Last summer, a who’s who of hip hop luminaries descended upon Yankee Stadium for a giant celebration of the 50th anniversary of rap. The underlying assumption here is that an entire genre of music was born on one particular night at a back to school party in the Bronx. An optimistic take on this theory is that culture thrives on mythology and that assigning a birth date promotes a unified scene. A more cynical view is that assigning hip hop a birth date is a ready made opportunity for somebody out there to make a lot of money. A realistic take is that all of this can be true, that August 11 can be both a beautiful celebration of how a social movement in the Bronx shook up the world and a cash grab. Sort of like Christmas.
What is indisputable is that on August 11, 1973, an 18-year-old DJ, going by the name of Kool Herc, played music for a back-to-school party thrown by his sister. During his set, Herc extended the instrumental break on the records, allowing people to dance longer, laying the framework for the art form that would come to be called hip hop and eventually dominate popular culture around the globe.
If we accept this birth date, rap was about fifteen years old when Sinead O’Connor moved to New York City. She was smitten with the young genre, taken aback by the excited young people carrying boomboxes and dancing in the park. It felt as if something big was happening. Something inclusive, a party to which all were invited. Revolution was afoot. Here is what she said in her autobiography:
Similar to Christ’s, rap’s mission is self-esteem for those “previously deemed shit.” So it’s as dangerous as Christ’s. Because a lot of kids of all manner are listening, and no one in the industry wants their top floors threatened by either the wrong skin color or the wrong mindset - that is, anyone who cares about truth.
Kids are the market, but you have to keep them believing they’re worth less than the stars or they won’t think they need what the stars are selling.
Wait till you see. When showbiz execs realize they can’t kill rap, they will hijack it. They’ll make millionaires of impostor rappers who say things like, “You can’t be like me.”
These words aren’t exactly prophetic, considering the book came out in 2021, but they are a pretty accurate and concise wrap up of the art form’s relationship with the music industry. Like most new art forms, hip hop sprang from a dissatisfaction with the status quo. The youths O’Connor encountered were experiencing the joy that comes from flaunting your own personhood in the face of the establishment. Hip hop was, by its very nature, protest music.
Consider the following:
Early hip hop was often an illegal act in and of itself. As Herc’s parties outgrew any indoor space he could afford to rent, they moved to the parks, where Kool Herc and other DJ’s would routinely hack into streetlamps and perform on stolen power.
The earliest DJ’s would purposely schedule parties on the nights major disco and R&B artists were performing in town, providing an option for the poorest within their communities, left home while those with disposable income headed to Manhattan.
A major power outage at one of the Bronx’s bleakest economic moments led to a redistribution of wealth and a creative renaissance. Within a week, new DJ’s were popping up everywhere.
While rap has come to be grouped more with the sleek production value of R&B, early rappers actually cut their teeth in Manhattan punk rock clubs, championed by fellow subversive artists like Joe Strummer and Debbie Harry. Like punk rock, early rap is a statement of creative resentment of the status quo.
Eventually, rap would come to be known as another branch of capitalism, an instrument in the sale of everything from tennis shoes to soda to headphones. But in the 1980’s it was subversive, a great equalizer. And to an industry that hadn’t yet figured out its immense earning power, rap was a cool little fad. Enough of a footnote that it wasn’t even deemed worthy of inclusion at the Grammys.
Today we all realize the Grammys are music’s dumbest night. The show really has nothing to do with the artistry of creation. It’s simply a celebration of the money that has poured into the pockets of the wealthy old white men who run the industry.
Everybody already knew this in 1989, too. But unlike today, options for discovering new music were limited in the late ‘80s, amplifying the importance of a national television performance or getting your name in the newspaper for winning an award.
Inclusion at the Grammys mattered to rappers. It was acknowledgment that their art form was more than a fad, that it had lasting significance. When the Recording Academy finally caved and created a new category to award the best rap performance of the year, they did so with a caveat: the award would be handed out earlier in the day, without the television cameras. The industry acknowledged rap to save face, but denied artists the visibility that could have kick started many careers.
So rappers did what rappers have always done. They protested. They refused to attend the ceremony or accept their awards. And perhaps nobody loved a good protest more than Sinead O’Connor, who elected to go ahead and perform her breakout hit song, “Mandinka”, but do so with a Public Enemy logo painted on the side of her head.
