Public Enemy's It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back (33 1/3) (6 page)

Public Enemy were in a similar position in the late ’80s, though Chuck was assuredly a more reluctant hero. The writing was on the wall as early as the turn of the decade: In a 1980 readers’ poll in
Black Enterprise
magazine, 73 percent of respondents said black Americans lacked effective leadership. Bill Stephney, who originally signed and marketed Public Enemy, broke it down to rap historian Jeff Chang: “In our hunger for a charismatic, post-King/Malcolm figure, a vacuum existed. I don’t think that the times of the ’80s were any less politically volatile than at any other point in history. The difference was the vacuum of leadership.”
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For a while in the late 1980s, Chuck D was painted as the leader of the post-civil rights generation. As anyone who heard him knew, he was incredibly outspoken, with a stentorian boom that was impossible to ignore, even if you couldn’t always get behind what he was saying or fully understand it.

For those who lacked a knowledge base about the black radical movement, Public Enemy’s lyrics
and imagery played referents like samples, placing iconic names into records as punctuation, dropping clues that their music was bigger than hip-hop. They name-checked Joanne Chesimard in “Rebel without a Pause,” referenced Louis Farrakhan in their second and third singles, sampled Farrakhan’s adviser Khalid Muhammad and Jesse Jackson in other tracks, calling Professor Griff the “Minister of Information” as a shout-out to Eldridge Cleaver’s title in the Black Panthers. Even a reference to Charles Barkley in “Rebel without a Pause” carried a unique weight, since the then 76ers baller was integral in shifting basketball aesthetics from the graceful game of Dr. J to a more powerful, aggressive sport. Says Chuck about his mosaic rhyme technique: “I just spewed all kinds of things that was on my brain. That became my rap style for a while, spewing out different phrases, never staying on one subject. I turned into a schizophrenic rapper, because of people’s attention spans being so short. I figured I’d rap the same way people paid attention, giving five seconds to one thought, 10 seconds to another thought, and seven seconds to another thought.”
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In a turbulent time, hip-hoppers were forced to take on the role of a generation’s voice, and Chuck was forced to assume the role of the revolution’s nuclear core — he and Flav got the closing verse on “Self Destruction” for a reason. It helped that Chuck was eminently quotable, a guy whose sound bites were
more famous than most rappers’ music. (Google currently shows 7,710 results for “Chuck D”+“black CNN”.)

In a contentious interview with writer John Leland, Chuck laid out the dilemma of his position: “The only thing that gives the straight-up facts on how the black youth feels is a rap record. It’s the number one communicator, force and source in America right now . . . I look at myself as an interpreter and dispatcher.” In the interview, Chuck took credit for the paradigm shift from talking about gold chains to talking about the government, from looking out for No. 1 to looking out for your community. But he asserted that he was not assuming the role of a political leader. “People are always looking to catch me in fucking double-talk and loopholes,” he said. “They treat me like
I’m
Jesse Jackson. I’m not running, I’m just offering a little bit of a solution, or at least explaining why things are the way they are.”
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Even though the core message of Brown’s “Say It Loud” was confrontational — “We
demand
a chance to do things for ourself / We’re tired of beatin’ our head against the wall / And workin’ for someone else” — the song reached far beyond the radicals. It broke the Top 10 of the
Billboard
Hot 100, even though Brown said it ultimately cost him a lot of his white audience as many white radio stations refused to play it. But more important, the song took an unwavering stance of self-pride and righteous anger in the face of adversity
that held appeal no matter what side of the revolution you were on.

This was the type of James Brown song that raised Chuck D. As Chang notes in
Can’t Stop Won’t Stop
, “Say It Loud” and “I Don’t Want Nobody to Give Me Nothing (Open the Door, I’ll Get It Myself)” had messages of change and upheaval that could appeal to everyone from the radicals preparing for armed revolution to the black conservatives who stressed economic self-sufficiency. The songs — like those of Public Enemy 20 years later — were radical at heart but crossed a wide audience: black radicals, pro-black non-radical integrationists, white hipsters and teenage kids of all races looking for voices that mirrored their alienation. “People called ‘Black and Proud’ militant and angry,” said Brown in his autobiography. “But really, if you listen to it, it sounds like a children’s song. That’s why I had children in it, so children who heard it could grow up feeling pride. It’s a rap song too.”
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Chuck D, then known as Carlton Ridenhour, had just turned 9. He says, “As a youngster in school, we sang that record like there was no tomorrow.”
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These songs would provide a spiritual center for Public Enemy, but they were ultimately not the pistons gunning inside
Nation of Millions
. They lacked the paranoia, moodiness, abandon and noise needed to build a better bomb. Instead, the Bomb Squad found armaments in James Brown’s work from 1970 to 1972, a time when the Godfather, like Public Enemy, was
doing constant rethinking, regrouping and reassembling. The time when he had two bands that played like they could take over the world. The time when his funk was at its absolute heaviest.

