Chuck D

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Please, won’t you join me in welcoming Mr Chuck D.

[Applause]

Yesterday, all these participants came in on their first day and introduced themselves, talked a little bit about their personal journey to get here. I wondered if you might share your journey to get to music, because it really wasn’t part of the game plan originally, right?

Chuck D

No. Number one, my personal journey to get here yesterday was kind of f---ed up by London Heathrow and then Iberia Airlines, they just took all damn day and they lost my bag. So I couldn’t make you a really righteous CD, I just pulled something off what I call a Vamp player, which I’ll show you later. My personal musical journey came by accident because I grew up as a big sports fan. In New York, where I was born, in Queens, I was a big fan of baseball, which is the New York Mets, and basketball, which is the New York Knicks, and American football, which is the New York Jets. And around the time, I was eight or nine, they all won their championships, so that threw me further into fanaticism. I just wanted to be a sports announcer, listening to sports talk shows.

Music was always in my household. My mother was into Motown, Stax, Atlantic in the ‘60s, my father played jazz and some James Brown. I listened to music quite casually, but then in the 1970s I listened to a lot of AM radio – big AM radio fan. WABC was the radio station in the New York metropolitan area. It played top 40, pop radio, but what I thought was exciting were the DJs, the jocks, and the way they used to come on, [affects voice] “WABC, Dan Ingram.” I just loved the voices, and I wanted to become a sports announcer. And there was one guy who bridged the gap, George Michael.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

The Sports Machine, not the George Michael you may all know from “Careless Whisper.”

Chuck D

Not that George Michael. He was a DJ on WABC, so when he flipped over into sports, I thought that was a cool thing. The music bug bit me around ‘76/’77. I wanted to play ball all the time and I went to this place called Higher Ground, named after the Stevie Wonder record. Half of the place was basketball, half was music with this thing they called a “DJ.” Now, we always thought a DJ meant a discotheque guy, and they would wear silk shirts and be behind this gigantic foundation platform. So, we would walk a mile to this place in the wintertime to try to get our ball on. But they only had two rims, and everybody wanted to be at this place that was open to the kids, so you’re looking at two basketball rims with 100 brothers waiting to play. So, who got next? This shit’s gonna take forever. But as you’re sitting there, knowing damn well you’re not going to play, on the other side of the gym was this DJ, wearing a silk shirt as all of us just had these tank tops or whatever. Before, music and sports were totally different things. So, we were over on one side, trying to look hard, just nodding our heads.

This is when disco was just coming in from the “over funk” period – when funk got played out because everybody was trying to do it. Once David Bowie did “Fame”, it was like, “OK, I’m tired of this shit.” Disco came in, and it started off quite funky, because you had The O’Jays and “I Love Music”, a lot of the Gamble & Huff sort of stuff, strings and orchestral arrangements and The Stylistics and Thom Bell. They’d upped the tempo and changed the beat, and that’s how disco came in, and it was very cool in the beginning, around ’75/’77.

So, the DJ was playing this record from the group War, who’d suddenly upped their tempo. A lot of the funk groups upped their tempos: Mandrill, War, better-known groups like Kool & the Gang, when they did “Ladies Night” two years later. We’re watching this DJ as we’re waiting to play some ball and the DJ is playing “Galaxy” by War. So I’m sitting there and I liked how the song sounded on the radio, it would start out on WWRL – which was a soul station in New York with incredible DJs, Hank Spann and Enoch Hawthorne Gregory, Gerry Bledsoe – and they had the best voices in the world. [Affects voice] “Welcome to WWRL, the Super 16 (because it was 1600 on the AM dial), here’s a song by War, ‘Galaxy.’” And it would come in [does the beat and sings], you can Google it, Limewire it, in case you think I’m tripping.

