Public Enemy (band)

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Public Enemy
Public Enemy performing in 2007 at the Canary Islands.
Public Enemy performing in 2007 at the Canary Islands.
Background information
Origin Long Island, New York
Genre(s) Hip hop, political hip hop, hardcore rap, East Coast rap
Years active 1982 - Present
Label(s) Def Jam/Columbia/CBS Records
Def Jam/Columbia/SME Records
Def Jam/PolyGram Records
SlamJamz/Koch Records
Associated acts Paris
Anthrax
Ice Cube
Website www.publicenemy.com
Members
Chuck D
Flavor Flav
Professor Griff
DJ Lord
The S1W
Former members
Terminator X
Sister Souljah

Public Enemy, also known as PE, is a hip hop group from Long Island, New York, known for its politically charged lyrics, criticism of the media, and active interest in the concerns of the African American community.

In 2004, Rolling Stone Magazine ranked Public Enemy[1] number forty-four on its list of the Immortals: 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.[2] Acclaimed Music ranks it the 29th most recommended musical act of all time and the highest hip-hop group.[3] The group was inducted into the Long Island Music Hall of Fame in 2007.[4]

Contents

[edit] History

[edit] Signing to Def Jam Records

Developing his talents as an MC with Flavor Flav while delivering furniture for his father's business, Chuck D and Spectrum City, as the group was called, released the record "Check out the Radio," backed by "Lies," a social commentary—both of which would influence RUSH Productions' Run-D.M.C. and Beastie Boys. The group was signed to the still developing Def Jam Recordings record label after co-founder Rick Rubin heard Chuck D freestyling on a demo.

Around 1986, Bill Stephney, the former Program Director at WBAU, was approached by Rubin and offered a position with the label. Stephney accepted, and his first assignment was to help Rubin sign Chuck D, whose song "Public Enemy Number One" he had heard from Andre "Doctor Dré" Brown. According to the book The History of Rap Music by Cookie Lommel, "Stephney thought it was time to mesh the hard-hitting style of Run DMC with politics that addressed black youth. Chuck recruited Spectrum City, which included Hank Shocklee, his brother Keith Shocklee, and Eric "Vietnam" Sadler, collectively known as the Bomb Squad, to be his production team and added another Spectrum City partner, Professor Griff, to become the group's Minister of Information. With the addition of Flavor Flav and another local mobile DJ named Terminator X, the group Public Enemy was born."

[edit] Stardom

It then took roughly one year before its debut, Yo! Bum Rush The Show, was released in 1987 to critical acclaim. The group went on to release the revolutionary album It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back in 1988, which performed better in the charts than its previous release, and included the hit single "Don't Believe the Hype" in addition to "Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos," which chronicled a daring prison break. Nation of Millions... was voted Album of the Year by the The Village Voice Pazz and Jop Poll, the first hip-hop album to be ranked number one by predominantly rock critics in a major periodical. It is also ranked the 18th best album of all time by Acclaimedmusic.net.[5]

In 1990, the group went on to release Fear of a Black Planet, which was considered to be just as militant and controversial as its first two releases. It was also the most successful of any of its albums to date and, in 2005, was selected for preservation in the Library of Congress. It included the singles "911 (is a Joke)," which criticized emergency response units for taking longer to arrive at emergencies in the black community than those in the white community, and "Fight the Power," which is considered by many to be the group's anthem. The song is regarded among the most popular and influential in hip-hop history and was the theme song of Spike Lee's Do The Right Thing. It is ranked the 84th best song of all time by Acclaimedmusic.net.[6] "Fight the Power" contains the classic lines "Elvis was a hero to most/But he never meant shit to me/You see, straight-up racist that sucker was simple and plain/Motherfuck him and John Wayne."

The group’s next release, Apocalypse '91...The Enemy Strikes Black, continued this trend, with songs like "Can't Truss It" and "# I Don't Wanna be Called Yo Nigga." The album's influence could be seen and heard in the controversial song and video "By the Time I Get to Arizona," which chronicled the black community's frustration that some states did not recognize the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. The video featured members of Public Enemy taking out their frustrations on politicians in the states not recognizing the holiday.