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“The Grunt” wasn’t the only triumph from the Bootsy Collins-led JB’s. By the end of 1970, the group had played on seminal Brown tracks such as “Get Up (I Feel Like Being a Sex Machine),” “Super Bad” and “Talkin’ Loud and Sayin’ Nothing.” From this period, Public Enemy took liberal use of Brown’s “Get Up, Get Into It, Get Involved,” seemingly for spiritual guidance. Brown himself called “Get Up” a rap song.

“Get Up” beefs up the
Nation of Millions
closer “Party for Your Right to Fight.” Chuck and right-hand man Flavor Flav run down a quickie history of COINTELPRO, blaming the U.S. government and J. Edgar Hoover for disrupting and destroying the Black Panthers. James Brown’s right-hand man Bobby Byrd provides the punctuation. Byrd’s voice is speaking from the winter of 1970, less than a year after Hoover’s secret FBI squad helped coordinate the raid in which Fred Hampton was assassinated. He turns Public Enemy’s history lesson into a call to action: “Get into it!” “Get involved!” Byrd, always the intrepid sideman, even gives Chuck and Flav a quick “You got it!” from “I Know You Got Soul.”

A word on Byrd: When they met as teenagers in the early ’50s, James Brown and Byrd were both keyboardists in gospel groups in Toccoa, Georgia. However, Brown was stuck behind a prison fence and Byrd was a curious town gawker striking up conversation from the other side. When Brown was released from prison at age 19 with nowhere to go, Byrd’s family gave him a place to stay. In no time Brown was playing with Byrd’s group the Avons. Byrd and bandmate Sylvester Keels pushed Brown out front, the Avons became the Flames, the Flames became the Famous Flames, the Famous Flames became a couple of different versions of James Brown and the Famous Flames, and it all eventually became the-amazing-Mr.-Please-Please-himself-the-star-of-the-show-Jaaaaames-Broooown — Byrd Bobby was by Brown’s side for every step of the way. They were so close, in fact, that there was even a rumor in 1965 that Brown was getting a sex change so he could marry Byrd.

Byrd was always there to add a “Get on up!,” and he pretty much invented the concept of the hypeman. Chuck would be the first to point out how closely the Brown/Byrd dynamic mirrored that of himself and Flavor Flav. When Public Enemy was signed to Def Jam in 1986, Hank Shocklee and Chuck wanted to bring Flavor Flav in as part of the group, an idea that both Rick Rubin and Russell Simmons loathed. They wondered what exactly Flav did. Hank and Chuck couldn’t really explain, but they knew he would bring
the “supercalifragihestikalagoothki.” Chuck wanted someone to bounce things off of, citing Byrd as a direct influence.

The JB’s who backed Byrd on “Get Up” weren’t the same JB’s whom Brown had plucked from obscurity two years earlier. That band and Brown clashed over creative control, and after a European tour, they decided to split ways. Bootsy Collins tells an interesting story about battling the staunchly anti-drug Brown after a show where he thought the neck of his bass guitar had turned into a snake while tripping on acid. Even though Brown never really yelled at the guys or fined them like he did with the previous band, it was time for them to go. As Brown’s heaviest band, it was only natural that Collins and crew would hitch their next ride on the just-launched P-Funk Mothership. By 1971, Brown had a new band whose experimental spirit was analogous to Pubic Enemy circa 1987.

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After the success of “Rebel without a Pause” in May 1987, Chuck, Flav, Terminator and the plastic-Uzi-toting S1Ws spent their summer on the Def Jam tour, gigging across the U.S. with Whodini, Doug E. Fresh, Eric B and Rakim, Stetsasonic and, the star attraction: the sweat-dappled chest of LL Cool J. On the bus, Professor Griff would play Farrakhan tapes and the S1Ws would practice their defense moves — a far cry from the
party atmosphere in Whodini’s ride. Meanwhile, the Shocklee brothers and Eric Sadler stayed behind in their 510 South Franklin pre-production studio, cooking up tracks. They would send Chuck tapes of what would be “Don’t Believe the Hype” and “Bring the Noise.”

