The claim that Public Enemy is the “Rolling Stones of the rap and hip-hop game” may seem like bravado from lead polemicist Chuck D. But when you consider that the band is currently on its 70th tour in 23 years, with 11 albums behind its name and numerous side projects to add to that, the comparison begins to make sense.
Public Enemy has been there, done that and got the T-shirt, and while the band was at it, it changed the face of hip-hop — but not enough for Chuck D’s liking.
“In the United States hip-hop has been taken away as a language of the people and has become the language of corporations,” he says. “They shouldn’t have the audacity to say they own culture. When you say you own culture, it means you own people and that’s slavery.”
When I chat to him, he is travelling across Germany on the Public Enemy tour bus as part of the fifth leg of the band’s Fear of a Black Planet World Tour.
South Africa is included in the sixth leg, and Australia and Asia are next on the agenda.
“In the rest of the world people follow America, because it’s like ‘hey, it’s America’, but in the past 15 years there has been this idea that everybody has made it in America and so people’s individual greed has come across in the music,” says Chuck D.
“How ridiculous is it going around the world telling people how rich you are — never mind Africa, you can’t even go to Eastern Europe telling people how rich you are. What type of crap is that?”
“Jay Z is a corporate entity that people can’t relate to. He keeps bringing up his past, but his past is long past,” he says.
“The message of America has been made to be above the people, but we are going to show that it’s meant to be for the people. Our whole idea is to come to South Africa and eradicate what people there think hip-hop in America is all about.”
Fair enough, the man appears to have lost none of his fighting spirit. Public Enemy’s fierce reputation in the 1980s and 1990s as a shit-kicking political hip-hop outfit is well documented.
Albums such as 1987’s Yo! Bum Rush the Show, 1988’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back and 1990’s Fear of a Black Planet provided a soundtrack to the plight of millions of African Americans and the racism that they were subjected to.
This is personified in Spike Lee’s 1989 film, Do the Right Thing, in which the character Radio Raheem carries a massive boom box on his shoulder always playing Public Enemy’s Fight the Power.
In 1998 the band walked away from its record label, the infamous Def Jam Records.
“We were the first rap group to walk away from a million-dollar contract,” says Chuck D glibly. “It was just that the heads of Def Jam Records had become the exact kind of people we had been always rebelling against — but you know that happens.”
Now the band is fully independent, with its own internet label www.SlamJamz.com.
Since 1999 the band has released five independent albums, the last being 2007’s How You Sell Soul to a Soulless People Who Sold Their Soul. Chuck D says setting up the label was “a very enjoyable process”.
“We developed a small collective of artists from around the world and set up a prototype digital label,” he says. “The beautiful thing about SlamJamz is that digital allows you to knock off things that don’t make any sense financially and it’s accessible.
“Before when you had a label and you had to make CDs you had to worry about distribution and accessibility. Manufacturing, distribution, shipping and stocking have nothing to do with music and I am so glad that those are out of the picture because they were dictating what type of music people were going to make and that’s crazy. “I am so happy all that shit is gone.”
Well, not quite gone just yet — the music industry remains intact, even if its whining about the impact of file sharing does seem a little fake to millions of music fans sick of being dictated to by large corporations.
Ultimately what Chuck D is talking about is a revolution in the production of music and the increase in choice that consumers now have and artists too.
“You can’t stop technology,” he says, ramming home his point, which is exactly the one that the music industry failed to grasp until it was way too late.
“I will be coming to South Africa and doing workshops with people to teach them how they can do their own thing online and use these tools properly to benefit their music,” says Chuck D. “I want to guide people to do these things for themselves.
“If you go to another country and bring more take than give, then that is a problem,” he says.
“I know that South African hip-hop has been going on a long time and there are probably people trying to figure out how to work in the industry with digital delivery.
“America has an arrogance problem of fitting in with the rest of the world,” he says. “The central point of hip-hop must be Africa. They mustn’t be trying to follow Americans.
“The qualities of America are arrogance and greed. We are always thinking we are better than everyone else and we don’t want to encourage that. We don’t want to send the wrong message.
“African hip-hop needs to be heard all over the world on its own terms and I am sure there are artists who are trying to figure out how to do things positively and they feel they can be important artists like a BB King, a Fela Kuti or a James Brown.
“We want hip-hop in South Africa to be revolutionary and not evolutionary. Evolutionary is when it just follows on from the source and revolutionary is reminding the community and the culture that it comes from something greater than just the source.”
So besides Chuck D’s crusade to help African hip-hop reach the rest of the world, what can South African audiences expect when Public Enemy hits South African stages for the first time?
“The greatest, most powerful rap show on the planet,” says Chuck D, and, with the man having a reputation for being a straight shooter, can you doubt him?
Public Enemy will play at the Alexander theatre in Braamfontein, Johannesburg, on Friday December 3 and Saturday December 4.
In Cape Town the band plays at the Assembly on Tuesday December 7 and at Atmospheer on Wednesday December 8. Tickets are on sale at Computicket for R300 for the first three shows or will be available at R350 at the door. Tickets for the Atmospheer show are R150 or R200 at the door