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Chuck D Brings the Noise to Syracuse University

March 30, 2006
My dear friend Gina Stankovitz is great! She has been a true friend and supporter for many years. Over the years, he has come out to see me perform at innumerable Born Again Savages shows, and even had me speak about Marketing in front of the Arts Management class she teaches at Cazenovia College.
This time the lovely Miss Gina helped me out in my HeroQuest to meet my Top Ten Living Rock & Roll Heroes.
Gina works full-time as a curator at one of Syracuse University's museums. On March 30th, after receiving an email about it, she called me and let me know that Chuck D, founder of the legendary Hip-Hop group Public Enemy, was to be the keynote speaker at Syracuse University's Grassroots Media Convention.
The Black Voice, a student publication, and the Association of Black Journalists were sponsoring the event and Chuck D agreed to come and speak on short notice because the original keynote speaker, Asha Bendele, (editor of Essence Magazine), was unable to attend due to scheduling conflicts.
I asked Gina when it was and she said, "Tomorrow at 3:30." She also told me tickets to the event were free, but you still had to drop by the Box Office at Schine Student Center to get them. So, I immediately dropped everything I was doing and made plans to go.
(I had met Chuck D before at a lecture at SU and had a short talk with him. He was very cool. At that time, I suggested that Public Enemy should do a cover of the Bob Dylan classic "Subterranean Homesick Blues". I even did a small bit of the song while doing my best Chuck D impression. The idea made him go "Hmmm…" Back to the story…)

I called a few friends to get others to go see Chuck D speak, but the only ones that would be joining me for the address were Sven O'Neil and my daughter Eliza.

March 31, 2006
Sven showed up at my house and we were off. Eliza kept asking whom we were going to see. I explained who Chuck D was. She seemed confused until I told her he was in a band with Flavor Flav. She knew right away who he was because of the television show The Flavor of Love.
The lecture took place at 3:30 in the student center's Schine Underground, a large room used for conferences and concerts. (I performed in there once with my old band the Born Again Savages.) Sven, Eliza, and I arrived early and got seats right in the first row, directly in front of the podium. Soon, one of the symposium's hosts walked up to the microphone and welcomed everyone. He thanked us for coming out and introduced Chuck D.

Chuck D, is a Rapper, composer, actor, lecturor, author, radio personality and producer. He was born Carlton Douglas Ridenhour in Roosevelt, Long Island, on August 1, 1960. His parents were both political activists, and he was a highly intelligent student, turning down an architecture scholarship to study graphic design at Long Island's Adelphi University.
While in school, he put his talents to use making promotional flyers for hip-hop events, and went on to co-host a hip-hop mix show on the campus radio station with two future Public Enemy cohorts, Bill Stephney and Hank Shocklee.
Under the name Chuckie D, he rapped on Shocklee's demo recording, "Public Enemy No. 1," which caught the interest of Rick Rubin at Def Jam Records. In response, the now simply named Chuck D assembled Public Enemy, a group designed to support the force of his rhetoric with noisy, nearly avant-garde soundscapes.
With his powerful, authoritative baritone, Chuck D rhymed about all kinds of social problems, particularly those plaguing the black community, often condoning revolutionary tactics and social activism. In the process, he directed hip-hop toward an explicitly self-aware, pro-Black consciousness that became the culture's signature throughout the next decade.
Public Enemy debuted in 1987 with Yo! Bum Rush the Show, a dry run for one of the greatest three-album spans in hip-hop history.
Released in 1988, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back was acclaimed by many critics as the greatest hip-hop album of all time, and was instrumental in breaking rap music to white, alternative rock audiences.
Fear of a Black Planet (1990) and its follow-up, Apocalypse '91...The Enemy Strikes Black, consolidated Public Enemy's position as the most important rap group of its time.
There were storms of controversy along the way, most notably Chuck D's endorsement of the polarizing Muslim minister Louis Farrakhan, and group member Professor Griff's highly publicized anti-Semitic slurs.
As the frontman for Public Enemy, Chuck D became one of the most recognizable figures in the history of Hip-Hop.

He redefined hip-hop as music with a message, in an era when Rap was closely scrutinized for its content. Although Rap's primary concerns have changed over the years, its status as America's most controversial art form has only gotten stronger since Public Enemy hit the scene. The group's strident radicalism drew much attention from the media and government alike.
Chuck D and Public Enemy epitomized the essence of grassroots and have practiced freedom of speech for years in an attempt to elevate African-American communities. The lyrics to many of Public Enemy's songs bring to light the everyday struggles of those in the Black community and revealed the anger that it produced. It was something that is reminiscent of Punk Rock. The music style was different, but the ethic was exactly the same.

