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Chuck D: Rebel Without a Pause
By Jim Welte
Conducted January 4, 2007, 04:36 PM
On the road with his legendary hip-hop group, Public Enemy frontman Chuck D sounds off on his relationship with Flavor Flav, the state of hip-hop, and the upcoming 20th anniversary of PE's breakthrough album.

The opposing styles of Chuck D and Flavor Flav have always been the foundation of Public Enemy.

But those divergent personalities--Chuck the conscious commentator and Flav the jovial jester--also left some fans scratching their heads over the years, particularly as Flav has ventured down reality-show lane with his VH1 series, Flavor of Love.

In a concert in San Francisco last month, Flav's lengthy solo set took what had been a scorching set of classic PE and turned it into amateur night. MP3.com said as much in an MP3 Live concert review, and a certain Mr. Chuck D read it and expressed his disagreement in the comments section of the story.

We couldn't pass up the opportunity to chop it up with the legendary rapper and hear his take on his relationship with Flav, the state of hip-hop today, and the upcoming 20th anniversary of Public Enemy's landmark It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back.

Chuck?

Hey man, how are you?

I'm good. Yourself?

Good. We're in Spokane [Washington] right now.

Alright, great. Well, let's jump into it. Let's start with your show in San Francisco.

I know, I know, Flavor's a little over the top. I had to take into consideration that number one, in 2002 he didn't tour with us because he was incarcerated for some traffic violations. So when we hit the Fillmore, it was a tight show but it just didn't have him, you know.

Yeah, a key part of the whole equation, obviously.

Yeah, I would like to think so, you know. You get the rough edges along with the sweet.

Exactly.

And then I guess I didn't take into consideration that he was out [on stage at Mezzanine] for that long. Like, you know, it was just partly, he has a record out, so I really didn't pay it any mind. But my thing is sometimes, you know, you come out if it's too long--it's a thin line, you know. If it's just right, then we're going to come out smoking. If it's just too long, then, you know, it's something else, so.

And you guys have managed over a couple decades now to find that perfect balance between his thing and your thing and all that.

It's not my thing. It's more like it's his thing and then, you know, everybody else's thing, and then trying to find everybody else's balance within that. Now, one thing that helps is that, you know, they've got everything to play around with. Griff can play instruments. Flav can play the drums.

Has finding that balance over the years gotten easier or harder?

Oh, way easier. The hardest thing about the show sometimes is when to cut it back. But it's much easier to know that you have the flexibility with the band and band members and stuff like that, as opposed to before you felt a little constricted by the fact that you've got recordings that should--you know, you're doing a live DJ thing, but live DJ things at best are still recordings. You can't really improvise, or you don't have any flexibility past recordings.

Having a full band makes it easier to spread your wings a little bit.

Yeah, it's just another added element, you know. It's your recordings matched with the records and turntablism matched with a band matched with the timing of seeing where the vocals can arrange it. And sometimes you've got to be conscious of where you are. If you're playing somewhere like in the Ukraine, you know, those audiences, they might more than a four-hour show. And if you're playing in the area where there's a show every night by a stellar act then, you know, you've got to kind of know where you're getting down at. That's why I understood your article. I thought the headline was kind of crazy.

The headline was a little heavy-handed, as I said in my e-mail. But I hope you felt like the write-up itself was fair.

Yeah, absolutely. Pardon the noise, I'm actually picking up food for my brother and for Griff because I've got a rental car. You've got to remember that it's a team effort with PE. I know when I leave the stage at that particular time there's a very thin line on trying to keep the momentum up. It's almost like when you take a player out, you take him out of the starting lineup and you bring in the rest of the cats, you've got to keep the intensity.

And sometimes that happens and sometimes it doesn't, maybe.

Yeah, yeah. It's all--everything's timing.

Is it hard to kind of keep such a big group together on the road?
Nah. You look back to the guys of the '30s and the '40s. I just interviewed Quincy Jones. He had something like a 20-piece outfit in the mountains of Europe lost for about half a year. Touring in this millennium is a piece of cake. It's way different than when we started 20 years ago. The roads are right, the hotels are accommodating, and the venues are a better fit. We don't do more than 21 days nationally, no more than 14 days internationally. Because we live in nine different parts of the country now. And when we come together, we come together at one point and everybody has to know at least 100 days in advance what the schedule looks like. So it's a very organized outfit. This has always been the number one most organized outfit in the rap/hip-hop business. But I think that kind of gets overlooked because it's in the rap/hip-hop business.

Gotcha. Now, your partnership with Flavor is the foundation of this group. Has there ever been any tension there as he's done this reality thing?

