Public Enemy first placed the music industry in its infamous crosshairs in 1987 with the release of their breakout album Yo! Bum Rush the Show!. At the time, the military industrial complex was thriving thanks to the Reagan/Bush regime, and hip-hop, which had yet to be completely co-opted by the mainstream, was famously tagged by Chuck D as the "black CNN." 2002: the nations have seen some turnover in staffing, but the political landscape remains largely the same. What has changed is hip-hop and its role in the national political dialogue. In today's climate, it would be unimaginable for an aggressively political group such as Public Enemy to achieve the levels of commercial success and exposure that they did in the late 80s. Hip-hop-- particularly mainstream, though the underground is not inculpable-- has degenerated into an iced-out billboard for hyper-capitalism and MTV culture. Instead of saying "fuck tha police" or "fight the power," today's hip-hop heavyweights implore their audience to buy their clothing line and obey their thirsts.
Hip-hop statesman/PE frontman Chuck D, realizing that the grip of corporate capitalism has strangled hip-hop's ability to invoke public dissent, has now embarked on a mission to redefine the cultural parameters of the music. "The [hip-hop] culture has been bought and sold," Chuck D recently told Bay Area DJ Davey D. "As a people, we aren't even at the packaging table. The determination is being made elsewhere." So it's evident that Chuck D is still very articulate with his views. What's revolutionary about Revolverlution, though, isn't its socialist-charged rhetoric, but its decentralized means of dissemination and its level of audience interactivity.
Since 1998, Public Enemy have established four separate websites to achieve their goals: Rapstation.com is a general hip-hop news site; Bringthenoise.com offers a real-time live feed of underground and mainstream hip-hop; and the main facet of Publicenemy.com is the message board, which is both widely popular and closely monitored by the band members to gauge audience attitudes and encourage an open dialogue between artist and audience. Slamjamz.com, however, is perhaps the most innovative of all four-- here, the band made 1999's There's a Poison Goin' On available via MP3s, and have consistently posted instrumental and a capella versions, encouraging fans to manipulate them and share the results.
Last August, Public Enemy posted four a cappellas ("By the Time I Get to Arizona," "Shut 'Em Down," "B-Side Wins Again," and "Public Enemy #1") to the website, and requested visitors to remix them for inclusion on Revolverlution. And from the sound of the remixes that ended up making the cut, Chuck D's still got a pretty good ear-- the tracks are disjointedly experimental, and the new sound breathes new life into these classics for 2002. The "B-Side Wins Again" remix, in particular, really stands out. The minimalist yet funky drum track fades in and out, augmented by densely textured and frenzied samples that perfectly complement Chuck D's riotous homage to b-sides. Not many old-school acts could pull off such an audacious revision, but Public Enemy have always been musically ahead of the game; their siren-laden sound collages provided the blueprint for everyone from NWA to Company Flow.
Noticing that audiences tend to digest mix CDs better than full-lengths in the post-Napster world, Chuck D sought to structure Revolverlution so that it mimicked the Internet mixdisc. And in order to concoct what Chuck has called a "compilation of ourselves," Revolverlution also includes several live selections of their classics, an interview with Big Daddy Kane and Ice Cube on the making of "Burn Hollywood Burn," and a post-concert interview in 1992 that covers how Arizona dealt with the controversy that arose when it refused to recognize the Martin Luther King holiday-- a political mess that was chronicled in the PE classic "By the Time I Get to Arizona." Of the live tracks, "Fight the Power" and "Welcome to the Terrordome," both recorded in Switzerland in 1992, capture the blistering energy of the group's acclaimed live show and also demonstrate the international eminence of hip-hop.
Of course, while the album's structure is both inventive and successful in recontextualizing Public Enemy's past, it does result in diluting the focus of the new songs, a hit-or-miss assemblage of tracks addressing the post-9/11 political climate. "Gotta Give the Peeps What They Need" kicks off the album with a sample declaring that "our society is fucked up, they are fucking our brothers and sisters up," followed by Flavor Flav and Chuck D alternately screaming broken imagery in vintage PE fashion. "See Uncle Sam pissin' on us," Chuck D declares before the chorus repeats what has become a mantra of sorts for the band: "Before you give the people what they want, you gotta give them what they need."
But the most pointed critique on Revolverlution seems to be aimed at the hip-hop community. "Gotta Get Your Shit Together" addresses hip-hop's reaction to 9/11: "Cold and dark is the weather y'all," Chuck spits over a bludgeoning drum track, "Gotta get your shit together." This works on occasion, but it's true that Chuck no longer seamlessly spits the witty and confrontational critique that characterized It Takes a Nation of Millions or Fear of a Black Planet. And, with its guitar soloing theatrics and 7th Octave's Zach de la Rocha-like squealing, "What Good Is the Bomb" may be the worst song to ever have been tagged with the PE name.
Yet, despite these moments when PE shows their age, they have largely prevailed with Revolverlution by revamping the very structure of how we digest music. One can only hope that their ability to examine the relationship between themselves and their audience will be infectious, and that other hip-hop crews will pick up where the group left off.
