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Public Enemy: Revolution, Scandal, and a Message Louder than a Bomb · DISGRACELAND

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. The stories about
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: hip hop legends Public Enemy are insane. Their heighteman allegedly
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: tried to shoot his neighbor while high on crack cocaine.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: Their so called Minister of Information was so controversial that
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: he nearly destroyed the group's career. They played a show
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: at Riker's Island immediately after releasing a track about a
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: prison break. Their music video depicting the assassination of politicians
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: was pulled after it aired on MTV just once. Public
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: Enemy were revolutionaries, both in their message and their music.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: In the nineteen eighties and nineties, they helped elevate hip
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: hop to an art form. They did this with Chuck
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: Dee's booming voice, flavor Flaves, comic levity, and the auditory
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: assault of the Bomb Squad's production Great Music, unlike that
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: clip I played for you at the top of the show.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: That wasn't great music. That was a preset loop for
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: my melotron called Vogue Schmog MK two. I played you
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: that clip because I can't afford the rights to a
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: clip from Baby Don't Forget My Number by Millie Vanilli.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: And why would I play you that specific slice of
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: secretly lip syncing cheese. Could I afford it? Because that
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: was the number one song in America on July fourth,
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: nineteen eighty nine, And that was the day Public Enemy
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: released their single Fight the Power, a song that put
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: them in the middle of the cultural zeitgeist at the
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: very moment they were splintering apart. On this episode, Heypemen revolutionaries, assassinations,
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: prison breaks, auditory assaults, and public antim I'm Jake Brennan
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: and this is Disgraceland nineteen ninety three. The Bronx William Drayton,
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: the man better known to the world as Flavor Flave,
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: was hearing things, voices, specifically the voice of his baby
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: girl crying for her daddy coming from the other side
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: of his apartment wall. The sound of his daughter hit
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: Flave where it hurt. He was seeing less and less
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: of her these days, seeing less of all his kids. Actually, Karen,
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: his ex, had full custody. The only thing that helped
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: him block out the pain, that helped him forget, if
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: only for a moment, was crack cocaine. But not today.
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: Today the crack was reminding him of what he didn't have,
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: his kids. They were clearly in distress, being held hostage
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: by his next door neighbor. Karen was there too, Why
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: didn't matter. All that mattered was that Flave was fully
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: convinced that his estranged family was locked up next door.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: So flav Or Flave did what any good daddy would
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: do in this situation. He grabbed his three eighty semi automatic,
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: stuck it into his pants, and went to the rescue.
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: Out into the hallway and knocked on his neighbor's door,
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: and the guy opened it just a smidge, and then
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: Flave pushed the door wide open, barged right in, sweating,
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: bugging out, Yo, man, where's my family? They were in
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: here somewhere. He could still hear his little girl screaming.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: His neighbor just kept saying, they're not here. Man, man,
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: you know, fuck this guy calling Flave man. How about
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: he act like a man and give Flave back his kids?
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: How about that neighbor panicked and then he bolted out
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: of the apartment into the hallway, straight to the stairwell door.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: Flave gave Chase twenty three flights down all the way
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: to the lobby. He was panting now, sweating profusely. His
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: neighbor stopped and spun around, took a step forward like
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: he was going to get into it, but fuck that,
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: Flave pulled the three eighty from his pants. One more
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: step and I'm gonna shoot you. Gee. The neighbor freaked.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: He ran outside into traffic, noise, total chaos. Then came
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: play with Flave, still just one step behind, outside onto
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: that same street, ready to be strong, to be a
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: good daddy, to do the one thing he believed he
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: had to do. Just a few years after his group
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: Public Enemy changed the rap game, Flavor, Flave, high on crack, paranoid, armed,
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: was committing the kinds of transgressive acts that ran counter
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: to pe'es message, a message that was delivered by the
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: group's MC Chuck d a guy who famously didn't do drugs,
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: didn't drink, a guy who viewed hip hop music AllMusic
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: as a way to raise the dialogue. Chuck aimed to
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: free your mind, the exact opposite of what was going
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: on with Flave here trapped inside of his own mind.
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: Freedom from oppression, from the propaganda of the ruling class,
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: freedom from complacency, and a shared loss of history and culture.