It comes with an understanding that Flavor will never, ever change. So I always say when a camera goes on Flavor Flav, you know, you can expect anything. Seriously, though, I'm very happy he has an itinerary considering some of his problems before when he didn't have an itinerary, when he was away from Public Enemy and off the road, I think that's when problems arose. But I think he has a grasp on what he's going to do on TV and how to go about that. And, you know, it's just like, you know, Griff writes books and does some things in the documentary world. We have other members that have taken on aspects. It's important that everybody has an itinerary, so I'm not the one that says Flavor needs to do as I say. He's a grown man and needs to understand that when we come together, we've got to be able to record and also be cognizant of what he's doing and what we're about. But he's man enough to admit that.

I'm sure that a lot of your fans always wonder what that partnership is like. And it sounds like it just is what it is.

Well, I always tell people all the time, Public Enemy's a group. So, you know, it's not a duo. If it's a duo then you have a situation where maybe it's Andre 3000 and Big Boi, you know. But this is not that situation. Public Enemy has always been a group. It just depends on who recognizes the other aspects of the members of the group, you know. If somebody just says, "Public Enemy is Chuck D and Flavor Flav," not only is that a slight on him but it's a slight on hip-hop as not having complete outfits. I think a lot of people don't look at hip-hop groups the same way they do rock bands, but they should.

The New York Times just had an interesting article about how hip-hop has done a poor job of promoting its back catalog and that it always just focuses on the here and now. It mentioned It Takes a Nation of Millions as one of those records that is universally regarded as one of the greatest records of all time, but that it and others like LL Cool J's Bigger and Deffer and Run DMC's Raising Hell have seen sales plummet over the years compared to rock classics like Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, which still sells tens of thousands every year.

Well, I haven't read it, but you're talking about a 50-year industry versus a 25-year one. And there's room to grow. It also depends on where you're at and what country you're in, because over the last 10 years I've signed more copies of It Takes a Nation from kids in Japan than ever. We should also ask what this has to do with race. It seems to be a fundamental problem that black folks in the United States are not encouraged to check out history. I'm not talking about music. I'm just talking about all the way across the board. Therefore there's an issue of being able to revere it and honor it and hold it up high, whereas I guess white kids in America, if you want to just be blunt like that, have been encouraged to look it up. Hip hop has a lot of negligence where it's just about the music and nothing else. I mean, you came out with your article. Not to say I nitpick over every article, but if something comes across my face, I'm like, "Okay, I think I have an answer for this."

I wish there were more of that. That was fantastic.

Yeah. I mean, I care about what I do.

Absolutely. Bottom line is I'm a fan. I was at the show. I wrote it up, and it was a thrill that you read it.

Yeah. And that's the end of the story. And so where can we go from here? This is where hip-hop has to figure out on growing. It has to grow to the point where it's organized. Once upon a time hip-hop had a lot of people in a lot of different areas. Now it's kind of like treated like it's all about the charts because of corporate standards. And it's got to be a little bit more than that.

What's your take on Nas declaring that Hip-Hop Is Dead?

Well, you have to understand where he's coming from. By the time he came along in '94, I saw a tremendous drop-off in what was even existing before Nas came in. For example, when I first came in the hip-hop game at least two arena tours per year were the norm. Artists used to get down in the same places where the NBA teams play. So when Nas came in, there was a big drop-off. Matter of fact, we had moved on from headlining tours and we had moved on to opening up for the U2s and headlining for Sisters of Mercy. So somebody was supposed to come behind us and pick up the slack, and they just didn't because there was a fear factor with the [buildings] and with the promoters, so. Nobody really picked up on touring at a high level. I think Nas sees a lot of things missing from when he first was involved. I think he's saying there's a lot of things that tainted the term. I think Nas looks at a lot of these rappers, like Young Jeezy, who are basically just corporate entities, and asking them, "Can you guys actually give us more than what you're giving?" I don't know if it's fair to make that call, but I will tell you this much is that a person can make a record about whatever they want to make. But if they don't give you their all you have to really question whether that's any good for the fan. It's funny, though, that when I was Nas' age, I said a lot of the same things and I was called an old guy that doesn't know what he's talking about. And I'm seeing all these guys having the same concerns now.
Alright, last one: What's next for Public Enemy? A lot of people say that this last album was your best in years.

It's gotten a lot of rave reviews, and having Paris produce it gave it a West Coast sensibility that a lot of people liked, but we released three other pieces of product in the past two years. When it comes to delivering the music, I just take the reviews and all that with a grain of salt, good or bad. But the next year is one of those "pulling out all the stops" years, and it's the 20th year of PE and the album How Do You Sell Soul to a Soulless People Who Sold Their Soul will actually be one of those records that we position strongly.

I talked to Hank Shocklee earlier this year about the book he's got coming out about the history of Public Enemy. Are you involved in that?

It's his thing, but we have the same headquarters, so sitting down and working on it is just about picking what night we're going to stay up late. It should be ready by July or August. Check publicenemy.com for updates.

Hey Chuck, I really appreciate the time, man.

All right. Thank you.

You have a good one.

All right. Peace.

Source: www.mp3.com