It’s been five years since the last Public Enemy album, but the band’s frontman, Chuck D, hasn’t exactly been putting his feet up. “I’m a furnace,” he declares, and he’s not wrong. In the past few years, he has published a graphic novel, released a solo album and narrated an acclaimed TV series about hip-hop,all while hosting shows on his global radio network. This month, Public Enemy return with their 16th studio album, Black Sky Over the Projects: Apartment 2025. “I’m diversified across so many areas,” he tells me, “but Public Enemy is a juggernaut – it is a locomotive of its own.”
That locomotive has shed a few parts during the past 40 years – their DJ Terminator X left in 1999 to raise emus, and the band’s Minister of Information, Professor Griff, was forced to leave in 1989 after making antisemitic remarks in a newspaper interview. (“Griff’s statements were wrong, and I apologised. He also apologised to me,” Chuck D said at the time, after announcing that “Griff had to lose his position.”)