[edit] Legacy

Public Enemy at Vegoose in 2007. From left: DJ Lord, Chuck D, and Flavor Flav.
Public Enemy at Vegoose in 2007. From left: DJ Lord, Chuck D, and Flavor Flav.

Public Enemy was a pioneering group in many ways. Some of Terminator X's most innovative scratching tricks can be heard on the song "Rebel Without a Pause," and the Bomb Squad offered up a web of innovative samples and beats. Critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine declared that PE "brought in elements of free jazz, hard funk, even musique concrète, via [its] producing team the Bomb Squad, creating a dense, ferocious sound unlike anything that came before."[7]

Public Enemy revolutionized the hip-hop world with its political, social and cultural consciousness, which infused itself into skilled and poetic rhymes with raucous sound collages as a foundation. Prior to PE, political hip-hop was confined to a few tracks by Ice-T, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, and KRS-One, as well as prototypical artists such as Gil Scott-Heron and the Last Poets. PE was the first hip-hop act to base its entire image around a political stance. With the success of Public Enemy, hip-hop was suddenly flooded with new artists that celebrated Afrocentric themes, such as Kool Moe Dee, Gang Starr, X Clan, Eric B. & Rakim, Queen Latifah, the Jungle Brothers, and A Tribe Called Quest. In the 1991 movie Terminator 2: Judgment Day, John Connor (Edward Furlong) wears a Public Enemy t-shirt throughout the entire movie, exhibiting its influence even in mainstream venues.

Public Enemy was the first hip-hop group to make extended world tours, which led to huge popularity and influence in hip-hop communities in Europe and Asia. It also changed the Internet's music distribution capability by being one of the first groups to release MP3-only albums,[8] a format virtually unknown at the time.

Public Enemy helped to create and define "Rap Rock" by collaborating with New York Thrash Metal outfit Anthrax in 1991. The single "Bring tha Noize" was a mix of semi-militant black power lyrics, grinding guitars, and sporadic humor. The two bands, cemented by a mutual respect and the personal friendship between Chuck D and his Anthrax counterpart Scott Ian, introduced a hitherto alien genre to rock fans, and the two seemingly disparate groups even toured together. Flavor Flav's pronouncement on stage that "They said this tour would never happen" (as heard on Anthrax's Live: The Island Years CD) has become something of a legend in both rock and hip-hop circles. Metal guitarists Vernon Reid (of Living Colour) contributed to Public Enemy's recordings, and PE sampled Slayer's "Angel of Death" middle riff on "She Watch Channel Zero."

Members of the Bomb Squad produced or remixed works for other acts such as Bell Biv DeVoe, Ice Cube, Vanessa Williams, Sinéad O'Connor, Blue Magic, Peter Gabriel, L.L. Cool J, Paula Abdul, Jasmine Guy, Jody Watley, Eric B & Rakim, Third Bass, Big Daddy Kane, EPMD, and Chaka Khan. According to Chuck, "We had tight dealings with MCA Records and were talking about taking three guys that were left over from New Edition and coming up with an album for them. The three happened to be Ricky Bell, Michael Bivins, and Ronnie DeVoe, later to become Bell Biv DeVoe. Ralph Tresvant had been slated to do a solo album for years, Bobby Brown had left New Edition and blew up in 1988, and Johnny Gill had just been recruited to come in, but [he] had come off a solo career and could always go back to that. At MCA, Hiram Hicks, who was their manager, and Louil Silas, who was running the show, were like, 'Yo, these kids were left out in the cold. Can y'all come up with something for them?' It was a task that Hank, Keith, Eric, and I took on to try to put some kind of hip-hop-flavored R&B shit down for them. Subsequently, what happened in the four weeks of December [1989] was that the Bomb Squad knocked out a large piece of the production and arrangement on Bell Biv DeVoe's three-million selling album Poison. In January [1990], they knocked out Fear of a Black Planet in four weeks, and PE knocked out Ice Cube's album AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted in four to five weeks in February."[9] They have also produced local talent such as Son of Bazerk, Young Black Teenagers, Kings of Pressure, and True Mathematics—and gave producer Kip Collins his start in the business.

