Tavis: This makes you feel old. It’s hard to believe it’s been 20 years since Public Enemy came crashing into the national consciousness with their brilliant debut album ” Yo, Bum Rush the Show.” One year later, of course, came an even bigger record featuring classic and powerful songs like “Don’t Believe the Hype.”
Twenty years later, they are still making though-provoking and relevant music. Out now with their new disc – bam, there it is – “How You Sell Soul to a Soulless People Who Sold Their Soul.” See, you can’t (unintelligible) PE. (Laughter) Before we get into the new disc, here is some classic PE back in the day – “Public Enemy Number One.”
[CLIP]
Tavis: Flavor Flav. I was watching a roast of him on Comedy Central the other night – you see any of that, Griff?
Professor Griff: Yes, sir. Yeah.
Tavis: Funny stuff.
Chuck D: I don’t watch Comedy Central.
Tavis: You don’t watch Comedy Central?
Chuck D: No, I made a promise that I would do a thing for him, and it was in another city on another day, and I heard they attached it.
Tavis: It is what it is.
Chuck D: You know what it is; we boil it down to us. It’s like, it’s that every Black family always got that one person. (Laughter) I don’t care –
Griff: You can’t deny it.
Chuck D: And even when White folks say it in America, I say, “Oh, you done forgot that there was Billy Carter, huh?”
Tavis: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or Paris Hilton and the Hilton family. You’re right, every family has one.
Chuck D: Yeah, he’s that one.
Tavis: Let me take you back to the beginning. When the group was formed –
Chuck D: You say we was wearing white, so I guess we lost our musical virginity or something.
Tavis: Yeah. (Laughter) What was Flavor bringing to the table?
Chuck D: Greatest hype man ever in the history – he invented the (unintelligible). And –
Griff: I think on top of that, a lot of times in most cases the people we were trying to reach would not gravitate towards I guess the dynamic between me and Chuck. Born on the same day, same hospital, the old bit. Same –
Tavis: That’s true?
Griff: Yes.
Tavis: Wow.
Griff: So, we bring a certain kind of energy. Flavor drew all of those people that we could never reach. So he drew them to us and we got a chance to at least interact with them, to raise a conscious level.
Tavis: Of course I should have – you know this already, you PE fans – the guy on the left with the hat would happen to be Chuck D. And of course, Professor Griff sitting nearest me on the set.
Chuck D: We’re a group. We let people know very quickly, like, we’re a group and we think the essence of Black music – especially rap music and hip-hop – is groups. And somehow in the nineties and the millennium, groups have been forsaken and have been forgotten for this whole individual (inaudible) –
Tavis: What’s behind that, you think?
Chuck D: Well I think the thing is our travels around the world, traveling to 60 countries together, seeing many people, many places, and a lot of things.
Tavis: But what do you think, Griff, if Chuck is right – and he is right about that – that rap has moved from – back in the day, we could run a litany of them – there were so many groups back in the day; now there are individuals. What’s behind that, you think?
Griff: The whole idea of creating an icon, an idol to worship, to follow. The whole idea of the super-size me mentality. It’s all about me, the I, the me, me, me society. It’s all in that individual. Constantly writing and talking about and praying about the acquisition of wealth, and it’s all about me. The bigger the car. You kind of figure 300 million people in this country, how many cars are there? About 300 million. (Laughter) Do you understand what I’m saying? So that speaks to it.
Chuck D: And the HOV lanes are rarely packed.
Griff: Ain’t that something? (Inaudible) bike lane, HOV lane.
Tavis: Where did the commitment come from to saying something in the music? To the point now about being individual, it’s not always about saying anything. But where did the commitment come on the part of the group to actually saying something with your music?
Chuck D: Simple, we evolved out of the sixties, and from the Curtis Mayfields, the James Browns, Aretha Franklins, The Last Poets and people that put it down in the sixties, we’re children from that. And then this guy’s one of the first DJs I ever witnessed in the middle of the seventies, playing some of those same records.
Tavis: What do you make now, looking back – first of all, are you feeling like it’s been 20 years? Are you feeling that?