This DJ played the same record, but the words never came in. He was like, [does “Galaxy” beat over and over], and I couldn’t understand why the words couldn’t come in. He extended it for about 10 to 12 minutes. This shows you how people didn’t understand anything about DJing, and I’m from New York, because automatically people think cats from New York are just, “Yeah, yeah. It always was like that…” No, we’re country as a motherf---er, man, especially in Long Island, which is only 15 minutes out. I was like, “How is he making the record go like that?” You couldn’t really see two turntables, you had no idea what he was doing behind the DJ stand, he was just moving like side to that side, he had a light in his face. I said, “That record must be about this big [holds arms out]. How can it be that it still hasn’t stopped!” That was my first introduction to the technical aspect of DJing, I totally did not understand how one record could be extended into another. That bit me.

Later on, tapes were going out and people were making pause tapes off the radio stations. One tape that got me was DJ Hollywood’s son, DJ Smalls. The Jacksons... how many of you know Michael Jackson? How many of you know the Jacksons were produced by Gamble & Huff in ’75/’77? How many of you know Gamble & Huff? OK… Gamble & Huff were Philadelphia International, which was signed by CBS Records, which really they were distributed by them. They were the in-house producers, and they were hot producers, so they were producing everyone in the CBS soul tank. They had just picked up the Jackson 5 from Motown in 1975, but they couldn’t use the “5” because Berry Gordy had sued CBS for use of the name. So, the Jacksons without Jermaine were just called the Jacksons. And on the album Goin’ Places, which had all the Jacksons moving, going forward, Michael included – because Michel Jackson’s a bad-ass motherf--er, I don’t care what anybody says – they had this song called “Music’s Taking Over,” which starts off with this groove [sings], and this is the break part [does the beat]. I heard it on the tape, and once again the record was really short intro then boom into the record, but this groove was going on forever. And I was hearing Michael Jackson’s voice “Let’s, let’s, let’s, let’s.” And I was like, “Why is Michael doing that shit?” Then “Let’s dance, let’s dance, let’s dance.” So, I went to the store to buy the 45, and it started off, went into the song and faded out, because it was a 45. I was like, “This ain’t the shit I heard.” That’s what really bit me.

To make a long story short, the technical aspect of what DJs were bringing to the music is what started hip hop; the curiosity of taking something that was given to you as a recording and flipping it, whether it be at a party or a tape. And cassette tapes were new then, they were developed in ’64, but they hit the hood when people could afford to make pause tapes with cheap players. That’s why it’s no secret that the holy trinity of hip-hop are Kool Herc, Afrika Bambaataa, the Master Of Records, and Grandmaster Flash. That’s the holy trinity, it starts right there because their influence with the recordings, taking them and flipping them in their three different circles, went into other areas – and you’ve got to talk about Pete DJ Jones, guys like Maboya, and the big soundsystem DJs who came with the Jamaican aesthetic of two turntables and really manipulating disco/soul records. A lot of people didn’t dig into funk and soul at first, but as disco went forward with more computerized shit, people went back and the guys from the streets started to dig back even more, finding things like James Brown “Sex Machine,” and all those obscure records, like “Apache” and “Seven Minutes Of Funk.”

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

I guess, at that point you were on Long Island.

Chuck D

Yeah, you take the bus to Jamaica and the E and the F train to the city. The thing about it is, everyone from the city had moved to Long Island, so Nassau County and Suffolk County are the only places in New York where you had people from everywhere in the city. Before that, people in Brooklyn had no reason to go the Bronx, absolutely no reason. You ask a person from the Bronx if they want to Brooklyn, they’d say, “For what?” Harlem in Manhattan was the center point, so a guy from Brooklyn would go to Manhattan and that would be the end of that, or they would stay in the planet of Brooklyn. Same thing with the Bronx, they’d stay in the Bronx or they would come to Manhattan. You wouldn’t find a person from the Bronx coming to Queens. People in Queens would venture into Manhattan and possibly the Bronx. So this migration in the ’70s was very important for figuring out the gigs and the DJ, the music, all that’s intertwined. RL was the soul station, but they can’t front and say WABC wasn’t an influence. You ask guys like Biz Markie and Bambaataa, and they’ll tell you: “Hell yeah,” that’s where their exposure to people like Steely Dan, Aerosmith and all that came from.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

When did you get exposed to things like the Cold Crush tapes – were those passed around at school by kids from the Bronx?

