Album Review: Public Enemy, What You Gonna Do When the Grid Goes Down? (Enemy Records Ltd)

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Hostilities are opened from the first line of Public Enemy’s Pandemic Year album Not pretty, slaps you in the head and kicks your butt. But it also completes an American Classic trilogy of It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back and Fear of a Black Planet.

State of the Union/ Shut the fuck up/ Sorry-ass motherfucker/ Stay away from me.

Public Enemy were constructed in the mid-Eighties with original collaborators Carlton Ridenhour and William Drayton as Chuck D and Flava Flav respectively. Threatened to fly apart over disagreements endorsing Bernie Sanders Democratic nomination campaign early this year. Holding it together for this with current crew Khari Wynn guitars and DJ Lord.

State of the Union wastes no time laying into the White House. Assturbator/ POTUS Dictator/ Prime-time primo/ Rhyme time crime Nazi Gestapo/ Another four years gonna gut you hollow. In going over the top like an Eddie Murphy stand-up possessed by Bobby Searle, the rap diatribe is grisly mix of horror and pitch-black comedy. From fearing the Orange comb-over to being walked into ovens. Berlin’s burning and history is a mystery. After a while it is a detachment from the anti-Trump hysteria by thoroughly rolling around in it like fresh road-kill.

Before this one is GRID. This gets deeper into the roots of discontent and dysfunction and rubs the noses of Millennials’ in it. No algorithms/ Pick up a book, pick up a pen/ Universal mind blown/ Pandora’s Box opened up/ Uncle Jam’s Army is here. Funk hero George Clinton and Cypress Hill wind into this with supple beats, electronic drones and relentless momentum.

First target of the psychic attack from the original English Punks were their own useless generation. Sex Pistols besides, Punk was a middle-class suburban revolt rather than a working-class one. Sly humour from old-timers here. Why are so many youth proud of not having opened a book and boasting of all knowledge coming from their phone.

Public Enemy Number Won is a reminiscence of the Eighties cauldron. Run-DMC who appear here were running hot then. But the wish was to take Rap and Hip-Hop to a next level in politics and social consciousness. Hard grooves, no compromise, no sell-out. Post Coleman and Blood Ulmer Harmolodic Funk heated and focused to incandescent diatribe. The Beastie Boys were touring to promote their ground-breaking Licensed to Ill album. Public Enemy debuted as the opening act. King Ad-Rock and Mike D are here.

Can you sing a song to save a life? / Can Hip-Hop survive? / Can culture save humanity? / If a mule dies buy another one/ If a nigger dies try another one.

That is Toxic. Ominous and disturbing. Nightmare dark and disturbing. Soundtrack to the New York street crime and sick violence caught on cellphones and streamed on Twitter.

Yesterday Man features Daddy-O. Similar oppressive urban atmosphere. Guitar shredding festers in the background. Rap the Black CNN. You don’t know where you’re going if you don’t know where you’ve been.

The voice and thoughts of Malcolm X are back.

Fight the Power: Remix 2020. The most influential Rap song in its original form. Joining in are Nas, Rapsody, Black Thought and Jahi amongst others. Begins with the Funky Drummer and Godfather cutting and getting down. This time it is darker and angrier. Shocking images of lynching and burning. The Promised Land we almost there/ Why are Whites scared of Black. The procession of murder collects Malcolm X and Martin Luther King as no different to any of the others on the long list. Elvis was a hero but he never meant shit to me.

There is a lot to shock and unsettle. The music is relentless, constantly firing off and exploding and threatening to attack your DNA. More powerful than any Pandemic. To change the world in an instant of enlightenment as the greatest Art aspires to. As with Coltrane in the Sixties, the music unleashes spiritual energy.

The quote about Elvis is at the core of the tragedy of Black history in America. Elvis should mean shit to Chuck D. But in a different world. Public Enemy as great artists are close to breaking on through.

Rev Orange Peel                                                 

               

Rev Orange Peel
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