Chuck D: No, not at all. When people talk about 20 years, it’s a benchmark in rap music and hip-hop. But one thing we came along understanding that we have to be musicologists. And being a musicologist comes out of the understanding that this comes out of records. Afrika Bambaataa, Kool Herc, and Grandmaster Flash all were DJs that understood not only (unintelligible) DXT are DJs that not only understood the record but the musicians inside the records.
And the record companies, they even might have exploited them. Our understanding is this understanding that there’s a homage to the musicians and the records, and in knowing that blues artists have gotten down 50 years. BB King is still doing his thing. The holy trinity, or better yet the founding fathers of rock and roll – Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Fats Domino – are not only here today but they’re doing gigs.
And often by our people, because history is not this thing that we feel that’s a part of us that we should search and seek. We’ve lost the fact that these brothers are still here, sisters are still here doing what they innovated on long ago.
Tavis: But see, Griff, that’s what makes for me this conversation so profound, because getting to a 20-year benchmark in the hip-hop is, like, unheard of. There’s so few people who hit a 20-year mark where their music is still relevant, where their work, where their witness is still relevant, where folks still want to hear from them – they still want to hear what Chuck has to say, what Griff has to say.
Even to your point about Flav – Flav, 20 years later, is still putting it down in his own way on television and getting people to tune in to watch his insaneness and his craziness. But he’s making his thing work. The question behind that is how in the hip-hop world do you stay relevant for 20 years? It’s, like, unheard of?
Griff: I think there’s some things that lend to that particular dynamic. One, I think we have the ability to speak outside of the CD, like we’re doing now. He’s been on the lecture circuit; I’ve been on the lecture circuit, so we can speak outside of the CD because the songs are relevant. I think, too, Prince called this music that we’re hearing today – and it’s not hip-hop; we call it something else – disposable music.
It’s like a piece of bubblegum. You buy it, chew it, spit it out, and that’s it. Hopefully it don’t get stuck to the bottom of your shoe. So it’s bubblegum music, and a lot of times when there’s no substance in the music, it has no longevity. The average CDs stay in the shelf how long? Maybe three weeks? And I defy anyone in your listening audience, name me the number one single last year this time.
It’s very difficult to do, because we don’t remember. It don’t stick to the ribs. Now, that time that my old uncle was giving my car the tune-up and teaching me how to do that, I remember Sly and the Family Stone, James Brown, Curtis Mayfield, Gladys Knight and the Pips. You understand? Because those things stuck to the ribs.
Tavis: Let’s be honest about this – you could not have had – maybe being the visionary that you are, Chuck, maybe you did, I don’t know – but I can’t imagine you guys could have had any idea when you guys formed this group over 20 years ago now, that you would be regarded by The New York Times, by Rolling Stone – every major publication in the country has listed something that you have done on their top 20 list of all time this, their top 50 list of all time that.
Did you ever have any idea that the impact that you were going to bring to the game would be so profound and recognized, even by mainstream?
Chuck D: We knew the music would be very powerful for years to come, and we expected that there would be other situations outside the music that would delve into the music and also direct it in a whole bunch of different places. We didn’t necessarily know our place, and it wasn’t self-serving to look at our place. Like, this is who we are.
But we knew where we had came from and what had actually turned us on as young people to actually infuse inside rap music and hip-hop. But I would tell you this – that the saving grace for Public Enemy is that we never relied on the United States of America to be our sole base. We always relied that there is a Black Diaspora; there is a struggle amongst people around the planet that we could learn about and align ourselves with and attach to our music.
And we knew that once we got our passports – although I even think passports are derogatory, knowing that you need permission to go somewhere else on the planet, the one place that God gave you – we used them. And up to this point, 20 years, Public Enemy has frequented 60 countries. And we’ve frequented not only 60 countries but the cities and the realms of societies within. And hearing a lot of stories from thousands of people and understanding that our place is as citizens of the planet, and not just exactly where we come from.
Tavis: What’s the response, Griff, when you travel around the world, and what have you most taken from the opportunity to travel to these 60 countries over the years?
