The man who wrote the great protest song “Fight the Power” 36 years ago will not say the name of the current president of the United States.
“My thing on 45, 47 – I don’t say his name – is we’ve been seeing this guy in New York since the 1970s,” says rap legend, Public Enemy leader Chuck D (real name Carlton Ridenhour), “and he just pulled a three card monte on the rest of the country, the rest of the world. He fooled the country bumpkins twice. The dude was never fit to be president; he used to own a USFL team, he was in the middle of boxing matches, wrestling…He’s an entertainer, but I’m not saying he’s a great entertainer.”
Recalling the origin of “Fight the Power,” Chuck D adds, “A lot of people don’t know that ours was the second song with that title. The first was an Isley Brothers song that was influential to me and my peers in 1975. Then Spike Lee called in need of a song [for his 1989 film Do Tha’ Right Thing.] “Hey Chuck, I need an anthem…so me and my team was able to come up with an anthem. But rather than ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing,’ we felt that ‘Fight the Power’ was apropos. In 1975 the Isleys wondered, where are we going in the country? Nixon had been impeached, Ford was the president, and (Nelson) Rockefeller wanted to be the next guy. And we’re all like, how could a guy like Rockefeller—a billionaire—be the president of the United States? So, fast forward 50 years later to a person that’s typical of the fears we had in the ‘70s.”
Here, the Public Enemy songwriter, vocal frontman, social activist, documentary producer, illustrator, and radio host talks with Lisa Robinson about the state of hip hop, his relationship with his Public Enemy partner Flavor Flav, artificial intelligence and human interaction in the digital age.
Vanity Fair: Especially with your early albums (Fear of a Black Planet, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back), Public Enemy was one of the first major rap groups to reach the MTV audience and one of the first of four rap groups inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. How do you see your legacy?
Chuck D: We’re the Rolling Stones of the rap game, and it’s been a rewarding experience, because it touched the human mind through the ear. Public Enemy is older than most people in our genre, we’re of pioneer age. Still, when we get together, there’s nothing like it. But we never repeat ourselves. The minute you like something, we’re fucking with it the other way. And if you don’t like it, we don’t give a fuck. Back in the day, we used to say “believe none of what you hear until you see it.; Now it’s reversed: now it’s “believe none of what you see, and half of what you hear.” Because listening is now a lost virtue.
Because of the phones, the screens?
People don’t know how to listen. They’ve got you by the gadgets and the devices and people listen with their eyes now. You trust your eyes a little too much. I grew up watching TV, reading books, listening to music, and creating imagination. But…The rules of this century are not going to be the rules of last century. It’s like bragging about your horseshoes when cars are running. Now, everything is delivered. Nothing is left to the imagination. When you don’t have history or geography, you are deemed a slave. Where’s our human GPS? In the last century you had to have some sense of your human GPS, your moral compass–how to treat people the way you want to be treated. Basic shit. We were taught how to be a citizen. In this particular land, under this governance, there are no rules on how to be a netizen.
As an artist, especially with all of the current corporate censorship, do you have any optimism?
Well, usually time times out everything. Time wins at the end of the day. Nobody’s getting to the next week faster than anybody else. Past is still past whether it’s 24 hours or 60 years ago. How you teach time and space to new human beings…that has to happen beyond people just being screenagers.
How have you managed to keep Public Enemy going for all these years?
Well if it’s not gonna be me and Flavor, it’s not gonna happen. We’ve had different lineup changes through the years but I was amazed at Flavor’s comeback, because I said [to him] if you don’t have it together, it won’t happen.
Flavor had a reality show, he’s always had that big clock and was the group’s hype man; but recently he’s become more of a loveable, mainstream kind of figure—showing up at WNBA games and Taylor Swift concerts. What happened?
