81. Public Enemy - Fight The Power (Def Jam/Columbia. 1990. From the LP Fear Of A Black Planet)
Raven Mack: I am a pop culture contrarian at heart, and I will readily admit two things regarding this so-called Public Enemy right off the bat. Number one, I think It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back is one of the best, maybe even the best, hip hop album ever, changing a lot of people's approach to the sound which made room for a lot of the epileptic seizure-inducing beats you hear from indie camps. And number two, I have not liked shit from P.E. ever since. Fear of a Black Planet is probably only good in my mind for giving great parody material for the title of that Fear of a Black Hat movie, starring Chino XL and that dude who plays for the Kansas City Chiefs in that one candy bar commercial. When the Black Planet CD landed - and being this is on the internet, this will get shit all over as being completely made up self-important bullshit - the only people I remember listening to it in my high school were white kids. No shit. By this point, more heritage-abandoning rednecks had already taken to wearing big clock necklaces, and the middle class kiddies had been pre-conditioned by Spin and Rolling Stone by this point to accept Public Enemy as second Jesus, but with verbal bombs and fake Black Panthers and shit. There was one kid who was all about this tape, and this song, and you know what that kid does now? He's a fuckin' pastor in South Carolina, at what I would assume to be an affluent white people's church. I guess you could say that means Public Enemy spread their message, but if the message gets completely lost as a message and is nothing more than a brief means of expressing average teenage rebellion, then what's the point.
Besides, I saw Chuck D speak one time, and man, a legend died in my eyes that night. Dude was straight capitalist motherfucker talking about business this and marketing that, and it just put a shiny used car salesman undercoating charge over his whole revolutionary schtick.
And the song itself is funny, because I would assume most people figure Elvis Presley was a racist. I don't know this to be true or not; I just know he was marketed as rock-n-roll, previously mostly what black folks did best, and made a ton of money. I think any simple-assed white kid who had all that money, drugs, and pussy thrown at him would've done the same. In fact, any black kid or brown kid or any kid would've done the same. He's just stupid Elvis. Who the fuck cares if he took rock-n-roll away from black people? Have you heard black people trying to do rock-n-roll in the last thirty years or so? Unless your Mick Collins, you ain't really hitting on too much.
It's just grandstanding, to make money and be fake concerned about your people so that you can get wealthy and have ironic old metal sign advertisements with Aunt Jemima Sambo characters on your bathroom wall. Except those people wouldn't listen to Public Enemy, nor the white people who used to listen to it. But this song is one of those critic-happy sign-of-the-times ditties that is supposed to personify the stupid shit going down, when in actuality this song is "Market the Fighting of the Power to Momentarily Feel Good About My Contributions to Society, All the While Making Money Like Elvis". Fuck a Chuck D.
Flavor Flav is awesome though. His show was more of a Aunt Jemima Sambo character than a thousand upper middle class bathrooms of black lawyers and gay white couples (they seem to like that Aunt Jemima shit too, I guess relating the struggle to share penises as something akin to not being able to vote and getting, you know, murdered for being dark-skinned) could ever have. Gold teeth, screwing white women who hardly know him, all while chewing on a piece of fried chicken... Flav turned out so much more subversive than Chuck D.
And haha, I totally see how expert and whiteboy of me it is to hate on PE once other white people loved them. IT'S BECAUSE THEY LOST THEIR EDGE! EVERYBODY KNEW ABOUT THEM! I AM UBER-DOWN AND HAVE TO LIKE SHIT NO ONE KNOWS ABOUT YET, OR PRETEND TO LIKE SOME IRONIC SIMPLE SHIT AS IF IT IS A GENIUS THAT REGULAR PEOPLE CAN'T GRASP! BALLIN'!
Mike Dikk: I feel like anything I write after Raven’s synopsis is going to pale in comparison. I feel basically the same way he does, and I noticed the same thing with how only white people bought this tape. I even remember the news talking about it. This record was a lot more mainstream than your average revolutionary white guilt college dorm soulja would have you believe. It was a real big deal back then for 4 million white people to buy a rap record.
I really never understood white guilt. I would love to be rich, and I think if I grew up rich, I would be proud of being rich. Sometimes I guess white guilt is charming. Like when someone from a well off family decides to “slum it” like the DIY punk/hardcore kids. The ones dumpster diving while their families beautiful suburban home in a quiet cul de sac is like ten miles away. Personally, I wouldn’t want to spend the best years of my life digging around in garbage to try and be down with lower class culture to prove to some imaginary social group that I don’t need money and oppressive things like deodorant to live my life. Well, until times get tough. Then you use that credit card your parents gave you for emergencies. Fucking fuckers. Either way, I find shit like that cute.
On the other hand, there’s a lot of kids who would normally never listen to rap that will exclusively listen to the most militant pro-black rap they can find. To this day, I still don’t understand that. How does listening to a bunch of music meant to uplift black people going to make your white ass anymore righteous? I bet when Public Enemy was actually relevant, the same types of people thought Young Black Teenagers was an insulting name, but the group was created by Public Enemy.
I don’t hate this song or anything, and everything BEFORE “Fear of a Black Planet” is fucking great, and you can’t dismiss The Bomb Squad. It’s real obvious why metal kids got into Public Enemy. The beats were so fucking heavy and frantic. What I do hate is that Public Enemy basically started this whole white guilt self righteous asshole hip hop movement. It’s not quite as in vogue as it used to be, but it’s still there. Honestly, this whole topic gets me really upset at how fucking stupid some people are. I’d rather not get into how much I hate Flavor of Love and it’s offspring, so I’ll just end it here.
Download: Public Enemy - Fight The Power
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