Griff: We’re discovering that regardless of your complexion, regardless of your nationality or your race, we’re finding people all over the globe have the same struggle as Black people in America – just on a different level. And it’s critical, because, as he said, we travel to – this is almost our what, 60th tour and it’s like in the beginning, we didn’t know people was going to understand what we were doing. It was new to us.
So to go to Amsterdam, go to London, Germany, Europe and a lot of the place, and it’s, like, amazing to see people really, truly understand. Maybe not every nuance, everything that we were saying, but they understood the frequency in the music and they understood it spoke to something in them. And the same thing that was going on in their life was going on in our lives in America – just on a different level, that’s all.
Tavis: When you see that and you come back and you prepare for the next project, it informs your music, it informs your work in what way?
Griff: I think in the way we’re a lot more cautious when we put the pen to the pad, because now scope is broader, and now we know if we’re going back to some of these same places we have to incorporate the people’s struggle. Not only the local and national level, but global now.
Tavis: I want to talk about the new CD here in a second. Let me just throw some hits at you, and you tell me anything about the hit, anything connected to it you want to tell me.
Chuck D: Are they hits? (Laughter) We ain’t had no hits.
Tavis: You had hits, man, no, no, no, no. You tell me – we all know the music, but you tell me the story behind the music. When we all listen to “Fight the Power,” and still listen and love it to this day – tell me about “Fight the Power.”
Griff: That was a crazy day in Brooklyn.
Chuck D: Yeah, theme for “Do The Right Thing,” Spike said he needed an anthem. We did a tour with Run-DMC, came back with an anthem. But more importantly, I think we were inspired by the Isley Brothers in 1975, who came up with the same slogan. You gotta fight the powers that be; you just can’t sit down.
Tavis: What did the exposure of that song on that soundtrack do for the group?
Griff: One of two things. It put us in a position where we had to define who the powers that be are.
Chuck D: The forces at work.
Griff: Right. So in defining that, I think – like I said earlier, it gave us the opportunity to speak outside of the song.
Tavis: Go back to the beginning – “It Takes a Nation of Millions.”
Chuck D: It takes a nation of millions to hold us back is actually a line from the first record, a song called “Raise the Roof.” And it was something I saw in print when I described that song, and it was in Toronto. And Hank Shockley said, “Hey, I think that could be the name of the title of the album,” and that’s what it is. It was twofold – it could take a nation of millions to hold us back as adversaries, or it takes a nation of millions of us to hold ourselves back.
And I think where we’re at in 007, which is 2007, is really when we go around the world; it’s easy to recognize forces at work here against us. Dead Prez comes up with a campaign against corporations, it’s turn off the radio. Professor Griff has turn off channel zero. And he can explain that. There’s a lot of things manipulating Black people’s imagery right about now that we always have to be the anti-force at work, to work against that. Not to say that we’re going to change and flip things overnight, but if you lie down you’ll fall for anything.
Tavis: “Turn Off Channel Zero,” since Chuck went there, is what, Griff?
Griff: It’s a project that me and about 20 to 25 activists across the country put together a documentary film dealing with the negative images in the media. And we just put it out free to give it to organizations and groups and teachers and preachers and leaders to have discussions about it, to raise the consciousness level of the people.
Tavis: Since you’re on that, tell me what PE’s role has been over the 20 years, vis-à-vis the music, in trying to address this issue of Black images in media.
Griff: I think bottom line it could be said best – probably not best, but from my perspective, we’ve become the voice of the voiceless in areas where a lot of people just won’t go. We pride ourselves in reaching (unintelligible) and Peanut in the projects, and Re-Re. (Laughter) So being the – a lot of people labeled us because of the song “The Prophets of Rage,” but that’s another subject. But we became the voice of the voiceless.
Tavis: One more song title – “911 Is a Joke in Your Town.”
Chuck D: Healthcare and it responded to the non-response of services in our community. I gave Flavor the title. I said, “You got a year to write this rap.” (Laughter)
Tavis: It took a whole year and a half.