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: In the mid eighties, when Public Enemy blew up that
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: culture was still resting too hard on the laurels of
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: the civil rights movement some two decades prior or At
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: least that was the case in Chuck DSIs. For Chuck,
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: the movement it didn't simply happen. Saying it happened implied
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: that it was in the past, but it wasn't over.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: It was still beginning. Chuck, of course, was the polar
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: opposite of Flave. Chuck rapped about the street, about drugs,
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: about the United States broken prison system, but Flave was
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: the streets. He was, at various times a user, a dealer,
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: another number in the New York lock up. Now, however,
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: he was a foil. He existed to soften Chuck, the
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: Bobby Bird to Chuck D's James Brown, the comic relief
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: to Chuck's hard hitting broadcast news crawl. He gave Chuck
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: room to breathe in the verses versus that came at
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: you like an oozy to waigh a ton flavor. Flave
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: also made Public Enemy's message more palatable to suburban America,
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: to the white kids buying their records, white kids like me,
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: and we bought them, We really did. Couldn't wait. Actually,
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: by the time Flavor Clave was chasing his neighbor out
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: of an apartment building with a loaded gun. Public Enemy
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: had four stone cold classic albums under their belt, albums
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: that sold millions. Years earlier, Elo COOLJ had declared he
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: was hard as hell, but these four PE albums were
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: hard as a motherfucker. Hank Shockley and his brother Keith,
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: Eric Vietnam Sadler, and Chuck D, a production team known
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: collectively as the Bomb Squad, brought a wall of sound,
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: a hip hop that was unlike anything before or after.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: Hank Shockley was raps phil spector, layering sample upon sample,
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: dissonant and forceful. The resulting hypnotic sound was, as Chuck
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: D put it, quote, repetitive, repetition, relentless, no escape. James
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: Brown took it to the bridge. We'd take it over
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: the bridge unquote. This wasn't your father's R and B.
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: This wasn't rhythm and blues. This was the eighties going
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: on the nineties. R and B was Reagan and Bush.
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: Now it was DJ Terminator X, scratching the ones, scratching
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: the twos, not just make it funky, break to demand
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: your attention. It was Professor Griff Public enemy's self described
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: minister of bringing back the Black Panther urgency of decades past,
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: giving pe its image. The security of the First World
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: aka the S one W standing at attention on stage
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: with fake machine guns while air raid sirens wailed. The
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: S one w's professor, Griff Hank Chuck flave. They had
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: a collective message, wake the fuck up. September nineteen eighty three,
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: there was a war going on. The NYPD called it
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: a war on graffiti, but it was really a war
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: on hip hop. In eighty three, hip hop and the
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: eyes of the law was not art but vandalism. Musicians, artists,
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: they had to make their own space, like Michael Stewart
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: standing at the first Avenue and fourteenth Street subway station
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: with a marker in his hand. It was late past midnight.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: Michael did his thing and made the wall of the
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: subway station a little cooler than he found it. The
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: transit cops watched and waited, and then they pounced. They
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: forced Michael to the ground and beat him with their
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: billy clubs. They hog tied his arms and legs behind him.