The Academy awarded the first rap Grammy to the Fresh Prince and DJ Jazzy Jeff for “Parents Just Don’t Understand”, a saccharine track rapped by a lovable goofball with a charming smile. If rap was a fad, the Grammy’s had sided with the artist who best exemplified what they thought that fad was all about. With the artist who had crossover appeal, the one who, if this rap thing wasn’t a fad, they could grow comfortable hitching their wagon to.
An artist who didn’t appear to threaten their top floors.
As a society, we take art far too seriously and not seriously enough. That’s probably why, when people ask me about my first concert, I’m always tempted to answer the Smashing Pumpkins, when the correct answer is actually Creed. Likewise, it’s why I bask in the glow of perceived elderly wisdom when my students call me an “old head”.
It’s meant to be flattering, an acknowledgment of the wisdom that comes with age. I’m 43, not ancient by any metric other than hip hop standards. I lived through the entire Golden Age and I’m old enough to remember almost anyone’s top 5 in their primes. I have knowledge to share with the youth!
But to be real, I didn’t know anything about rap in the ‘90s. I was a white kid growing up in the suburbs. It wasn’t entirely my fault, but like the rest of the ‘90s suburban white kids, I didn’t really understand the nuances of any art form, much less the one Chuck D described as “the Black CNN”.
Of course, this isn’t to say I was completely ignorant. The radio and MTV still ruled, so like anyone else I was familiar with the greats. 2Pac and Biggie, Nas and Jay, Lauryn and Missy.
But my earliest introduction to the concept of protest music was from Rage Against the Machine, a rock band whose lyrics were rapped instead of sung. I loved Rage Against the Machine. I read an interview once where they talked about how socially irresponsible it was to write love songs in a world where people lack human rights. Hell yeah! I went out and bought a shirt at Sam Goody or something. It was red with a big picture of a shotgun wielding Emiliano Zapata on the front. The back said, “It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.”
I don’t know how I will die, but I suspect I will not be on my feet. There was nothing revolutionary about me as a teenager. The most revolutionary thing about me was probably that shirt. I wore it to the Creed concert. Some guy stopped me in the Alpine Valley parking lot and told me my anger was a gift. I was like, “Hell yeah, man.” I wasn’t all that angry. I’d just enjoyed the hell out of a bitchin’ Creed set. Can you take me higher?
But I did have tickets to see Rage Against the Machine and the Beastie Boys in Tinley Park with my friend, Michael Lubben. The show got canceled after Mike D broke his foot or something. Then Rage Against the Machine imploded, as countercultural rock bands that make loads of money tend to do, and disappeared into history. I saw them seven years later, playing a legacy set at Lollapalooza, on a stage sponsored by a beer company. The machine is a tricky thing to rage against.
Rage Against the Machine taught me that music could be important. The cover of their debut album featured a famous photo of a Vietnamese monk setting himself on fire in protest of religious discrimination. I could imagine myself having this type of commitment to a cause. Imagining it was about it. But I could rally around the idea that some things mattered and admire those willing to sacrifice.
Rage Against the Machine also introduced me to “good rap”. The artists they put me on to weren’t on the radio very often. Sometimes they referred to their style as “real rap”. Or “underground rap”. These artists, and the people who supported them, drew a line in the sand between themselves and the mainstream, which by the time I arrived at college had fallen into a dark age, the pejoratively termed “Jiggy Era”, named for a song about being rich by that same guy who won the first rap Grammy, the guy who didn’t threaten the top floor. These artists represented the struggle at a time when the mainstream was just interested in leaving it behind. Rage Against the Machine’s heroes had names like KRS-One, EPMD, and Rakim. By the late ‘90s they had been replaced by people like Mos Def, Common, and Talib Kweli. Backpackers. Real rappers. Descendants of the greats who weren’t afraid to stand for something.
Greats like Public Enemy.
Public Enemy was the biggest, baddest rap group in the world. They were terrifying, not just because they were angry, but because they were far smarter than anyone else in the room. And their most recognizable member was a cartoon character who wore a giant clock around his neck.