Chuck D

No, because when I graduated from high school it was ’78 so those tapes weren’t running around like that. They were more like ’78, ’79, ’80. I was in college and in some other things. When you got into college you quickly severed yourself from all high school activity. When people talk about the parks, “Yeah, I was in the parks!” Yeah, because you couldn’t get in the clubs. The whole key was to get in the clubs, and the DJs excelling in the clubs were Eddie Cheeba and DJ Hollywood – they just totally dominated the club scene. I’m 18 years old, and I’ll make no secret about it, I’m trying to get into a club that’s 18 and over so I can get with a girl, I ain’t trying to get into no high-school shit. I’m trying to get into club, college, and whip out as much ID as I can and these are the DJs that were dominating up in there. You had to dress up, which I didn’t like to do, and the parks jumped off in the summertime, where you could be casual because you were outside. You can’t be outside in January. So, before my exposure was before Cold Crush, it was to the DJs who were making tapes. The first street DJs to penetrate to me – other than me just following Hank Shocklee and Spectrum in ‘76-77, because they would bring Long Island and Queens with Infinity Machine and King Charles – they had a big terrain and I would follow them.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

So, these were the mobile soundsystems in Long Island doing big parties?

Chuck D

Not only were they mobile but you had to be mobile to catch them. The thing that’s different from the Bronx or Brooklyn, is that people waited for things to come to them. In Long Island you had to go and check it, you got in your car and you went to the Bronx and Brooklyn and Queens, you drove there because you wanted to find the jump-off. That was key, and these are some of the things that are underwritten in the formation, because you talk about the New York metropolitan area... People are surprised that the first rap record – and we’re not going to talk about “King Tim” and The Fatback Band, who had a recording contract knocking out things for Spring [Records], which I thought was incredible – but people were surprised that the first rap record came from guys from Jersey. You must understand the physical logistics of Inglewood, New Jersey – it’s right across the bridge, everybody’s got the same radio station. So before tapes, the radio was dominant, the clubs were dominant, but also the parks and the streets were dominant. So the first street cats, who really cut across and ventured out and who I was impressed by, were Grandmaster Flash and Melle Mel; those guys blew me away. That was in 1979.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

When did you first encounter them?

Chuck D

Live in ’79, because they were able to bleed into what was happening at the club level, and also at the college level.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Because they had records out at that point?

Chuck D

No, this was before that. There’s nothing in hip-hop – and I’ve been in front of stadiums of 75,000 people – I can’t even explain the atmosphere in hip-hop and rap music before the first record. From January ’78 to October ’79, when the first rap record came out, I can’t even explain to you the intensity of rap music and hip-hop. It was heading to a place where nobody expected it to go, no one knew where it would go. If you’d told me in 1979 that there would be a rap record, I would’ve said it was inconceivable, it was impossible, because it was a whole party atmosphere type of thing. So, when Eddie Cheeba was going around in 1979 – I remember it clearly like it was yesterday – “I’ve got this new record, I’m going to break it for you.” And the place was packed and the name of the song was “Good Times” by Chic. People were used to dancing faster because Chic had brought you “Dance, Dance, Dance” and then later “Le Freak.” They considered that a slowing of the pace in ’78, but when they did “Good Times” it was waaaay down. I found it hard to dance to. “What the f---, man! Gotta dance slow to this shit.” But really, that was New York’s return to funk, which it escaped from around ’73/’74.