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: A nightstick wrapped around Michael's throat. He gasped for air,
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: an hour later, Michael Stewart went into a coma. The
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: case went to trial. The defendants, the judge, the jury,
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: the attorneys, the court officers, all of them white. The
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: one person of color was unable to tell his side
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: of the story because less than two weeks after the incident,
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: Michael Stewart was dead, all because he tagged the wall
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: of a subway station. The six officers went free, and
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: the NYPD made their point. People who looked like Michael
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: Stewart be arrested, assaulted, even killed. Carlton Ridden aka Chuck
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: D wasn't about to accept that. He, along with his
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: fellow disruptors and public enemy, were ready to fight the
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: powers that be, ready to revitalize the movement. As Chuck saw,
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: that movement had gotten a little soft in the nearly
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: twenty years since Malcolm and Martin. It was a movement
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: that never got what it wanted, not really anyway, not
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: what it deserved. Four years after the death of Michael Stewart,
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: New York had a new public enemy to contend with.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: This one rode the Bomb Squad's relentless grooves, led by
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: Chuck D's deep baritone, like Marv Albert calling a game
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: not from the court, but from the street. A game
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: of life and death. It was February nineteen eighty seven.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: Yo Bum rushed the show public Enemy's debut, and Chuck
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: De's own words, kicked down that motherfucking door, not just
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: so they could give the people what they deserve, but
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: to free the people from their own minds. Nineteen seventy nine,
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: New Jersey, the three men walking into the Clinton Correctional
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: Facility for Women pulled out pistols and aimed them at
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: the two security guards. They demanded to be taken to
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: Joanne Chesimard. They were breaking her out. Joanne Chesamard aka
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: Asada Secure, one time Black panther, now a member of
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: the Black Liberation Army, step aunt and godmother to Tupac Secure,
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: serving a life sentence for her role in the murder
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: of a state trooper, a murder she said she didn't commit,
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: a murder that took place six years prior in nineteen
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: seventy three. On that day, shots were fired on a
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: stretch of Garden State Turnpike. A Jersey trooper and one
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: of Securre's colleagues were dead. Asada Secure was sitting inside
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: a car panicking she'd been shot twice. Every breath was
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: like razors in her lungs. Suddenly the car door ripped open,
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: a couple of stadies dragging her onto the pavement, those
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: fucking pigs squealing at her. Now, which way do they
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: fucking go? You better open your goddamn mouth or blow
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: your goddamn head off. She knew they weren't kidding. They
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: could end her right here, right now. Witnesses are not
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: and they fucking get away with it too, because they could.
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: She nodded in a direction to indicate where her crew
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: was at. Honestly, though she had no clue, she was
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: losing blood and she could barely see straight. The law,
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: on the other hand, said it could see very clearly,
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: clear enough to know that Asada Shakur was a killer.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: And all white jury agreed. And now Asada Shakur was
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: pacing around her cell feeling nothing but contempt. Contempt for
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: the systemic racism running rampant in the so called land
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: of the Free, contempt for the system of justice under
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: which she'd been tried, a system that wouldn't allow a
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: side of Shakuur to get what she wanted, which was
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: actual justice. She wasn't going to wait around for someone
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: to give that to her, especially not the United States government.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: It was like the Godfather said, open up the door,
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: I'll get it myself. A side of Shakira opened her
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: cell door with the assistance of three armed men there
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: at Clinton Correctional with their forty fives locked and loaded
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: in the two guards as hostages. The men ushered Shakira
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: into a prison van and they drove it to a
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: parking lot nearby, where a blue Pontiac and the two
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: toned blue Cadillac were waiting for them. If they carefully,
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: we set the two hostages free, and then the Pontiac
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: and the Cadillac roared to life. A side of Shakurra
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: and her accomplices were gone. The next time Shakira was seen,
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: she was in Cuba, where she was now living under
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: political asylum. Meanwhile, back home, the FBI made her the
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: first woman ever to be added to their most Wanted
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: Terrorist list. A nineteen year old Chuck D. Young Carlton
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: ridden hour here growing up in Roosevelt, Long Island, heard
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: all about Asada Shakiro when this all went down in
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: the seventies, but he did not hear that she was
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: a terrorist. Instead, Chuck heard about how she been framed, persecuted, wrongfully,
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: convicted simply for standing up and fighting for what she
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: thought was right, her plight, her cause, her story. It
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: was one of many stories about cops, juries, judges, prison guards,
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: the nation of millions that wanted to hold them back.
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: Stories told in the Roosevelt Community Theater that Chuck's mom ran,
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: in the summer programs at Host and Adelphi, where Chuck
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: learned from Black Panthers and Black Muslims their socio political discourse,
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: igniting a passion within his mind and his heart. That
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: passion was there, and the lyrics he was now writing,
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: the potent DJ sets that his friend Hank was performed
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: in roller rings, in elks clubs, in hotel ballrooms, any
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: place that would happen. Chuck's deep interest in the budding
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: genre that was hip hop was validated by the professors
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: at these higher institutions. Hip Hop was not a fad.
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: Hip hop was part of the fabric of American culture.
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: It was another story that was being told. Chuck Hank Flave.
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: They had their own story, a story about broken promises
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: and failed revolutions. The revolution was in the sound of
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: public Enemy, their new group and Public Enemy's goal was
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: to put that sound in people's ears. Disciplined, controlled, confident, strong,
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: but as strong as their def Jam debut was, Chuck
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: didn't think it was enough. Just months after Yo Bum
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: Rushed the Show was released, Eric B and Rock Kim
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: dropped their debut Paid in Full, a record so breathless
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: and made Yo Bum Rush the Show sound like it
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: was riding in the slow lane. Chuck and Hank Shockley
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: knew they had the uppees game. The bpms became faster,
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: the layers of samples grew more dense, drones, feedback squeals.