Public Enemy released Fear of a Black Planeton April 10, 1990. It had only been two years since their colossally acclaimed and game changing sophomore record, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, yet the group already sounded like grizzled veterans. Critics loved the new album - and continue to pile accolades on it to this day - but some members of their production crew, the Bomb Squad, complained about the rushed final product. More importantly, infighting flared as members disagreed on the best course of action in responding to anti-Semitic remarks made by the collective’s minister of information, Professor Griff.
But the finished product is Public Enemy’s second masterpiece, important for pushing the genre forward both sonically and intellectually. For my money, there are three highly memorable tracks on Fear of a Black Planet, presented here in no particular order:
“Fight the Power”, obviously. One of the most important tracks in the history of both rap and cinema, it made Public Enemy a household name beyond just the alternative music world.
“Welcome to the Terror Dome” is a ferocious track that unfortunately sees Chuck D doubling down on the criticism he’d received for anti-Semitism and homophobia.
“911 is a Joke”, the most noteworthy of a couple of showcase pieces for Flavor Flav.
People who know much more about hip hop than I do will tell you that Flavor Flav is one of the main reasons Public Enemy is the successful and influential group we know today. Chuck D is an excellent rapper who moved the art form into headier spaces than it had ever been. He is the prototype for so many to come after him, from Rage Against the Machine to Killer Mike. And if he were a stand alone rapper, just him and a DJ on a stage, he would be an absolute drag to listen to.
We want to dance. We want to laugh. Yes, we want to learn, but nobody is looking for their college professors in recreational spaces. We want to feel smart, to feel rebellious, but we listen to Public Enemy because we want to have fun at the same time. The most rebellious rap voice of all time would be an underground shadow, a niche interest, without the clown prince by his side.
And humor is subversive. Flavor Flav makes us laugh, but listen closely and “911 is a Joke” may actually be the most prescient track on the album. Where Chuck is leaning into political theory, scaring moderates and suburbanites, and veering dangerously close to the anti-Semitic point of no return, Flav is taking on a real, practical, fixable issue. An issue that the majority of his white audience probably wasn’t even aware of. An issue that you don’t need to be a radical liberal to get behind. Any moderate can hear the message of this song, learn something new, and respond with a “Wait, why in the world can’t we just get the ambulance into a poor community a little bit quicker?”
This is music that actually changes minds.
Public Enemy was every bit as counter-cultural as my teenage mind believed them to be, but for completely different reasons.
Thirteen days before the release of Fear of a Black Planet, and 54 years after he embarrassed Hitler on the world stage, Jesse Owens was posthumously presented the Congressional Gold Medal by President George H.W. Bush. It was also the first year he appeared on a postage stamp.
Owens was immortalized for disproving Hitler’s myth of Aryan supremacy, but it wasn’t originally his preferred method of protest. He and a number of other Black athletes had planned to boycott the games altogether, not give Hitler the opportunity to parade himself in front of the eyes of the world in the first place. This plan was shot down by American Olympic Committee president Avery Brundage, who referred to Owens and the others as “un-American agitators”. I know little about the life and character of Avery Brundage aside from the fact that he is relegated to the annals of history with all the other privileged members of society who believed they knew the proper way for marginalized people to protest their own mistreatment.
After the Games, Owens, who had shared hotels with his white teammates in Nazi Germany, was required to take the freight elevator to attend a banquet honoring the team at the Waldorf Astoria in New York, as he was barred from entering through the front door. His career effectively ended when he was stripped of his amateur status after accepting endorsement deals. Over the next four decades, Owens would attempt to support himself and his family through a combination of menial jobs and dehumanizing publicity stunts, such as racing horses. Jesse Owens was a hero when America needed one, and cast aside as soon as he had fulfilled his purpose.
If you Google “1968 Olympics” the first thing you will come across is an iconic photograph of two Black men on podiums, fists proudly raised, alongside a somewhat sheepish looking white man. The Black men are Tommie Smith, the winner of the gold medal in the 200 meter race, and John Carlos, who took bronze. The fists are raised in protest of the continued treatment of people of color, not in some fascist state, but right at home in America. The white man is named Peter Norman, the Australian silver medalist. He is generally an afterthought in the story, as he should be in a story that is not about him. But as a white man who cares about human rights, I have always found him inspiring. Norman reportedly asked Smith and Carlos how he could help. He didn’t make assumptions. The fight was not his, but he believed in it. Should he raise his fist? There is no correct answer except whatever answer Smith and Carlos gave. That answer was no. But what matters is Norman asked. And that Norman wore a matching patch to show support, for which he returned home facing official sanctions and mistreatment, and that Smith and Carlos respected his allyship enough that they served as pallbearers at his funeral in 2006.