[edit] Origin of name

Chuck D had put out a tape to promote WBAU (the radio station where he was working at the time) and to fend off a local emcee who wanted to battle him. He called the tape Public Enemy #1 because he felt like he was being persecuted by people in the local scene. This was the first reference to the notion of a public enemy in any of Chuck D's songs. The single was created by Chuck D with a contribution by Flavor Flav, though this was before the group Public Enemy was officially assembled.

Public Enemy is also the name of one of the first film noir gangster movies, a 1931 classic starring James Cagney.

According to Chuck, The S1W, which stands for Security of the First World, "represents that the black man can be just as intelligent as he is strong. It stands for the fact that we're not third-world people, we're first-world people; we're the original people [of the earth]."[10]

On the track "Louder Than a Bomb" from It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, Chuck D reveals that the D in his nickname stands for dangerous.

[edit] Cultural Impact

In the 1999 movie Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, Sonny Valerio (Cliff Gorman) expresses his musical taste—mentioning a few hip-hop acts and the MC that he prefers: Flavor Flav. Afterward, he appears in his bathroom dancing and singing “Cold Lampin' with Flavor,” from the group’s second album, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back.

[edit] Discography

Main article: Public Enemy discography

[edit] Members

  • Chuck D (Carlton Douglas Ridenhour) — leader, producer, lyricist, main vocalist, and artwork
  • Flavor Flav (William Jonathan Drayton, Jr.) — lyricist, vocalist, producer, instrumentalist, hype man, comic relief
  • Professor Griff (Richard Griffin) head of S1W, liaison between PE and S1W, road manager. Occasional vocalist and producer, plays drums at live shows
  • Brain Hardgrove - (Guitarist, Band Director and producer)
  • DJ Lord (Lord Aswod) — DJ, producer
  • Terminator X (Norman Rogers) — DJ, producer (former member)
  • DJ Johnny Juice (John Rosado) Studio DJ, Producer
  • Sister Souljah, occasional vocalist, former member

The following are a part of the Bomb Squad, the revolutionary production group that is closely associated with (sometimes considered a part of) Public Enemy:

  • Hank Shocklee (Hank Boxley)
  • Keith Shocklee (Keith Boxley)
  • Eric "Vietnam" Sadler
  • Gary G-Wiz

Chuck D is often listed as a member of the Bomb Squad under the pseudonym Carl Ryder, a shortened form of his real name.

The S1W, which stands for Security of the First World, is sometimes considered a part of Public Enemy as well. The members constantly rotate and have included among others

  • James Norman
  • James Allen
  • Roger Chillous
  • John (Butch) "Pop" Oliver
  • Shawn Kevin Carter aka "The Interrogator"
  • Mike Williams
  • Andrew Williams
  • Tracy "Big Casper" Walker
  • Dwayne Cousar
  • Ronald Lincoln
  • Keith "Krunch" Godfrey
  • Jacob "Jake" Shankle
  • Many of the future members of Professor Griff's Last Asiatic Disciples
  • Butch Cassidy (Aaron Allen) & his group 5ive-O, aka the Interrogators
  • Harry Allen is also a part of the group as writer, journalist and media assassin

[edit] Further reading

[edit] References

  1. ^ Public Enemy. Adam Yauch. Rolling Stone Issue 946. Rolling Stone.
  2. ^ The Immortals: The First Fifty. Rolling Stone Issue 946. Rolling Stone.
  3. ^ www.acclaimedmusic.net
  4. ^ "Long Island Music Hall of Fame"
  5. ^ www.acclaimedmusic.net
  6. ^ www.acclaimedmusic.net
  7. ^ allmusic ((( It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back > Overview )))
  8. ^ Dubois, Keir. "Public Enemy and MP3". Transcriptions Project, December, 1999. Retrieved on March 17, 2007.
  9. ^ Fight The Power, pp. 236-237
  10. ^ Chuck D. and Yusuf Jah, Fight the Power, p. 82)

[edit] External links

v • d • e
Public Enemy
Chuck D • Flavor Flav • Professor Griff • Terminator X • DJ Lord
Studio albums
Singles
Live releases
Compilations
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