOC: Speaking of principles, you’re an outspoken critic of the record industry…
Chuck D: There’s no such thing as the “record industry” anymore, so I don’t even know why people continue to talk about it like that. When a computer company is delivering more songs to people than Sony BMG, there’s no point in talking about it like it’s a monolithic thing.

TOC: But the album format was a creation of that very record industry. Wasn’t that format integral to Public Enemy’s success?
Chuck D: When we came along in the middle of the ’80s, CBS required that all their artists release albums. At the same time, we knew that the street needed two singles.

TOC: So if the future of music is a singles market, is something lost in that?
Chuck D: No. The problem came when artists had to deliver 12 songs and a lot of them couldn’t handle that. Most rappers couldn’t diversify off of two or three topics and just made 12 songs that said the same four things: girls, cars, drugs, beef.

TOC: With 1999’s There’s a Poison Goin’ On, Public Enemy became one of the first mainstream groups to put out free MP3s ahead of their album. Seeing the attention and success Radiohead has had with a similar strategy, do you feel vindicated?
Chuck D: Do I feel vindicated? Hell, no. But do I understand that more people have awareness? Yeah. I’d be an idiot not to understand the way society responds to the media by this point. My thing is, I’m in the business of a beautiful genre that’s supported me, and I want to make it stand on its own two feet with some kind of accountability. My goal is not to destroy the music business but just to make it more fair. So [Napster founder] Shawn Fanning, to me, is the Beatles of the music industry. He still doesn’t get credit for his effect on society.

TOC: Have you seen that Volkswagen ad with him recently, where he’s all, “Free is definitely not cool?” That bothered me.
Chuck D: Yeah. C’mon. That’s like Edison apologizing for the lightbulb.

TOC: Do you care if this show only gets heard by a narrow demographic?
Chuck D: If that’s true about our appeal, how come PE was being played by Eastern European students when they rebelled against Milosevic [in Serbia]? Look, it’s not about ticket sales at one show. It’s about how many people know you. And we’re confident that plenty of people know us by this point. That’s America, right?

Click here to read our interview with Public Enemy producer Hank Shocklee.