That was the turning point because cats could rap on that speed and cut to that speed. I remember very clearly in the summer of 1979, they would have cats coming together, cutting up “Good Times” with their sneakers. 1979, New York City was rap-f---ing-crazy. They used to say, “Get that B-boy shit out of here!” But it was rap crazy. But this was before the records, and everybody had a feeling something was going to happen, but nobody knew exactly what. Eddie Cheeba would go around saying, “Look out, y’all” – he broke the records, but he didn’t make them – “I’m gonna put rap on a record soon” “What the f--- are you talking about, how are you going to put rap on a record?” When “King Tim III” came out in July ’79 , the Fatback Band had already been putting out some hot funky, disco-tinged joints. They were from Brooklyn, they would make songs people would dance to, so when they had King Tim III on it, it was “Whoa!” It sparked something, it was the click in the lightbulb. Then “Rapper’s Delight” came out in October, that was the dam that burst, it was “Good Times,” it was the “Firecracker” break by Mass Production. It was the two hottest songs on one record with street rap on it, and that was the beginning of the dam breaking and people were like, “Whoa, that shit’s a rap record.” Immediately, it went into the era of the record and the tapes became less of a force – big, but less of a force. It was about that record.

When “Rapper’s Delight” came out it was 15 minutes long. A lot of you might think that was a long-ass record, but the irony is, when it came out, it wasn’t how long it was, but how short it was. Because to me and others, rap was a three-hour thing, and they got it down to 15 minutes. This is what’s not really talked about because this is old head’s shit, but I’m giving it to you straight from the horse’s mouth, because I always looked at black music, rap music, urban music as a science, as well as something to just enjoy, because I was a sports fan. And anyone who knows about sports knows you can’t be a dumb motherf---er talking about sports. How many of you here like sports? See, that’s why you’re music people. You go in a sports circle and don’t know what the f--- you’re talking about, they’ll tell you to get the f--- out of here. I like people to think in music terms the same way as people talk about sports.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

So, when rap records came out, that’s when you thought you had something to devote your life to. But it wasn’t the music, right?

Chuck D

No, I was going to college and I got kicked out in my freshman year, I worked at a job, then I went to some other classes. I got into college as a graphic design phenom. I turned down a scholarship for architecture at New York Tech. I was really good… as a matter of fact, I thought I was too good, but I had no direction. “OK, you’re good but what the hell are you gonna do?” So, when rap records came out, everything just kind of clicked for me. “Wow, rap records – that means covers, that means graphics. I could use my graphics to work in an art department at a record company as records get bigger.” So, that made me go back to school and finish, because I wanted to work in the art department of a record company, doing covers and stuff. That pushed me through school. I loved the fact you could apply your art to the music.

Now, I wasn’t a big graffiti fan. I would be going into work looking at the graffiti thinking half of it is wack, in fact, 90% of the graffiti I saw back in the day on the subway was just terrible to me. I was about getting really graphics to the point. I was a critic and thought I could do better. Just because you’ve got a marker and a spray can, doesn’t mean you’re right to be marking up shit. “This dude should’ve left his marker in his pocket instead of marking up this train, because this shit is wack.” But there were 10% of cats out there that were brilliant, I just thought there should’ve been some kind of zone for them.

So, I just saw the graphic/music connection, and that’s why I went through college. At college there was a radio station, WBAU, which I went on because I was a big rap fan. I got on the microphone because I thought back in the day 80% of all MCs were terrible and they would be on top of a DJ who was terrible. You’d be trying to get your dance on with a girl. you’d get the courage to ask the girl to dance, and then all of a sudden, she’d stop and look at the DJ and say, “I don’t think I wanna dance no more,” so you’re mad at the DJ too, because he’s terrible and the MC is terrible. I’m like, “Man, you’re f---ing my game up.” So, then I started to get on the mic to rhyme to sit the wack MCs down. If you’re in a long line and you let the first three MCs go and “Love Is The Message” comes on, all of a sudden, just because someone’s from the Bronx they get on the mic too, “Yeah, I know what this is.” Terrible. Then it was my turn, and the line behind me would disappear, because they would be like. “Well, I can’t do that shit.” That was my main reason for getting on the microphone – to sit the wack MCs down so I could enjoy dancing to the music with some chick out there.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Hank Shocklee from the Bomb Squad, and, before that, Spectrum City [soundsystem], says there was some jam at college and all the MCs were terrible, and then you got on the mic to make some announcement, and he went, “That’s the guy.”