His awakening came because his management was in line with what Flavor wanted to do, and once he realized his love of himself, he got in line with William Drayton [Ed.: Flavor’s real name]. The biggest problem, was how do you handle fame? If he’s in front of 50,000 people that’s the ultimate high right there. Me, I can take it or leave it because I’m an introvert, although I know how to be an extrovert, and I’ve got a lot of other things going on. Flavor was a kid who got picked on a lot, and when he got the taste of 20,000 people looking at him- well, you can’t replicate that with drink or drugs. But he’s a human anomaly; he’s just phenomenal. He’s a year and a half older than me and he’s stage diving.
You were always the principal songwriter and leader of the group. That often causes jealousy and conflict within so many groups. What changed?
In order for Public Enemy to be, Flavor had to come through. I had to pay attention to his rules, and he had to pay attention to mine. It was no longer this way or the highway type thing. It used to be that way, but I got rid of that in 2016. Now, I don’t have an open door policy; I have a no door policy. In the last year or so Flav has shown unbelievable—brilliant—ability and a lot of take charge shit. He had to, because there were too many other things I’ve been doing. He’s been seriously artistically and humanly amazing. Flavor and his team stepped up to deliver 50% of our last album (last spring’s Black Sky Over the Projects: Apartment 2025).
How have you personally not been affected by fame?
It’s all an act to me. But, if you’ve got 50,000 people in front of you, you could make them go this way or make them go that way, and I backed away from a lot of that because I didn’t want to be accountable for the actions of somebody who might be young and naïve. Especially in my prime time; I had every young ear listening to me, so I pulled back a little bit. I was an architecture student, I was a stage manager, I like behind the scenes. Rick Rubin had to chase me for years to be a (Def Jam) recording artist. I didn’t want to be a recording artist. I knew fame is fake. If you don’t believe that fame is fake, or a phase, then you’re fucked. There were a lot of different things converging at once. Eddie Murphy was from my neighborhood; I’m in a square mile town (in Long Island), and Eddie Murphy is running with us one day, and all of a sudden he’s on Saturday Night Live and then becomes the biggest entertainer in the country. That was a lesson, Not just watching Eddie Murphy, but watching everyone around him. I just never wanted to be the upfront guy. Being behind the scenes was the most fun for me.
You don’t drink, you said you’ve never taken drugs; how have you avoided what is often scandal and sleaze in the music business?
Maybe it was because of reading, and my upbringing; like, you can go hang out with your friends but I want you home at nine. And boredom on the road was fixed easy with drawing. I’m an illustrator, I’m a big fan of (Al) Hirschfield, and for the past ten years, I turned my hotel rooms into a gallery. Also, I was a terrible athlete, but I wanted to be an athlete whether good or not. I wanted to be second baseman for the Mets, and it was like, “Dude, you’re not good enough.” In sports, they don’t waste time. In music they tell you, “You’ve got a chance, you can sing a little bit”….No, you can’t really sing, that’s the answer. Then it’s “Oh, they really hurt my feelings.” Music people are pussies. In sports it’s like “Bro, we’re gonna cut you,” you can be the waterboy, you can bring the Gatorade to the team…But I never drank alcohol, and what kept me away from doing any drugs was there were so many drug scandals. We were running clubs in the ‘80s, and when the Indiana Hoosiers won the college championship with Isiah Thomas, one of the players got into a car accident and was paralyzed. So when I was the guy at the club, I was the designated driver. I didn’t want to get paralyzed.
How do you feel about the state of hip hop now?
The management, administration and curation of hip hop has been trash for fucking ever. When people ask me about hip hop now, I say we have Lamborghinis like Kanye and Kendrick and Q Tip, but the road is a swamp. The hip hop road’s platforms have been bombed underneath it. I’m representing hip hop and the music, and I don’t capitulate. I don’t capitulate to drug dealers or hustlers who got billion dollar deals.
I never made a record for the audience, I only make records that make me happy.
How do you feel about rap videos – then and now –with half naked women and some of the lyrics? Dionne Warwicke told Snoop to call her “bitch” to her face, and he wouldn’t.