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: The bomb Squad was coming at you with an auditory explosion.
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: Public enemy second album, It Takes a Nation of Millions
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: to Hold Us Back, came in fast and hot, Like
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: Mike Tyson in his prime. Public Enemy wasn't thinking about
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: Tyson so much as they were thinking about Marvin Gays.
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: What's going on? A record that equated music as art
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: as social commentary as the means necessary to get the
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: message across. This is what was going on now. Like
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: that big clock flav wore on a chain around his neck,
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: the time was here, and time was ticking. The effect
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: that it Takes a Nation of millions, had not just
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: on the public's perception of hip hop, but on the
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: scope of what the music was capable of. Cannot be overstated.
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: Public Enemy created a whole new lean, and they did
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: it with Chuck's voice, with Flay's humor, with Hank Shockley's
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: walled sound. One hundred and fifty samples spread across sixteen songs,
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: twenty samples alone on the track Night at a Living
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: bass heads from Bowie to Aretha to run DMC even
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: sampling Chuck's voice from another song on the same album,
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: Bring the Noise, Don't Believe the Hype Louder than a Bomb.
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: These songs are just as urgent and relevant today as
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: they were thirty six years ago. Chuck D had a
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: lot on his mind. The crack epidemic, conscientious objectors, prophets, farakhon,
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: the Panthers, the Sada secure who Chuck name checks, and
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: rebel without a pause. And yeah, he did refer to
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: her by her given name, Joanne Chesimard, which she had
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: long ago rejected as a slave name, but only because
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: Chuck D is a dope MC who recognized that Chesimard
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: fit is rhyme better Shakira might have also been on
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: Chuck's mind when he wrote black Steel in the Hour
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: of Chaos, a track about a daring jailbreak. Chuck saw
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: that track like he saw most of his music, the
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: start of a dialogue, but not everyone saw things Chuck
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: D's way. August nineteen eighty eight, two months after the
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: release of It Takes a Nation of Millions, a record
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: that everyone was talking about, Public Enemy were booked to
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: perform an unusual show, this one for inmates at Rikers Island,
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: twenty years since Johnny Cash played fulsome prison in San Quentin.
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: Just like their fellow prophet and rebel from Arkansas, Public
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: Enemy saw their Riker's gig as an opportunity first to
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: address the fact that the number of black men behind
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: bars in America was skyrocketing, but also to bring a
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: little light to the darkness inside those walls. That is,
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: until someone called Rikers to say, Hey, do you guys
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: know that the rap group you've invited to perform in
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: your prison has a song on their brand new record
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: about breaking out of prison. The warden flipped out. Public
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: Enemy had a promise not to play blacks Deal in
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: the Hour of Chaos, so that the show could go on.
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: Two hundred and fifty prisoners packed inside Riker's auditorium. Add
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: to that two guards per inmate, and another couple dozen
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: guards standing outside the auditorium. In the place was a sauna, hot, sweaty, loud,
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: chuck flave terminator X. They brought the noise. Professor Griff, meanwhile,
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: brought the rhetoric pride in oneself, pride in black nationalism.
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: Fuck the man, whether it was here at Rikers or
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: out there on the outside, simply being a black man
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: in America. A prison was a prison was a prison.
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: Griff's rap was uncompromising, not just the things he said
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: on stage at Rikers and around the world, but what
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: he was now saying off stage. The truth be told
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: public Enemy's Minister of Information was starting to get fucking weird.
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: His wrap of self empowerment was skewing, homophobic, an anti Semitic.
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: There's no place for gaze, he told the UK press.
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: He also said, quote, if the Palestinians took up our arms,
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: went into Israel and killed all the Jews, it'd be
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: all right, unquote. One confronted about those statements, Professor Griff
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: dug in, he stood by them. He wasn't budging, not
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: for anyone, certainly not for Flavor Fucking Flave. Griff's whole
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: vibe grated against Flave, and the feeling was mutual. And
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: when Flave came to the studio high on crack and
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: weed like one of those living bass heads Chucks so
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: urgently spoke out against on record, Professor Griff took it personally.