Chuck D

Back in the day it wasn’t about your rhymes. You had to sound good because most systems were inferior. I would be, “One, two, one, two.” Then someone else would come on, “[Weak voice] One, two, one, two.” “You ain’t cutting it, sit your ass down.” When I get on the mic I know no one’s going to be louder, and all I have to do is be clear, and put some words together. Everyone else is sitting down because they’re not loud and clear and rocking the music like that. Later on, when people talked about flows, you’re talking about enhanced systems, studios which balance out the sound… but, when it comes down to it, you’ve either got the pipes or you haven’t. People who sing in front of a hall, you’ll say, “Wow, they’re really cutting through.” Someone who sounded great in the studio might not sound great live because some people need help and some don’t. Melle Mel was the first MC to blow me away because he didn’t need a mic. [Puts mic down], You’d hear him clear and be like, “Damn.” But the next person would need the mic and amps and he’s complaining to the sound person, “Turn me up, turn me up!” Then Melle Mel would grab it and be like: “ONE, TWO, ONE, TWO.” I heard that. So the whole thing about microphone kings, masters of ceremony, was that the MC had to cut through because systems were wack, and if they were scratchy and you already had the DJ in the back [makes beat with mouth], “ONE, TWO, ONE, TWO!” – that’s gonna grab your attention. That’s why when we talk about up-to-date things... Today when we talk about MCs in a whole different way, we’re talking about studio-enhanced to bring all the nuances out. I remember one time someone told me a story about the blues, a harmonica guy Sonny Boy Williamson… He was over in the UK and they were asking him, “What do you do to get the microphone that way? What’s the technique?” They’re checking out engineers and that technical bullshit. Sonny said, “It’s right here [gestures to mouth].” Some things you have, some things you don’t.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

What finally gave you the confidence to make records?

Chuck D

It wasn’t a confidence thing, it was something that was worth my time. I loved doing the radio, and I still love doing the radio. You don’t have to be seen, just heard, you can be behind the scenes. We made our first record, “Check Out the Radio,” so we could sell our shows. I was a big fan of Mr. Magic, Afrika Islam, the Zulu Beats and the World’s Famous Supreme Team.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

These are all pioneering radio DJs in New York City.

Chuck D

I know we’re talking about a load of stuff before you were born, way back, but it’s very important. If you say you love the music, you’ve got to pick up on some of the reasons why some of this started in order to be able to innovate and take it to 2012 and 2010. And also at Red Bull Music Academy, you want to separate yourself from someone else who does what you’re doing, just because they like it. Separate yourself from someone who might say, “I do that shit that you do, I don’t need no school.” All this is important, and since I was there and I was able to retain that surrounding, then it’s important that I spread it. What good is an old head like me, if I can’t drop some jewels for you to pick up and use yourself?

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Radio was important because it was also the foundation of being part of a community, something beyond music.

Chuck D

That’s correct, because we talked directly to our community and they were able to see us. That was a beautiful thing about radio back in the days of R&B, by which I mean Reagan and Bush. So, we talked directly to the people in the laundromats and bus stops, and that was very important. When people ask me about rap music today, I tell them the rappers do a load of things, the producers do a load of things, but the radio is terrible. It’s never been worse – they give you nothing, they give you no information and they don’t innovate, no sense of history. What they think is good, they only judge themselves, not by a higher order. The people who are supposed to bring it to the public, they’re no good. Not the rappers, not the producers – although even some of the producers need to know more, because it’s not just about taking the sound, it’s about knowing the dynamics behind and the mentality of why it was created in the first place.

