You're Gonna Get Yours

When interviewed for The Quietus in 2008, Chuck D expressed some reservations about performing ‘It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back’ in its entirety for the All Tomorrow’s Parties-curated Don’t Look Back concert series.

And with hindsight you can perhaps understand why. Public Enemy have no less than four classic LPs, and back in 2008 Chuck D maybe thought he was staring down the barrel of 20 years of plane flights, tour buses and Flavor Flav peddling unsold copies of ‘The Surreal Life’.

Cut to two years later and Public Enemy are about to embark on the fifth leg of their ‘Fear Of A Black Planet’ tour. The shows have reportedly been huge and Chuck seems to have grown used to the idea of exposing teams of new fans to the group’s classic works. “The promoters in the UK were tired of being burned by inadequate acts that didn’t really know how to put together a show,” he explains down the line from his home in Santa Barbara. “So they came up with ‘Don’t Look Back’. When we were approached they met with some resistance because we’ve always done an engaging show and have our own style, but they said by us doing it we would spur off a good pattern of just being a legitimate way for promoters promoting and doing shows, and it happened to do just that.

“One of the things that has led to Public Enemy’s longevity is that we’ve always dealt with travelling the planet. Every place has their own particular thing. I think you see a lot of artists – especially hip hop artists – make it down to Australia, whereas once upon a time artists didn’t really like to leave the United States, and there was a whole aura of an act not showing because people dreaded the flight and they dreaded going to a place they didn’t know anything about. But we were well travelled, so we kept being invited and kept coming back. It’s not just about going to a place – you’ve gotta go and leave an impact.”
And it seems Public Enemy’s impact is once again on the rise: a major reason for the success of the group’s album tours is the fact that ‘Fear’, ‘Nation Of Millions’, ‘Yo! Bum Rush The Show’ and ‘Apocalypse 91… The Enemy Strikes Back’ remain relevant a whole generation after they first hit the streets.
“In all politics the definition is real clear: running in the streets and running the streets is real different. Of course, things have changed but, still when it comes down to Barak Obama – President Obama, I should say – good man, bad government. But it is a bad government; he knew exactly what it was before he stepped into it.”
But does Chuck think Public Enemy had a hand in shaping the political and social environment that would eventually allow the United States to elect a black president?
“Well I’m a culturalist,” he sighs. “I think that culture brings human beings together for our similarities and not our differences, and then governments spilt people up. So a word to the wise can come through culture. I don’t think that we should take any credit for that – it’s something you’re supposed to do as an adult – open your mouth, open your mind and share, you know? It might sound a little utopian and free-spirited, but that’s what it is and it is.”

If Public Enemy weren’t a smart bomb aimed straight at the heart of the US nation, they were at least a massive wake-up call for their own genre. Twenty years on Chuck feels that hip hop has changed again, but not necessarily for the better.
“The state of hip hop, I think, is a lot of talent but not a lot of skills, which means that it has to be developed into something that works for the genre. A lot of greed, but that didn’t necessarily come from the artists – the greed came from the people who always thought that this was something that was going to make money and [then] forgot what it is. Last but not least, with hip hop, it’s a performance art that has gotten away from the passion and intensity and necessity of performance. Once people feel they’re better than what is projected towards them, what’s going to make them fanatical about it?
“Record companies were holding onto this thing just solely so they can make money, without investing in how important it is to maintain some sort of standard that separates it from the fans – as opposed to the standard that separates it from the fans now, which is maybe elitism. Right now it’s not based on what I can do but based on what I have, and so those things have kinda gotten out of hand to offshoot hip hop into an area where it’s more based on chance and luck as opposed to skill and ability.”

And Public Enemy are taking the situation into their own hands. Rather than jumping into the studio with the latest big name producer, they’re digging through the internet to find some real undiscovered talent.
“To think beyond is the key,” Chuck says. “I do a hip hop radio show and it goes around the world. I have my label SLAMJamz. We [Public Enemy] do have a collaborative album with eight to ten different collaborations on it. But, nowadays, how do you find the great producer? Well, we just completed a remix contest where I might do an a cappella and put it out there and try to judge maybe 300 mixes that come back, and that’s how you find a great producer. They can be anywhere: Australia, Thailand. You don’t go based on names from some clique.

“The recruiting of who’s the next person in hip hop has been so poor and shabby that you’ve gotta go beyond into the recruitment of who really is the next hot shit … as opposed to just relying on names that have been building up and have been hot the last couple of years. Who says that they’re the best? This is how the artform always moves and you can move along with it. We’ve heard some incredible mixes on this new song, ‘Say It Like It Really Is’, and if you’re able to knock that out we know you’ve got the talent to earn your own keep in your own right.”

But all that will have to take a backseat when Public Enemy jump on the plane for the next leg of their ‘Fear Of A Black Planet’ tour, which will see the group landing back in Australia early in the new year and leaving their unmistakable mark on Sunset Sounds in the Brisbane Botanic Gardens.
“Well, at the end of the month we’re starting the fifth leg of our ‘Fear Of A Black Planet’ tour. We’re starting off in Moscow,” laughs Chuck. “So, Moscow at the end of October and going to Australia in the middle of summer – definitely something to look forward to, I suppose!”

Public Enemy perform ‘Fear Of A Black Planet’ in its entirety at Sunset Sounds, Brisbane Botanic Gardens and The River Stage, January 5-6.