I like this story because it demonstrates that there are many ways to protest, and that the most important thing is to hear the people who are most affected. Jesse Owens protested through his athletic prowess. In 1968, he disagreed with the way Smith and Carlos protested:
The black fist is a meaningless symbol. When you open it, you have nothing but fingers—weak, empty fingers. The only time the black fist has significance is when there's money inside. There's where the power lies.
While Owens later softened his tone and acknowledged the importance of the gesture, it’s worth taking his initial criticism seriously. There are as many ways to protest injustice as there are people. The methods we choose come down to a variety of factors, not the least of which is the experience of the person in question. As a young man he valiantly stood up to the most famous racist of the 20th Century, but thirty years later, with his own experiences as a template, he cared more about financial security for himself and his race.
And thirty years on from that, mainstream rappers began hearing criticism from those who came before. Like Owens, they had accepted the money, given up their amateur status for endorsement deals. They rapped about foreign cars, expensive jewelry, and loose women. They seemed to be saying, as Sinead O’Connor feared, “You can’t be like me.” They were labeled sellouts, traitors. They had sacrificed creativity for wealth, the collective fist for personal gain.
But when they opened their fists, there was money inside. And Jesse Owens wasn’t wrong, this is where money lies. And while many turn-of-the-millennium rappers were indeed lacking in the artistry and inclusivity that made rap special, a few understood exactly what they were doing: protesting an unjust system by taking some of its money away. One of them understood this well enough to become not only rap’s first billionaire, but it’s consensus GOAT.
To truly study hip hop requires an understanding of context. You can’t understand Public Enemy’s place in the culture without recognizing a simple truth: unlike nearly every great rapper to come before him, Chuck D was raised in the suburbs.
Chuck D is a prophet of rage in an unjust society. We have always needed people like him and we will continue to need people like him for longer than I will be alive. His anger is a gift, mine is a joke.
But Chuck D’s rage isn’t the result of abject poverty. His rage is a luxury afforded him by a relatively comfortable childhood.
Yes, he is from a predominantly Black suburb on Long Island. Yes, like any Black man in America, Chuck D has had to live his life in the shadow of hatred and bigotry. But he was not raised in Queensbridge Projects or the South Bronx. He came of age with a degree of privilege. He had parents who encouraged him to explore the arts, even as a potential career. He was able to afford tuition at Adelphi University, where he took classes in African nationalism, DJ’d a radio show, and met Flavor Flav.
The rage on display in Chuck D’s lyrics was made possible by his separation from the real world conditions experienced by nearly all of hip hop’s original greats. The parties in the Bronx and Queens were an escape from daily life. They were rebellious by nature because they were fueled by individualism and self-advocacy. But lyrically, the first rappers rarely took a political stance. When they did delve into socially conscious territory, such as on “The Message”, the result was more a painted picture than a call to action. More “What’s Going On” than “Killing in the Name”.
Revolution is not all rage. It comes in all forms.
We enjoy sharing the story of the Fresh Prince and Jazzy Jeff winning the first rap Grammy for the same reason we enjoy mocking big Will Smith and the Jiggy Era. They are anecdotes that point to greater truths, respectively that the music industry is controlled by old white men out of touch with youth culture and that the Jiggy Era represents a retreat from the original principles of hip hop equality. But if we are over reliant on this narrative we forget that art is much more nuanced than this. We forget that:
Will Smith was a charming rapper and DJ Jazzy Jeff is still renowned as being one of the best scratching DJ’s in the world.
The inoffensive nature of their album was instrumental in spreading hip hop to a wider audience that likely would have otherwise rejected the genre entirely.
Jiggy Era rappers, while often vapid and materialistic, helped pave the way for a world where rap has replaced rock as the dominant soundtrack in mainstream popular culture. For better or worse, this has been to the benefit of many children of color in America.
Sometimes, parents just don’t understand.
But perhaps the most glaringly obvious, the most fact-based, and the truth everyone in the know already knew….the entire idea to boycott the Grammys ceremony came from Will Smith and his DJ Jazzy Jeff.
Your anger is a gift.