When did you last see Terminator X and has he ever let you ride on one of the ostriches on his ostrich farm? Grimpeurs
Public Enemy does a conference Zoom call every two weeks, so, yeah, I still speak to him once in a while. I’ve eaten ostrich in South Africa years ago. But, no. It wasn’t an ostrich farm anyway, it was an emu farm, and it was destroyed by a hurricane in the late 90s or early 00s. This just shows you how digital news never goes away. It’s like radiation. That’s why we have to watch it with news, because they’re still saying Terminator X has his ostrich farm, and no matter how many times we refute it, this same dumb-ass question comes up. It’s no one’s fault: it just shows how far we’ve got [to go] to get the space junk out of orbit, bro.
The music you made in the 80s still sounds vital and fresh, like it was made yesterday. Of today’s hip-hop artists, who do you think will still be talked about in 35 years, and what current artists inspire you? Hhhhssss
There’s so many, it’s hard to choose. I play a lot of these artists on my radio show on Rapstation: Skyzoo, Substantial, Lazarus – who’s also a doctor – to name a few. One of my reasons for doing the Fight the Power documentary for the BBC is to let people know the world of hip-hop is as deep as jazz. I think the future of hip-hop and rap is Africa, with artists such as Sampa the Great. In fact, women play a large part in hip-hop worldwide. They’re not taking any slack, either; they’re coming hard: at least 33% of the worldwide hip-hop output is from women, and that’s great.
The Red Hot Chili Peppers are avowed Public Enemy fans, and have used songs such as You’re Gonna Get Yours as a rhythmic basis for their own material. Are you surprised how influential hip-hop has been to alt-rock bands? Jay_Murpheus
No, because music is music.
What was it like first performing in the UK all those years ago, seeing a sea of white faces staring back at you? CeefaxTheCat
If you go to a country that’s predominantly top-to-the-bottom white, that’s what you’re going to see. If I was in Nigeria, it would have been all Black faces. The UK was somewhere we relished because we knew words would be written about us, what we thought and where we had come from.
We went head-to-head as adults and hit the issues face to face. I think, at the time, a lot of kids listened to music in their adolescent spaces and the journalists threw their candy back at them. Except we weren’t candy – we were deep coffee, you know what I mean? The caffeine was the rap and the sugar was the motherfucking hip-hop. When we came to the UK, we paid our dues, but it was a two-way street. We wanted to stake the UK because we knew it was different from the US as far as freedom went. The English language had taken over the world, so we thought: why not plug hip-hop into it? The British had beaten the English language into so many cultures; bringing rap music back to the UK was our British invasion.
Why, when the Black experience in the US remains so difficult, does hip-hop engage with politics so fleetingly? Only a handful of artists have taken up your baton in almost 40 years. LaurenceN
Because the revolution can’t be sold. It can’t be marketed the way other music is marketed; it has to be given to the people. We had the blessing of right age, right place, right time. I was the right person with the right thing going on: Black music in New York. But it’s one thing to have coincidence and happenstance; you’ve also got to make it work. For me, hoping and praying was never enough. In the great words of Q-Tip: “To make something happen, let’s make something happen.”
Do you still have the same fire for political activism as you did in your 20s? Your words radicalised me as a young man. Or is it now just school runs and paying the bills? Somethingclever1
Very few things about a human being should be the same over 35, 40 years. When I was 27, the fire was different, but the release was different. Now I’m 62. Right now, we’re talking over Zoom, but we don’t need the screen between us; we can grasp on to the words. Today’s generations are different, so having the same fire as other human beings makes no sense. You adapt your fire, you control the temperature, you’ve got to adapt your energy. When you’re sixtysomething years old, you’ve got to manage everything: energy, space and time.
Your voice is one of the most authoritative in music. Which historical speech would you most like to recreate? DeJongandtherestless
I’ve Been to the Mountaintop by Dr Martin Luther King Jr.
Does working with Flavor Flav mean you can’t use the excuse: sorry, I didn’t realise what time it was? TopTramp
There were never any new batteries in his clock, so I was the one always making sure we were on time! Will there be another Public Enemy album? I’m available any time, but my desk is so full that it already takes me out of my time space of celebrating our last album, [2020’s] What You Gonna Do When the Grid Goes Down?
Should Fight the Power have won the Oscar for best original song? Omar04
No, we’re happy with it being the most important song in hip-hop.
How can the US become a more equal society? andrewlon
The whole world can move toward being a more equal society by bringing back the power of the United Nations. Social media and cellphones mean that cultures are all now all intertwined. People know who I am through music and culture, so I’ve always followed up with a great appreciation for the difference between human beings. Governments like to split and categorise human beings, but culture and hip-hop unites human beings and throws the differences to the side.
Are you pleased how hip-hop has progressed over the years? There seems to be a lot of rubbish out there (like any genre), but does the quality tip the balance in the right direction? Eelsupinsideya
Hip-hop and rap music could always be better, but we need more curators and administrators who care about the art and the artists.
How much police harassment and FBI intimidation did Public Enemy receive in its heyday? Fussyandhonest
I don’t know about intimidation, but, yeah, probably more than anybody in music. It’s nothing to be annoyed by. It’s what it is. The most I could do was to make songs about it. On Public Enemy’s first album, Yo! Bum Rush the Show, we said the governments are responsible. Governments plural because governments like to split up human beings, but music likes to unite people.
Charles Dickens, Charles Darwin or you: who’s the best Chuck D? GazMac
You’re asking me? Of course I’m going to say I’m the best Chuck D! But if you ask the average person, I can understand why they would choose Darwin or Dickens. I’m just glad to be in that Jeopardy category.
• Fight the Power: How Hip-Hop Changed the World is on BBC Two and BBC iPlayer from 21 January.
