The Public Enemy pioneer is still here for a fight.
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Chuck was cool with continuing down that path, but Flav was ready for a little major-label razzle-dazzle.
Updated versions of Public Enemy No.
One thing brothers are gonna do is work it out.
You gave us a good scare this year with the Public Enemy breakup.
A lot of people are curious about what really happened there.Well, No.
1, Public Enemy is Chuck D and Flavor Flav, but its gotta work.
You cant all of a suddenbe.
It happened to be that Def Jam was the right place.
It made the most sense.
Def Jam is sort of a settlement between me and him.
Its a visitation to the place that we helped put a beginning to, electric lights to.
For people asking what happened, I can kick someone out for two days.
Heres another thing: Flavor can give you 10 percent, but you cant unhear him.
Flavors 10 percent is someone elses 50 percent.
On State of the Union, produced by DJ Premier, you cannot unhear Flavor.
Without Flavor, you dont have a Public Enemy record like that.
He should be acknowledged if he wants to come and do his percentage of the work.
Thats all that was.
You cant say youre doing an album without getting in the studio and doing the album.
You gotta do it!
Its my job to hold everyone together best as possible, and its Flavors job to be a star.
Sometimes those philosophies dont mix.
You gotta prepare yourself for Public Enemy.
This is unprecedented in my day.
Over the summer, you released an updated version of Fight the Power.
People come and go.
You gotta fight for people.
You gotta fight for rights.
you’re able to be optimistic and know you still have to keep fighting.
Sometimes your lungs have to fight for breath.
Sperm fights to find the egg in order for conception to take place.
Fighting for survival is not something thats outside the ordinary.
You cant be asleep and expect things to wash up on your shore and all of it be positive.
I dont think life works like that.
Should life work like that?
Thats taking the God position I dont know if I can be afforded to take.
Were going to our own local jurisdictions.
We see something thats blatantly racist, and we might take that statue down.
Hes not equipped to govern millions of people or thousands of people.
Hes not equipped to govern 100 people.
Get the fuck up outta there.
He shouldnt even be there.
Its a reflection of the comfort zone a lot of Americans feel.
Theyre telling you your life dont matter.
Black lives dont matter.
On top of that, you have authority that basically says they dont care.
I feel like thats new in the equation.
The government used to at least pretend to be decent.Dr.
Even there, they were fronting.
That was 50 years ago.
The chips have turned and changed.
Black Lives Matter is beyond an organization.
Some ears are gonna be shut down to our logic, wisdom, understanding, and delivery.
In the new song Toxic, you ask, Can a song save the world?
Im curious what your answer to the question is.Songs can change the world and insert soul and meaning.
Rap songs epitomize that because they have the notes, the words, and the volume of words.
And this has nothing to do with making records or anything.
The other was: At what point do we consider cultural importance to be as valuable as popularity?
Youre messing with their foundation of value, and Bob Dylan is not racing up and down any chart.
That was the conversation with Def Jam.
They consider Public Enemy and LL Cool J important.
Its part of the foundation.
Importance and popularity are all in the same stew, but there has to be a balance.
Thats a problem we have with our legacy hip-hop acts.
Theres not enough of a foundation here.
Theres not enough classic hip-hop radio stations.
Theres not enough of a tour circuit here.
You have to go overseas to get a certain reception.Only an American would consider overseas foreign.
[Laughs] Its a whole world, Craig.
Public Enemys base has never been the United States.
When you hearIt Takes a Nation of Millions, whats the first thing you hear?
Its always been our base.
We did what Hendrix did.
We got big over there, and we came into the United States big in 88.
MTV Raps?Yo!
MTV Rapswas a show [that first debuted] in London [on MTV Europe].
Why do you think they called itYo!
Bum Rush the Show.
We did the firstYo!
MTV Rapsshow and pilot over in the U.K.
They test-ran it in Europe, and the next year it became a thing in the United States.
Those two instances show that our base was somewhere else in the world.
A lot of the time, people in the States sometimes wear USA blinders.
I knew that system was bound to fail and fall.
People couldnt get their budgets down because there were too many situations on the financial take.
If I get to Jupiter first with my CDs, you got the rights but aint been there?
you’re able to burn anything onto a CD, hundreds of songs.
We got in first because of the freedoms.
We felt it would open up the music, the genre, and us.
I dont think we were in the top 20 [at Polygram], which threw everything up pricewise.
Flavor was like, I wanna be big.
I dont wanna be big, but we have a catalogue at Universal, so why not?
It can make sense.
A little over 20 years later, youre warning people about the dangers of misinformation and social media.
Did we create something we cant control?Thats usually the case.
Things that start out as a tool end up as a toy.
He made the Model T to get a person from A to B economically in a horseless carriage.
That happens with all technologies.
You have generations that grow up with technologies that look at them a different way than the pioneering thought.
I have Rapstation, and I think we do a damn good job.
We have an all-women station called SHEradio.
We have Hip Hop Gods for those with 15-year careers or longer.
We have Planet Earth Planet Rap, which plays international artists and curates them carefully throughout all the languages.
We have Rap Inst, which does instrumentals and producers.
The business is a top-heavy hustle still.
Theres not a body of curators concerned about the 99 percent.
Me, I love breaking a song.
Its not because Im looking at the value stock-point system Rapstation might have, which is none.
Have you been following whatKanye West has been sayingabout fair record deals and artist unionizing?
As long as Kanye aint talking about governing millions of people, thats fine.
Its hard enough to govern yourself.
Thats just not right.
Its a tiring job, and I dont look at any job as being easy.
They have to read the shit that motherfuckers dont want to read.
Thats the difference between someone whos a zealot and someone whos a scholar.
Most people read shit that makes them feel good, and theyre not fucking with the unwanted shit.
Thats why you cant laugh at scholarship.
Thats the biggest thing: Can you read the shit that you dont wanna read?
Then, theres comprehension.
Too often, people think you’ve got the option to inject intellect through a syringe.
It doesnt work like that.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