Chuck D: And he came back, yeah. So yeah, there’s a lot of things that happened in that, there’s misconceptions about Public Enemy in this realm because we don’t get the media balance that’s necessary. But we thank you for allowing the media balance. There’s a big yin to the yang that they kind of see every day.
Tavis: You believe that – I assume you do; everything you say, you believe – you really believe that there is a lack of balance in the coverage of PE? And I say that only because –
Chuck D: In this country?
Tavis: Yeah.
Chuck D: Yeah.
Tavis: Tell me why you feel that. Because PE is so celebrated, as I said earlier, by all these publications for the impact that you’ve had over the last 20 years.
Chuck D: I think Griff can speak to that.
Griff: I don’t know, but if you look at it on a psychological level, you don’t think in some cases on the other side of the fence Public Enemy is being neutralized? Because we don’t look at it like we’re getting the play that a lot of the other groups get that are actually talking about absolutely nothing.
Chuck D: Also I would say that this is, like, when it comes down to other frivolous expression, I think they realize that they have to repeat it over and over and over again. And when you say something that’s pertinent it might enter the realm, like, once. Just like I tell people that history is taught to you. And maybe your history might be taught to you, but it’s taught to you so quickly if you don’t grab onto it and keep it and apply it to yourself, it’s out of sight, out of mind.
But dumbish, as we say, keep coming at you over and over again. And just like Viacom – and I blame Viacom and maybe the VH1 station. Flavor is Flavor – he’s been the same dude forever. He’s been the same guy. But they saw some DNA in there where they said, “Wow, we can go into that and we can just mass produce it and just repeat it over and over again.” And yes, it’s entertainment; it might make you laugh.
But not everything is funny. But a corporation only measures us as a people by our quantity and not our quality. And I’m always looking at the system and saying, more doesn’t always mean better, just because you have millions versus thousands. I look at the quality of the thousands and the millions before I say that’s better.
We’re still on an archaic voting system which says either you gotta be in this party or that party, and at the end of the day the one with the most wins. How primitive is that? So we as hip-hop artists have always delved into the underspoken or unspoken by saying we want to be able to have the music and the art form actually get into areas where credit has not been due.
Yes, it’s entertaining; yes, it could be funny. But where’s the adherence for hip-hop to be respected for the changes it can do in education, for the changes it can do just in social order? Where’s the communication for people who have been I guess incarcerated in the prison industrial complex? There’s a lot of movements that have been going on, have been raised on hip-hop, but hip-hop has not had that accepted portal of acceptance for people to say, “Hey, wow, this is a wonderful basis that I’ve learned from.”
Griff: But I think multinational corporations understand that dynamic.
Chuck D: Oh, of course.
Griff: And they also understand that younger people that would have respected Public Enemy, see Public Enemy through the eyes of a Flavor Flav show, and that may hurt instead of help.
Tavis: To your point, and this is much bigger than Flavor, because as we’ve said Flav’s been that way all the way through and somebody saw something and then wanted to exploit that. But what do we say to those persons, though, on MTV – those personalities, that is to say, on MTV, on VH1, God knows on BET – what do we say to those personalities that allow that to happen?
They can’t exploit something if there isn’t something to exploit, so there are a lot of folk who are stepping up and volunteering, quite frankly, to be exploited in that way.
Chuck D: I think it boils down to us being able to say that this is something that we’ll do versus something that we say that we won’t do. And a lot of personalities, they know that they have to have their job or whatever. But then also there’s other people that have their own grassroots operations that need some airtime that need to be respected, as well.
And we have always said that we are a diverse community. And there’s a lot of things going on all at once, but everything is just not synonymously just a one-trick type of way of living. So, there’s artists that will just be artists. There’s entertainers that will just be entertainers, and that will be all that they will do. But when it comes down to us as Black folks, we’ve been involved in so many different areas in managements and companies and distributions and publishings that will never get the light that other situations have.
That’s why we call ourselves the Rolling Stones of the rap game. If they got (unintelligible) about Mick and Keith for their 40 years in rock and roll, they gotta talk about us and our 20 years in the rap music and hip-hop game.