Well of course, he’s got manners. I’m a big fan of having nudity in art from an artistic standpoint, and also, it’s a woman’s choice. But it went to another place when it shifted in music and videos for the sake of sales. The record companies, those men were the producers, they did the marketing plans, and women were used as backdrops for guys to show their virility. That wasn’t hip hop, that was backdrop. Rock and rollers in the 1950s got their beach blankety bingo going on; you’re on a beach so you’re wearing a bathing suit. It got a little different if you saw Sally Field in a bathing suit or a sister in a bathing suit; it became a whole different thing. But if you’re coerced to come into this industry, and you’re held up to this contract that says look, you make money or you’re out of here, you get young people before they’ve matured as human beings and it’s different.
Of all dozens of people you’ve collaborated with (Nas, Rage Against the Machine, George Clinton, Janet Jackson, and Lenny Kravitz to name a few) – you said the ones that meant the most were Prince and Anthrax. Why Anthrax?
They taught me speed. Anthrax didn’t deviate. That shit is relentless, and they seemed to have more punch than us. So,we built some of our onstage performances and recordings on power and speed. You may hate it or love it, but we’re gonna beat your ass with this when you see us. Rap kind of stayed at the same beat for a minute. “Throw your hands in the air like you just don’t care.” That’s not gonna work, man. Nothing challenged me more than thrash metal.
And Prince?
I went and recorded a song (“Undisputed”) with Prince at Paisley Park and [after we recorded] he told me to go sit in the lobby. I looked at him through the glass in the studio and he looked like he was making a salad. He had tape in his hand, he was chopping it up—for about a half hour—hands waving, like a conductor. Then after a half hour he said, “Yo, come and listen to this.”
You recently toured 12 countries in Europe–including your own show at London’s Royal Albert Hall–and nine opening for Guns‘N Roses in stadiums. They really sold out stadiums? Were they on time?
Not only selling out stadiums but smacking the fuck out of them for four hours. I’ve never seen a group hammer a stadium for four hours. They showed up on time, every single stadium was like 20,000 or more. Every one of those countries came out and loved the music.
At what age were you aware that you had such a powerful, distinctive voice?
CD: My father had the voice. I was just the son of the father. When my father yelled for my brother or any of us to come home, the whole town heard it. Dr. Martin Luther King was living when I was growing up when he used to bellow across the radio. My dad’s voice was like that.
You’ve used AI for some things; how do you feel about it?
I steer it like a boat. But I’m an artist and I embrace my mistakes, and the thing AI is not going to be able to do is to be able to shift gears and relish our mistakes. We don’t celebrate our mistakes, but we get through our mistakes, and as an artist, you keep the dirt that might not have been in the plan. AI is not going to be able to go backwards; it refines or gets rid of; but can it keep the dirt? Would it be happy with something offbeat? Some people will realize that this is some digital McCarthyism. The next human beings are going to rebel against certain things that AI was going to try and fix.
You are busy: recording, drawing, working with apps for radio and social media, and touring into 2026. What gives you the most satisfaction?
Being a service person. Radio allowed me to play 100,000 artists, I’m a big radio jock fan. Back in the day radio would break records, and I still enjoy playing records – whether you get it on an app or on the phone, that’s my biggest joy. Music is religion to me. Hip hop is my military. We don’t have the language of bombs, bullets and bloodshed, but love is always the answer. No matter how hard it gets, it’s the only thing that can flip evil and turn that shit and give people a fighting chance. The fact that I can go around the world and somebody can say “Thank you”…musicians don’t get that a lot. That’s been the ultimate compliment. The most joy I get is illuminating people’s artistry. There’s nothing better than that. Like, you have to start asking yourself: what are you here for, what are you trying to do?
You also want to make money from it, no?
Damn right you want to make money, but you don’t want money to make you. If I was a billionaire or a millionaire…I mean how many millions can you make?
You’re one of the most sampled groups in hip hop history; you’re not a millionaire?
I don’t know. I never count.
The post Chuck D’s New Rules for Life: “Believe None of What You See, and Half of What You Hear” appeared first on Vanity Fair.
