Public Enemy Won't Sell Their Soul

Public Enemy (PE) is the only hip-hop group to last for 20 years or longer. On their last album, 2007's 'How You Sell Soul to a Soulless People Who Sold Their Soul?' the veteran and now middle-aged rappers and DJ mixologists put together an album consistent with their vision, yet matured along with them. 'How You Sell Soul to...' contains a lot of retrospective and recapitulation of the band's sound through the decades, never compromising, never careening off into escape from their middle age or success, but acknowledging and capturing their past and putting it into some fine new wine skins for present day consumption. Even the title of the album is an allusion to "Who Sold the Soul?" on their album 'Fear of a Black Planet.'

They have always been stand-outs among hip-hop artists for Chuck D's poetic and smarter-than-usual (whether they are right or wrong) political commentaries and the group's dense soundscapes, which take into their fold nearly any kind of music. There's the heavy metal guitar shredding on "Black is Back" (which makes metallic historical allusions not only musically but in the title, an obvious play off of AC/DC's "Back in Black"; it makes one wonder if there is another metallic historical allusion in this album's title--perhaps an oblique reference to Black Sabbath's 1975 album 'We Sold Our Soul for Rock N Roll'). 'Fear of a Black Planet' is alluded to yet again, musically, in the bridge sections of "Between Hard and Rock Place."

Public Enemy capture their past on "Can You Hear Me Now?" by including generous samples of their past work 'It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back.' They also show how the times have been a changin' as they rap against gangsta rap on "Sex, Drugs, and Violence" (only to use gangsta rap beats and rap styles, if not lyrical themes, on "Amerikan Gangster"). With Chuck D still the rapping political talking head, Flavor Flav continues to provide the comic relief--something that most hip-hop has forgotten about today, even though comedy was, arguably, what first put hip-hop on top.

Public Enemy also proved on 'How You Sell Soul...' that they are more interested in being true to the music than they are in getting mass commercial appeal. What they do sold big in the late 80s through the mid 90s, but today it only brings modest commercial success--another (ironic) way that they recapitulate their past in the present. Of course one could argue that they don't have to try too hard since they have plenty of money and a big enough core fan base to live a great life even now. But that's not the point in a line of work where more fame and more money is always desired. They don't deny this about themselves, as they embrace materialism on "Can You Hear Me Now?" Yet all in all, this is truly an album about the "soul" of music, not the green of it. That's what Public Enemy is about these days.

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