Fighting the Power in a New Millennium

Chuck D is one of those people whose impact on culture is felt by nearly everyone. A man who made his name as the frontman of the rap group Public Enemy, Chuck gained a reputation as someone who speaks his mind regardless of the consequences, and usually has the knowledge and intellectual prowess to back himself up.

These days, the better part of two decades after starting Public Enemy, Chuck D can look back on a career that includes some of the most ground-breaking sociopolitical music this nation has ever heard; he was one of the first to bridge the gap between rap music and rock; he’s written an excellent book called Fight The Power: Rap Race & Reality that tackles, among other things, issues of black culture — music and media — in America today; he’s been interviewed by the likes of Terry Gross and Charlie Rose; and has helmed several music and media projects of his own, including doing some reporting for Fox News. His current projects are his latest musical exploit, the rock-rap amalgam Confrontation Camp, and his quest to champion digital music and file-sharing — subjects he discussed when The Synthesis recently caught up with Chuck D at his studio.

Well, the Confrontation Camp record was a situation with Kyle Jason — a producer songwriter partner of mine who’s been fronting rock bands for, like, the last 10 or 15 years. I always wanted to be able to put together a fusion of the two styles. We had been talking about Confrontation Camp for about five or six years, and we decided to get busy with it in ’97, and were able to do some more with it in ’98 and ’99. It just happened to be at that time that everybody was going hoopla over the rap-rock connection, which to us was not very new at all.

It’s testosteronic, it’s rebellious, it has got a lot of angst in it, and it’s definitely on the macho, male tip. Those are the similarities. I think rap has a lot to learn from rock, and I think also rock has a lot to learn from rap, because of its use of other genres of music. It’s a turntable music, an overdub music, so rap’s tendency to borrow from other elements and morph that into its own style is something that has always kept it around. Rap is just the vocals, also, so you can take the vocals, put it over different genres and you’re good to go.

Well, the future is the present. I mean, what more do you need to say? It’s here, it’s been here, and it’s almost like when blues morphed into rock ‘n’ roll. It turned into a whole different thing. Music always evolves.

Trying to stop file sharing is like trying to stop the rain. I’m on public record saying that. The fact of the matter is that the public has built this community amongst itself using technologies to share music. That means that the music business, which always prided itself as being ahead of the game, is definitely behind in knowing the what the public really wants. So the industry is on a catastrophic course right now, and it’s turning into another industry. I’m very happy to be a part of that parallel industry — the third level of artists and labels on the Internet, the Int-ies — it doesn’t have the corruption and the red-tape the traditional industry prides itself in. Napster’s only problem is the government. That’s the only thing that can stop Napster — government.

I licensed that album through Atomic Pop, and I also licensed it through six other companies throughout the world, which has been a very successful thing for me. I think that Atomic Pop had good intentions from the beginning, but I think it got twisted when they expanded a little bit too much. They needed more money. Ten million dollars for a record company is really nothing if you want to compete with strong independents and strong majors, and they just couldn’t find that money. I’m launching SlamJamz.com, a rap and hip-hop label, and it’s a prototype. I think you should be micro-focused into what you’re about and be limited as far as expansion into all these different areas when it comes down to spending.

I’m keeping it pretty narrowed to Slam Jamz, Rap Station and Public Enemy, and I’m a person that’s always doing nine different things at once. I’ve done everything including scoring for television, and I think that the ancillary areas like television, movies, commercials and video games, as well as the e-commerce potential and unlimited off-line potential, are the things that will make my label work.

Super-media and the Internet interest me because you can get to a lot of people in a small amount of time with little expense. And working with Fox was a wonderful experience, it just became a time issue and I got into more music. But it was a great experience, it helped me out and it helped them out. They cross their Ts and dot their Is very carefully.

I try to use it as an outlet for expression, and just being a music fan. I’m increasingly becoming a fan of 50s R&B, and that’s coming off a period where I was totally entrenched in the blues, which came off a period where I was totally entrenched in early-60s British invasion rock. You know, I’m always searching, and loving what I find.

It can use any kind of music underneath it, and it can transcend all cultures and genres of people.

Well, it’s a weird paradox. We want the Green Party to extend, so they have to get enough votes to be funded so they can exist in the next election. But any vote for the Green Party is not a vote for Gore, which means a vote for Bush. That’s the paradox that exists and some people have it in mind that we’ll just have four years of Bush, then hurry up and get him outta there. But those four years are very critical to a lot people’s existence and a lot of businesses’ existences. A lot of people are trying to get a fair shake.

For the big picture, I’m looking ahead two years right now. I can’t look farther than that because two years is like five years nowadays. I foresee in the record industry a million labels and a million artists doing their thing on the Internet. You had the majors and the indies and now the Int-ies will exist. As far as society is concerned, I think we’ll see more people figure out how to navigate information better than before, and that will be necessary because anything and everything will be tossed around. As much as you have fact tossed around, you’ll have rumor tossed around as well, so it will be up to people’s abilities to be able to use reasoning, sense and logic to figure out what’s real and what’s not real.

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