Though the Hip-Hop style started off very party-oriented, it eventually became extremely confrontational with bands such as Public Enemy and Run DMC being prime examples.
Filmmaker Don Letts once said, "Hip-Hop is Black Punk rock." And I agree with him whole-heartedly. The connection being that people from the working class were seizing culture for their own use.
I had been saying the same thing for years, and it was Public Enemy that drove that idea home for me. The group's "in your face" attitude, militant appearance, scathing political commentary, and genuine shock value was everything I wanted in a group.
There are many links between early Rap and Punk, and in the African-American community, the rise of Hip-Hop paralleled the rise of Punk. Hip-Hop, like Punk, is another form of street music. It is hard-core, tough, and real. It rattled the establishment. Black youth of the time took issues and addressed them through a new form of music that belonged to them. The same anger with authorities, unemployment, and the limiting prospects of a bleak future combined to create a new style that frightened the older generation.
Punk stripped Rock & Roll down to its bare bones of guitar, bass and drums eliminating the bloated and overproduced sound of the almost orchestral progressive rock bands of the 70's. But Hip-Hop took it even one step further, eliminating all the instruments and using a DJ to provide the beats and sounds behind the vocals. The sound, with its heavy bass, "scratching" and sampling was new, and many of the performers were learning their skills and perfecting them on stage in front of audiences. This was something that commonly happened in the Punk scene as well.
Like Punk, Hip-Hop is about feelings. It's not sung, it's shouted or spit into the microphone. It doesn't matter if you can sing perfectly or hit the high notes, what matters is that you can open your mouth and make a statement. (But with Hip-Hop, it helps a LOT if you can turn a good rhyme.)

It was no wonder that after Hip-Hop became more popular, bands such as the Beastie Boys, a former NYC Hardcore band, took to the studio and tried their hand at the new form. The Beastie Boys' incredible success opened the eyes of many and inspired other Rock musicians to collaborate with Hip-Hop artists.
It was this ideal that lead to Public Enemy collaborating with Thrash Metal masters Anthrax and releasing a cover of the Public Enemy song "Bring The Noise". The song was a big hit for both groups.

Chuck D released his first solo album, The Autobiography of Mistachuck, in 1996, and published the book version of his autobiography the following year. He reconvened Public Enemy for the soundtrack to Spike Lee's 1998 film, He Got Game, and the following year left Def Jam over the label's refusal to allow him to distribute Public Enemy music via free Internet downloads.
Signing with the web-based Atomic Pop label, Chuck became an outspoken advocate of MP3 technology, and made 1999's There's a Poison Goin' On... the first full-length album by a major artist to be made available over the Internet (it was later released on CD as well).
On the whole, Public Enemy's groundbreaking body of work established Chuck D as one of the most intelligent, articulate spokesmen for the Black community. He became an in-demand speaker on the college lecture circuit, and was frequently invited to provide commentary on TV news programs.
Since 2000, Chuck D has been one of the most vocal supporters of Internet music file sharing in the music industry. Chuck has been increasingly involved politically. He co-hosted Unfiltered on Air America Radio, he has testified before Congress about peer-to-peer MP3 sharing, and was involved in a 2004 rap political convention. He was a featured panelist (with Lars Ulrich of Metallica) on the May 12, 2000 episode of the Charlie Rose show. Rose was discussing the Internet, copyright infringement, Napster Inc., and the future of the music industry.

Chuck D offered a pro-file-sharing argument, as a counter to Ulrich's critique of filesharing.
On a lighter side, Chuck D appeared on an episode of Space Ghost: Coast to Coast. While there, Space Ghost tried (and failed) to show he was "hip" to Rap, saying his favorite rapper was M.C. Escher. (If Escher could rap as well as he drew, he would have been the shizzle!)
Chuck also appeared on The Henry Rollins Show and in an episode of NewsRadio as himself.
Chuck D has also been involved in films. He appeared on-camera for the PBS program Independent Lens in a movie titled Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes, and was the narrator in the Kareem Adouard short film "Bling: Consequences and Repercussions" which explains how diamonds in "Bling" fashion can be "conflict diamonds", fueling wars and killings in Africa.
Chuck D continues to be an activist, publisher, lecturer, producer, and more. He is the co-writer of the essay book Fight the Power: Rap, Race, and Reality, along with Yusuf Jah. Chuck D also founded the record company Slam Jamz. He even loaned his voice to the video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas as DJ Forth Right MC for the radio station Playback FM.
Even if Public Enemy never recaptures the popularity or vitality of its glory years, Chuck D's legacy is secure enough to keep him a respected voice on the American cultural landscape.

Chuck began his speech by saying that we might recognize him as "that guy in the band with Flavor Flav" and everyone laughed. He also informed us that he would be leaving immediately after his speech because he was scheduled to appear at another college in New York City that night and had to catch a flight.
He then began his oratory and we all listened intently. While he occasionally glanced at notes placed on the podium, the talk was more often than not an improvised affair as he discussed how the media could be more responsible in serving the public. He lashed out at MTV (which he referred to as "Empty-V"), BET ("the Booty En' Thug Network"), and Vibe magazine ("a cultural coloring book"), calling them weapons of mass distraction that show pre-packaged, empty programming, that don't give viewers anything more than mass-marketed corporate products. He also criticized the news media for lack of integrity in their reporting and fact checking.
He brought up many good points and encouraged students to be aware of their audience and how they could best serve them. Near the end, Chuck took questions from the audience. I waited until everyone else was done and then raised my hand to ask a question. It was silly, but I asked if I could get a photo with him before he left. He laughed and said yes. When he finished he received a standing ovation from the crowd.
Chuck then signaled for me to come up on the stage. I jumped up and Sven snapped our photo. I shook Chuck D's hand and thanked him.

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