Public Enemy: Taking over Radio 4
Radio 4 listeners of a more sensitive disposition be warned. Thursday morning’s documentary is a 30-minute blast of Public Enemy in all their abrasive, white establishment-baiting, crazy theorising glory.
A bold commission from Mark Damazer, Radio 4′s outgoing Controller, the Jazzi B-fronted programme races through Chuck D and the gang’s impact on white America, the history of black oppositional music in the US and examines the decline of politically-motivated rap in favour of “gangsta” cliches.
Rather than take a cool, analytic approach, the doc is edited in the quickfire overload-style of a PE album, with black history professors and Chuck D himself delivering soundbites over clips of Public Enemy classics, including the “Elvis was a hero to some, but he never meant shit to me” line.
The thesis is that before the internet, rap was the swiftest means of informing and radicalising disenfranchised black youth – a black CNN. Chuck D explains how he tried to cram every idea he could into “micro-seconds”, hence the sonic overload of PE’s music.
PE: Moving Target
But as the group’s popularity spread, ironically it was white kids who became the premier market for politically-conscious rap.
Jazzi B explains how the “anger” of Public Enemy motivated Soul II Soul, although their musical style reflected a different black experience. But B asks why modern rap has largely descended into “gangs, girls and gangster” negativity.
The current breed have turned rap into “a missile of mass distraction”, says Chuck D, who accepts that the impact of peak period PE might have paved the way for President Obama by showing white suburban US kids that they need not fear African American culture.
The doc features a lot of Chuck D’s wife – Black history professor Gaye Johnson – and skates over the questionable areas of Public Enemy’s manifesto – the Nation of Islam proselytising and accusations of anti-semitism that forced “information minister” Professor Griff out of the group.
But its a bracing 30 minute blast and probably a first for Radio 4 to give such prominence to hip-hop – even sceptics might be impressed to learn that Fear of a Black Planet is the only hip-hop album chosen by the Library of Congress to be added to the National Recording Registry.
The Black CNN: When Hip Hop Took Control, Thu 24 June, 11:30am and the bbc iplayer for 7 days after.
What radio cannot do however is deliver the riot of sound and colour that was Public Enemy at their finest in the Spike Lee-directed clip for Fight The Power.