When Chuck returned in September, the first track they finished was “Don’t Believe the Hype,” a slow, punchy rumbler that seemed downright friendly compared to the spastic “Rebel.” On “Don’t Believe the Hype,” the Bomb Squad did some of their heaviest experimenting. The opening of the song sounds like two tracks jogging in reverse, an effect created by sampling sounds they first manipulated on a turntable. In this case, mainly through the transformer scratch. The transformer, an invention usually credited to DJ Jazzy Jeff, is the slurping sound of a DJ pulling a record backward against the needle, ducking the crossfader during the parts where it plays forward. It’s a woozy effect built solely on the noises a DJ usually doesn’t want you to hear. It’s often used as an embellishment, but here it makes up most of the track — ugly noise for noise’s sake. Another experiment involved the Bomb Squad inventing their own bass sound. Sitting around toying with the gear, Sadler took the sine wave from the Akai’s tone generator, tuned it down an octave and made a bass track from it.

The shrill, one-note tenor-sax blast anchoring the song is from the lungs of St. Clair Pickney. It’s
a rubbed-raw squonk taken from James Brown’s “Escape-Ism Pt. 1.” On the original Brown recording, it’s a piercing surprise, an unexpected peak in a solo that probably set the track into the red for a split second, an ill squeal like a heavy boot stepping on a cat’s tail. This piercing moment of music comes from a band — like the Bomb Squad — that was forced to do a little quick experimenting. After the Bootsy Collins-led JB’s jumped ship, veteran trombonist Fred Wesley was recruited to assemble a new band in December 1970. This was not the crack lineup of gifted teen savants from Collins’ Pacesetters; this band was
raw
. Said Wesley: “They were totally green. Cheese Martin was so used to playing rhythm, just scratching behind James, that I had to teach him to play lead guitar. And at first Fred Thomas wasn’t much of a bass player. We rehearsed for two weeks in the basement of the Apollo Theater just to get the show together.”
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They contacted Jimmy Parker, who they thought was an alto sax player. He accepted the gig but had never played an alto sax prior to joining the band. They put a show together in eight days. Within two months, the band had recorded two hits for Bobby Byrd — “I Know You Got Soul” (sampled on “Cold Lampin’ with Flavor”) and follow-up “Hot Pants — I’m Coming, I’m Coming, I’m Coming” (sampled on “Caught, Can I Get a Witness”).

James Brown’s “Escape-Ism Pt. 1” was released in a turbulent time. It was one of the first songs the new
band recorded together, the first single under Brown’s name with the new band, one of the last singles released as part of his King Records deal and the first track on Side B of the album that his new label rushed out in order to keep the momentum going. Like “Funky Drummer,” it’s just an extended studio groove paired down to fit two sides of a single. The uncut, 19-minute take (available on the
Hot Pants
reissue) reveals just how fresh everything is. Brown ad-libs in his classic style, going around the room to ask his new sidemen where they’re from. When he gets to Jimmy Parker, he stumbles: “Where’re you from, uh . . . You know I keep forgetting this cat’s name . . . What your name is, man?”

Immediately after the recording, the band was scheduled to play at the Apollo to record Brown’s sixth live album. Barely together three months, they rehearsed day and night in the Apollo’s basement to work up the telekinetic bond that made Brown’s live shows so amazing. The live album,
Revolution of the Mind
, released in 1971, would be incredibly influential for Public Enemy. For starters, the cover image is the spiritual blueprint for the
Nation of Millions
sleeve. On the jacket of
Revolution
, James Brown is pictured behind bars, looking resolute and unbreakable, the dull orange wall behind him seemingly one cell over from Chuck and Flav’s.

The
Nation of Millions
cover was shot by punk-rock archivist and skateboard photographer Glen E.
Friedman, who also shot the cover of
Yo! Bum Rush the Show
. The shoot was at a midtown Manhattan police station in some vacant jail cells. They had to reschedule the shoot after Flav didn’t turn up — apparently he was in an actual jail at the time. Friedman told U.K. hip-hop magazine
Hip Hop Connection
that Flav wasn’t too excited to spend another day sitting in a cell. The now-classic cover wasn’t the image that Friedman wanted. He had aimed for something grittier, shooting a series of black-and-white photos of Chuck and Flav breaking out of jail from the perspective of the surveillance cameras. His preferred cover was a black-and-white image of the last thing a security camera would see before Chuck clocked out with a swift punch.