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: He broke Flay's boombox, and then he fractured Flay's ribs
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: and shin real tough love. Chuck found himself caught in
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: the middle, trying to explain what was coming out of
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: Griff's mouth, trying to understand why Flave kept doing the
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: things he did, trying to keep the peace. But Flave
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: had a different kind of peace in mind. He started
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: showing up to the studio with a gun in his pocket,
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: safety off, finger on the trigger, ready to react to
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: Griff's bullshit at a moment's notice, close range. No errors.
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: Flave wasn't bluffing, Griff couldn't chill, and Chuck well, Chuck
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: had a choice to make. We'll be right back after
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: this word word word. Chuck d was in a tight spot.
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: The press wanted him to answer for the things Professor
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: Griff was saying. They wanted him to denounce hatred of
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: any kind. And though we didn't agree with Professor Griff's
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: increasingly problematic point of view, Chuck D also didn't feel
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: right acting as Public Enemies leader and spokesperson. Despite being
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: the group's front man. Hank Shockley was two years Chuck
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: sor since the beginning, back when Hank was DJing Elks
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: Clubs under the name Spectrum City, back when Chuck was
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: just a kid with some rhymes written down on paper
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: jumping on a mic, Hank had been the de facto leader,
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: at least to Chuck's eyes anyway, so Chuck wanted to
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: defer it was more mature musical partner. Maybe he just
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: wanted to hide behind him. At any rate, Chuck D
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: was the one being asked to step up now, just
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: like he'd been asked to step up and pe first formed.
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: So he did. Chuck called a press conference and read
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: from a prepared statement. Professor Griff was no longer a
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: member of Public Enemy. Public Enemy had a code a policy,
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: and that policy wasn't to offend any individual or group,
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: as Chuck explained. Instead, it was a policy intended to
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: quote offend the system that works against us twenty four
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: hours a day, three hundred and sixty five days a
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: year unquote, a system that was working overtime to do
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: just that, especially a pe hometown, New York City. April
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: nineteen eighty nine, the nine one one calls started coming in.
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: A wandering group of thirty maybe forty males young kids
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: harassing people in Central Park, some delivering beatdowns. The NYPDU
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: was dispatched. Patrol cars swarmed the area, kids hanging around
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: West one hundredth and Central Park West. The cops surged,
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: the kids scattered. Five unlucky ones were nabbed, all boys,
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: all between the ages of fourteen and sixteen, all of
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: them black or Hispanic. Brought down town for questioning inside
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: the park. Shortly before midnight, a grizzly discovery was made
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: near a ravine. A twenty eight year old investment banker
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: out for her regular job, brutally beaten, raped and left
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: for dead, covered in blood, barely alive, her cheekbone crushed,
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: her left eye, saw get crushed, skull fractures laceratious. The
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: cops down at the twentieth Precinct turned up the heat
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: and the five boys they now had in custody told
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: one kid that his friend was ratting them out, told
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: another they had evidence to put them all at the scene.
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: The boys had no way of knowing they were being
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: played individually. They were interrogated over and over for hours
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: at a time. They were disoriented, scared, not allowed to
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: see their parents, and they just wanted it all to end.
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: To leave the precinct, go home and get in bed.
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: They do anything, even confess, so they did. Over twenty
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: four hours after the interrogations began, the cops finally turned
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: on the cameras. All but one of the five kids
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: allowed the NYPD to videotape their confession to that unspeakable
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: crime in Central Park, and it wasn't until thirteen years
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: later in two thousand and two, the DNA evidence proved
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: what many had long known to be true, that the
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: Central Park Five, as the boys came to be called,
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: were innocent. In fact, a serial rapist had been the
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: sole attacker of the Central Park jogger. The boy's convictions
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: thus were vacated, but not before they'd done between seven
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: and thirteen years in prison. Back in the spring and
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: summer of nineteen eighty nine, when the young boys delivered
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: their coerce confessions and were charged with, among other things,
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: attempted murder, New York City was ready to split apart.
