Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, June 29, 1990 TAG: 9006290377
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: TRACY WIMMER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Director Spike Lee knew it.
Last year when he was shooting his racially charged film "Do the Right Thing," Lee called on Public Enemy to concoct the track "Fight the Power," used at the movie's conclusion to whip the performers as well as the audience into a frenzy.
It worked.
Within months, some 500,000 singles were sold. Within weeks, "Fight the Power" became an anthem for today's black youth culture.
Public Enemy is more than entertainment. The band's seven members champion themselves as the great black hope dramatically fighting racial oppression, rejection and alienation with music.
Public Enemy's 1990 "Fear of a Black Planet" tour, which kicked off Wednesday in Richmond, comes to the Roanoke Civic Center Saturday night. Also appearing are Heavy D. and the Boyz, Kid 'N Play, Digital Underground, En Vogue and Chill Rob G.
The rap genre is an easy one to recognize. Rap - or hip-hop, to true believers - is a basic sound propelled by a slamming polyrhythmic beat. It is raw. It is loud. And its chanted lyrics are a mix of comedic boosterism and racial promotion - salted by some rap artists with profanity or demeaning remarks about whites, women and gays.
Lead Public Enemy rapper Chuck D (Carlton Ridenhour) and his comic sidekick Flavor Flav (William Drayton) are known for philosophizing about the plight of urban life: "911 Is a Joke," "Meet The G That Killed Me" (AIDS) and "Anti-Nigger Machine," all from their latest release, "Fear of a Black Planet."
But while nearly all rap groups sing about socially 4 1 RAP Rap important subjects like the evils of drugs, few are as militant as Public Enemy.
It's that militancy that has landed the group in hot water in the past. Last year Public Enemy faced charges of anti-Semitism after Richard Griffin, then the group's "Minister of Information" told a Washington Times reporter that Jews were responsible for "the majority of wickedness going on across the globe."
Chuck D promptly condemned the statement and ousted Griffin. A few days later, Def Jam, the group's record label, announced the group would disband. In the end, Public Enemy stayed together, and Griffin stayed on.
Harry Allen, a self-described "Hip-Hop Activist and Media Assassin" who is often quoted in Rolling Stone magazine, Time and on MTV, avoided the anti-Semitism issue during a telephone interview from his Long Island, N.Y., office Wednesday.
"Please refer your questions to the Library of Congress, which maintains the complete body of all the copyright work on the subjects," Allen said.
But that was about the only subject the friendly and frank Allen avoided. As director of Enemy Relations, the group's publicity office, Allen has been faced with a lot of criticism concerning rap lately. On June 13, authorities in Prince William County ordered record store owners not to sell the rap album "As Nasty as They Wanna Be" by 2 Live Crew, based on a Virginia law that prohibits the sale of sexually explicit sound recordings to children. Florida officials have responded by arresting two group members during concerts and by banning the million-plus selling album, with both a black and a Hispanic judge ruling that it violates the state's obscenity law.
The lyrics are incredibly harsh, far beyond the limits of mainstream rap. For example, one song that boasts of mutilating a woman before forcing her to "kneel and pray" could be considered mild compared to the album's other tunes.
Still, Allen calls the ban a racist decision. And Chuck D, who is a friend of 2 Live Crew's Luke Skyywalker, is calling the Florida ban a "modern-day lynching," Allen said.
"While we do not do records like 2 Live Crew, we understand where they come from," Allen said. "We need to understand the First Amendment. We also need to understand why that, when African men in America start to talk about sex, white men in America get nervous."
With no state statutes about explicit lyrics, Roanoke-area record stores are left to handle controversial albums as they see fit.
A month ago, Record Exchange employees began telling anyone under age 16 that they could not purchase explicit lyric music there. Cyndi Gibson, manager at the Brambleton Avenue store, said at least 30 percent of her store's total sales are in rap music, noting that a lot of heavy-metal fans also purchase rap.
Gibson called the 2 Live Crew album "very, very strong medicine that a lot people have started buying simply because of the publicity."
Louise Kaiser, owner of Kaiser's Music Center downtown, said she sent the 2 Live Crew albums back to her record distributor after she heard about the controversy.
"The kids know and the parents didn't know" about the album's lyrics, Kaiser said. "Then the parents would end up going into deep shock."
But Allen holds that the line between banning a 2 Live Crew album and one by Public Enemy is literally paper-thin: "Why is Madonna paid so well for dancing off-beat in her underwear, and why is Andrew Dice Clay starring in a major-motion picture, while Luke Skyywalker - black, independent and rich - is dodging lawsuits?"
But Public Enemy is not 2 Live Crew. In fact, the concert lineup includes bands that don't make parents nervous.
Take Kid 'N Play. Christopher "Kid" Reid and Christopher "Play" Martin major in light, happy raps about nights out and their own talents. "2 Hype," their debut release, sold more than a million copies, and their recent film, "House Party," was a box-office success. This fall, NBC will give the duo their own cartoon series - not a likely option for Public Enemy.
Public Enemy is not afraid to appear with any group, Allen said, maintaining the concert lineup was not an attempt to mollify parents who might be purchasing tickets.
"There is still a lot of unwarranted racist opposition to the music which makes hip-hop combinations difficult," Allen said. "A lot of building managers would like to book shows that you would see and then forget. Well, Public Enemy doesn't do those kind of shows."
The group's purpose both "in concert and in general is to rescue black history - to free it from denial, defamation and destruction."
by CNB