The fourth annual Hip Hop Cultural Summit at the Delaware Art Museum on Saturday has a theme of “Art As Activism,” so it invited the man who did as much as anyone to make rap protest music, Carlton Ridenhour, better known as Chuck D of Public Enemy.
Ridenhour and William Drayton – you know him as Flavor Flav – founded Public Enemy on Long Island in 1985. The group’s first three albums, starting with “Yo! Bum Rush the Show” in 1987 through “Fear of a Black Planet” in 1990, made them the most successful and controversial hip-hop crew of the era. Chuck’s topical lyrics, delivered in his booming baritone amid the Bomb Squad’s frenetic production, made songs like “Fight the Power” anthems of Black activism.
Public Enemy’s popularity waned after 1990, when copyright restrictions put the kibosh on the Bomb Squad’s prolific use of previously recorded material (one analysis found that if “Fear of a Black Planet” had been required to pay for all the samples it used it would have lost $5 for every copy sold). But Chuck D has kept up his political involvement ever since, including campaigning for Bernie Sanders.
“Rebel Without a Pause,” the first track recorded for 1988’s “It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back,” broke new ground by using a faster beat than was common in rap at the time. Chuck D will be speaking, not rapping, at the art museum on Saturday, but the political message will be front and center.