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: On the one hand, Mayor Koch expressed a disbelief that
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: anyone would support these teenagers who'd been out wildly, to
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: use the term that was being thrown around by the
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: press of the time, while Donald Trump took out full
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: page ads in all four of the city's major newspapers
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: to call for the reinstatement of the death penalty. On
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: the other hand, Reverend Al Sharpton took to the streets
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: calling for justice, as did the boy's parents, who were
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: furious at their boy's lack of knowledge of the justice system.
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: The very system that Chuck d called out fire Professor
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: Griff had been used against them. It was into this turmoil,
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: just two months after the Central Park attack that Spike
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: Lee's incredible movie Do the Right Thing debuted in theaters.
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: Spike's critics said he was careless for releasing this kind
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: of movie at this particular time, a movie about racial
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: tensions boiling over into violence. There was real panic in fear,
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: fear that people would be pushed over the edge that
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: they'd mimic what had happened in the film trash cans,
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: smashing pizza, hia windows, buildings on fire, riots. And that
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: was not Spike Lee's intent, nor was it the intent
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: of Public Enemy, who Spiked tapped to come up with
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: a new track that would thunder out of radio Raheem's
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: boombox as he stopped the streets of Brooklyn. Hank Shockley
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: went cinematic with the track Sonic Palette. He wanted to
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: concrete an asphalt in near ear drums. He wanted it
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: to sound like New York felt. The resulting track, Fight
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: the Power wasn't an invitation to riot, as some Americans
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: loudly feared, but rather to revolution, a revolution that Chuck
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: d had been leading since day one. Free the people,
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: first from their own minds, recognized that there was work
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: to do, worked that hip hop could facilitate. Hip Hop
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: was art, it was power, the seeds of any great revolution.
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: Pe had an arsenal of weapons at their disposal, not
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: the least of which were Chuck's rhymes, which intended to
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: assassinate the long accepted hierarchy of cultural icons like Elvis
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: Presley and mother Fuck John Wayne, the King and the
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: Duke were dead. Rock and Roll was dead. Public Enemy
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: Hip Hop Chuck D's Revolution they were very much alive.
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: In a year of cheese ball hot one hundred hits
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: by Paula Abdull, Millie Vanilli, Poison, and Richard Marx Fight
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: The Power was louder than a bomb and realer than
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: anything else on the ear. It sold nearly half a
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: million singles and went straight to number one on the
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: Billboard Hot Rap Singles chart. But a hit single and
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: a renewed sense of purpose couldn't make the still fresh
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: Professor Griff controversy go away. Demonstrators disrupted do the Right
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: Things opening weekend chanting we hate Public Enemy. Anonymous callers
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: even rang Russell Simmons, Deaf Jam's co founder, at home
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: with a message of the roan we know where you
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: live and where your parents live. Russell added this latest
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: bullshit to a growing list of concerns that included an
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: imminent fallout with his business partner, Rick Rubin in a
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: lawsuit filed by the Beastie Boys over unpaid royalties. At
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: the moment of Public Enemy's greatest creative and commercial triumph,
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: Chuck D felt the weight of it all, Griff Spike's
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: movie Deaf Jam, and then there was Flave, his old
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: vices beginning to get the best of them again. Chuck
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: needed a break. He had Russell Simmons break the news
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: to the masses. Public Enemy would be disbanding for an
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: indefinite amount of time. Just like that. The music, the revolution,
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: the dialogue, the noise, it all fell. Silent revolutions never
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: really die it neither did Public Enemy. They just needed
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: a few weeks to collect their thoughts and catch their
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: breath do the right thing. Was still playing in theaters
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: when Chuck D released a news statement declaring pees and
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: pending return, which read, in part, the show must go on.
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: Brace yourselves from nineteen ninety. We're still pro black, pro
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: black culture, and pro human race. Please direct any further
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: questions to Axel Rose. Axel, of course, was busy punching
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: his way out of his own controversy over some lyrics
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: and a Guns N' Roses song. If what people were
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: saying about Axel Rose bothered, Axel Rose, that didn't show.
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: G and R were selling a shit ton of records,
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: so what did he care? The controversy sells just ask
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: Public Enemy their next album to be released following their
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: own controversy. Fear of a Black Planet became their highest
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: charting record to date with the hit singles nine to
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: one one as a Joke and Welcome to the Terror Dome.
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: The album after that went even higher. By the early
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: nineteen nineties, Chuck d was the undisputed rebel without a pause.