Griff: And I think that if they knew better, they would do better. And I think a lot of them know. And those, the ones that do know and are not trying to help the situation, eventually we have to bring them to the table of accountability at any, all, and every means necessary.
Tavis: Tell me about the new CD, Chuck. This title, first of all. I love this title.
Chuck D: Well, “How You Sell Soul to a Soulless People Who Sold Their Soul – “ matter of fact, you don’t. (Laughter) You can’t. My thing, I tell people hey, you can get the music however way you got it, but this is pretty much telling people if you don’t know what soul is, and if you kind of said you don’t want to do something based on your inner self, then maybe you should be introduced to soul to recognize it.
We give people the option. We say, “You could support us if you want; we’re still going to do our thing.” So we’re not telling people to go out and buy our album. It’s there, along with 14 other albums, and we might be in the town to do what we do. But we say that the business in this – the record industry is in trouble; the music industry is not.
We’re in the music industry, which means that we tell people, I say, choose between the two. Because a company coming to people saying buy, buy, buy, buy, buy all the time has met its end. You can’t beg people where the basic necessities are food, shelter, and clothing and tell them that they gotta buy a music offering.
Tavis: I like that distinction, though, between the record industry being in trouble and the music industry not being in trouble.
Griff: We make songs every day, regardless of whether they end up on an album or not.
Tavis: In terms of what’s on the CD, how does this fit into the pantheon of the other countless albums ya’ll have done?
Chuck D: It just fits. (Laughter)
Tavis: It just fits, huh?
Griff: It’s not a progressive thing or a left or a right thing; it just kind of fits because – well, you said you dug the title. When studying the soul, don’t you know soul records that move your soul?
Chuck D: So there’s some – you know Gary Gee Whiz, one of the members of the original Bomb Squad. The Bomb Squad has kind of expanded to 15 to 16 producers in this digital age; Griff is one of them. DJ Johnny Juice, Gary Gee Whiz did this one with (unintelligible) Smith. So the lead single is called “Harder Than You Think,” and simply, it’s like to be progressive, proactive, and positive is harder than you think. (Laughter) But that don’t mean that you don’t do it.
Tavis: Church said amen on that. And ya’ll don’t play, either – 19 tracks on one CD.
Chuck D: It’s not the quantity; it’s the quality. (Laughter)
Griff: The 19 is a very significant number; we’ll deal with that later.
Chuck D: There we go, there we go. (Laughter)
Tavis: Nineteen is a – before I let you go, our dear friend – our mutual friend, Dr. Cornel West and I were doing a joint lecture the other day, and in the middle of this lecture we referenced you; something you said the last time I saw you, and it fit perfectly into the speech to these young people. That I’d rather be – how’d Chuck D put it?
I’d rather be hated for what I am than loved for what I’m not.
Chuck D: Than loved for what I’m not.
Tavis: That’s (unintelligible).
Chuck D: That came from Big Daddy Kane’s album.
Griff: We have to give big shout-outs (unintelligible) family.
Tavis: (Unintelligible) you just did.
Chuck D: Yeah.
Griff: And his passing, we have to remember that he’s one of those brothers, those icons in the community that put it down in the educational department and stand on his shoulders – (unintelligible).
Chuck D: Yes.
Tavis: He did do that.
Griff: Yes.
Tavis: PE – been around 20 years now. The new CD, ” How You Sell Soul to a Soulless People Who Sold Their Soul.”
Chuck D: And they could go to PublicEnemy.com or MySpace/PublicEnemy.
Tavis: And the answer is, you don’t. (Laughter) But get the CD, because it has 19 tracks on it, and 19 is a very significant number.
Chuck D: And the DVD. We release DVDs on every one of our albums.
Tavis: CD and DVD – can’t (unintelligible) PE. First of all, let me close by saying thank you. That’s all I can say.
Griff: Give thanks, yes, sir.
Tavis: Thank you for all that ya’ll have done and continue to do.
Chuck D: Thanks, Mr. T.
Tavis: Love you both.
Chuck D: All right.
Tavis: That’s our show for tonight.
Drums in the Global Village 
