![]() ![]() intensified Run-D.M.C.'s sonic blueprint. Then taking little snatches of records to build them up and create an idea." Scratches and cuts were the instruments being played in this. People had done it with snippets but I wanted to compose the whole thing only using the samples inside the drum machine and using the DJ as the musician. And I knew at the time it could fly under the radar because nobody had done it. The record had to be made from what I had-my records. All we had was five grand, so you can’t hire musicians with five grand. "Run-DMC and Whodini were using keyboard players, bass players, guitar players. ![]() "This is a time when everybody else was hybriding with live musicians and drum machines," Shocklee shared. Public Enemy's ethos, image and sound were all revolutionary. The Cosby Show was the most popular sitcom non-threatening artists like Whitney Houston and Lionel Richie topped the charts and, coming on the heels of 1960s and early 70s racial turmoil, such presentations of Black faces were seen as progressive. On the one hand, there was the much-ballyhooed emergence of a so-called Black middle class and the embrace of inoffensive, widely-appealing, successful Blackness became a part of the popular narrative. The 1980s represented a uniquely dichotomous time for Black America. It took me two years to sit him down, for him to believe that he could be a rapper.” And Chuck came on and did an announcement for a party and I was like, ‘Woah!’ He caught my attention more than the 50 other rappers up there. So I had to sit through this nonsense and hopefully see somebody because I was looking for an MC for my DJ set. There was one mic and everybody had to bust a verse and all these cats were wack. But they weren’t called rap battles, it was just rappin’ when Chic’s “Good Times” got spun by the DJ. "Who was doing an announcement at a party that I was going to, that was the first of many rap battles to come. “I was the guy that brought everybody to the table when I found Chuck," Hank Shocklee explained to Okayplayer in 2017. The song was called "Lies" and it's B-side was "Check Out the Radio." The song flopped and the 27-year old Chuck decided any ambition to be a rapper was unrealistic. After Hank Shocklee decided the group should be named after Chuck's famous record, they rush-recorded an official single as "Public Enemy. ![]() At the urging of Stephney, Chuck needed to make the group official. 1" was generating tremendous buzz around New York City at this time, even Run-D.M.C. And Stephney steered Rubin to Public Enemy, this crew led by Chuck, with screechy Flav, DJ Terminator X and a militant pro-Black message. Stephney linked with Def Jam after Rick Rubin asked him to come work for the label. This crew would form the core of the Bomb Squad, while also providing the launching pad for Public Enemy. 1." Chuck had also linked with a crew that included Bill Stephney, Harry Allen, Hank Shocklee and Andre Brown, who would soon come to be known as Doctor Dre of Yo! MTV Raps fame. ![]() A former student at Adelphi University, Carlton DJed as "Chucky D" on campus radio station WBAU, where Chuck and his buddy Flavor Flav (William Drayton) recorded a quasi-anthem for Chuck called "Public Enemy No. That's Flavor Flav and Professor Griff, for anyone unsure.Ĭarlton Ridenhour was serious about music. It had a profound effect not just on myself but on other people in Public Enemy like Shocklee, Flavor and Griff.” The camp had students, rebels, Nation of Islam, Black Panthers… they were our counsellors! It made us challenge the theory of Columbus when we got back in the fourth grade. They encouraged me to be outspoken and they encouraged me to be studied, not just to speak at the top of my lungs. If you weren’t socially responsible then you were a louse. "My parents were around 28-29 in 1969-70,” Chuck D said in a 2019 interview with NME. But now, Def Jam was about to take a chance on a collective from Long Island, led by a 26-year old former-deliveryman-turned-DJ with an ear to the street and a mind for revolution. Not a by-the-numbers brand, Def Jam had already established that it could build a unique, individualized kind of rap star: LL burst out of the gate as a teenaged b-boy oozing bravado and charisma while the Beasties had traded on a "frat-rap" party image that endeared them to Midwestern metalheads and jocks. The label had seen explosive successes with LL COOL J's 1985 debut Radio and 1986s multiplatinum-selling Licensed To Ill by the Beastie Boys. In just under four years, Def Jam Recordings had gone from upstart label based in Rick Rubin's NYU dorm room to inking a major distribution with CBS Records. ![]()
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