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: Flavor Flave, on the other hand, always a flip side
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: to Chuck's thing, was a straight up rebel what it
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: would long ago lost the message he was supposed to
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: be delivering. Nineteen ninety three, Flavor Flave hadn't slept in
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: three days, a seventy two hours stretch fueled by crack cocaine,
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: a stretch during which Tupac secure Asada, Securre's step nephew
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: and godson, was arrested for shooting two off duty cops
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: in Atlanta. Back in the Bronx, Flave was paranoid, delusional,
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: distraught over losing custody of his kids, the kids he
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: was convinced are now being held inside his neighbor's apartment
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: along with his ex wife. It was the drugs talking,
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: but no one was going to tell Flave otherwise, he
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: broke into that apartment, chased his neighbor down twenty three
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: flights of stairs from a three eighty semi automatic gun
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: in his hand, out into the street, where a single
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: gun shot rang out. The next thing Flave remembered, he
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: was sitting in his apartment. The cops were there and
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: had his gun unlicensed, missing one bullet from his five
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: round clip. Flave was charged with attempted murder and locked
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: up for ninety days, but the judge ruled that the
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: gun can be used as evidence because the cops confiscated
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: it during a illegal search. No bullet was ever found,
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: a no bullet hole, no witnesses, not even the neighbor
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: whose back was to Flave when the shot was fired.
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: The only thing Flave was found guilty of was gun possession.
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: Other incidents followed, other charges domestic violence, cocaine, marijuana. In
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: nineteen ninety five, still on probation for the ordeal with
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: his neighbor, Flavor, Flave was busted in the South Bronx
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: with once again an unlicensed gun in his possession, this
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: time along with three vials of crack. Flavor Flave's routine
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: run ins with the law, his crippling addictions, addictions that
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: at one point were allegedly costing of twenty six hundred
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: dollars a day. He knew that these things were letting
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: Public Enemy down, that his own troubled image was now
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: undermining the image Pe worked so hard to define. Flave
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: was the antithesis to Chuck. By design, yes, but now
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: he was the personification of a broken promise, a failed revolution,
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: effectively closing off the dialogue the Public Enemy was trying
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: to raise with their music, not that they were giving
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: up on that dialogue. Just two years prior to Flav's arrest,
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: PE released their fourth studio album, Apocalypse ninety one, The
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: Enemy Strikes Black, which featured the powerful song By the
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: Time I Get to Arizona. This was at a time
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: when Arizona's governor refused to acknowledge Martin Luther King Junior
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: Day as a holiday. It was put to a ballot,
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: but wroters struck it down. For six years in a row,
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: Arizona citizens have been taken to the streets to voice
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: their frustration to get MLK Day on the calendar. They
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: marched and sang old protest songs. But this wasn't the sixties.
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: We Shall Overcome was overdone. Chuck and his crew had
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: a new protest song for a new era. In the
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: video for By the Time I Get to Arizona, Chuck
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: leads a group of assassins to the state where they poison, shoot,
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: and blow up politicians. To Chuck in Public Enemy, the
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: shock of it was the point, after all, that's what
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: they made. Wake the Fuck Up music, music whose purpose
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: was to start a dialogue. The video aired once on
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: MTV and then it was pulled. The governor of Arizona
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: called it racist. An Arizona pastor said that it perpetuated
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: a stereotype, the same stereotype that led to the murder
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: of graffiti artist Michael Stewart, the incarceration of the Central
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: Park five, and the assassination of Malcolm X. Back on,
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: it takes a nation of millions. Public Enemy opened the
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: song bring the Noise with the sound of Malcolm's voice.
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: Too black, too strong. Now, the band was being accused
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: of being just that, But to Chuck d that was impossible.
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: There was no such thing as too black, too strong.
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: To be anything less would be a disgrace. Yes, I'm
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: Jake Brennan and this is Disgraceland. Disgraceland was created by
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: Yours Truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis.
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: Credits for this episode can be found on the show
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: notes page at disgracelampod dot com. If you're listening as
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: a Disgraceland All Access member, thank you for supporting the show.
• 35:40
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• 35:43
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• 35:46
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• 35:51
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• 35:55
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• 36:04
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• 36:07
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• 36:14
  Speaker 1: at disgracelampod, Rock and roll Up. He's the bed Don
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: Man