DJ – [to participant] what’s your name again? [response inaudible] – he was finding a Mobb Deep sample on the Stylistics album from about 35 years ago. Before you even get into saying Mobb Deep took this sample, you have to get into the dynamics of the musicians that made it [in the first place]. Thom Bell was part of the Gamble & Huff team, so he would orchestrate The Stylistics and The Spinners, and so his use of horns and strings was immaculate, he was a perfectionist. His grooves from the Philadelphia Orchestra that Gamble & Huff also used, all of this is part of the science of why the music was made the way it was in the first place, which led me to think it’s groove is funky and it’s made to extend into a sample or even manipulate. You’ve got to go into the mind of the musician or the goal of what they would try to do. The Stylistics were there to hold you, make you swoon, so you think, “This is a love ,” but it’s also there to get you on the floor to sway a certain way or to relate a certain way. That movement is still there in the musicians’ mind and their chops. It’s not just about, “I’m gonna snatch a sound and make it the way I want it to make it.” That’s half the answer. But the other half is saying, “Why was it created in the first place?”

That’s why they call people like Afrika Bambaataa “The Master of Records”; Grand Mixer DXT, a master of records; Questlove from The Roots, a master of records. Not just to understand the record but the musicians and the engineers who made the recordings. You can’t get into the science of some of that hot Atlantic Pretty Purdie, James Gadson beats, without understanding Tom Dowd as an engineer, and not just whether he engineered that record or not, but his influence on that sound and other engineers. Or the influence of James Brown or Clyde Stubblefield. What’s the engineering technique, what are the David Matthews’ arrangements, which led to the James Brown funk section, but his arrangements on top of Fred Wesley’s.

You’ve got to be able to understand this to be able to say, “We’re going to make some more incredible music for 2012, or incredible mixtapes, or whatever.” And I just don’t think the radio stations and jocks, they don’t have it in them to take it to the next phase, no Isley Brothers pun intended.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Well, you speak about arrangements and production. What motivated you and Hank and Public Enemy to make the sounds you made, which were very distinct and pretty much unprecedented?

Chuck D

We didn’t make the sounds, we wanted to be able to make a new arrangement of the sounds. Because we had a knowledge of the records and we had a respect for the records and the different genres, our thing was trying to make it all work. We didn’t know where R&B was in the mid-’80s. We thought the worst thing that ever happened to it was the use of synthesizers, or rather that synthesizers started to use the musician. Stevie Wonder would pimp the hell out of a synthesizer, but synthesizers and drum machines started to use the producer. So, you would have this corny-ass [makes beat with mouth] that we wanted to rebel against. Our whole goal was, “We’re going to destroy the music business’s concept of music with music.” We wanted to eradicate every bit of smooth R&B that was made off the face of the earth, also English pop. Most of the music made from 1979 to 1986, except for rap records and a lot of organic types of music, most music was terrible, just wack. Our goal was to wipe that shit off the face of the musical map, that was Public Enemy’s goal as sonic assassins.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

By the same token, when Public Enemy came out, there was resistance from within hip-hop as well. Maybe this is a myth, but you guys performed at Latin Quarter and reputedly Melle Mel and others heckled you.

Chuck D

Melle Mel heckled us because he thought we were part of the contingent that dissed Mr Magic. Scott La Rock and KRS-One were launching into Mr Magic – “You’re gonna respect us” – so our association with Doctor Dre, I mean Andre Brown from Yo! MTV Raps, not Dr. Dre from the West Coast. Melle Mel was a friend of Magic’s and Melle Mel could be heard on top of the music. So he was like, “Get those motherf---ers off the stage!” We’re performing, we’ve got a soundsystem and you can hear this dude in the back. We’re from Long Island, he didn’t know anything about our history, but those were our chops coming through.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

And that was at Latin Quarter which was a very, very famous hip-hop venue in the ‘80s.

Chuck D

We had songs you couldn’t dance to that automatically set off some kind of zone inside the average b-boy that they could not dispute. That was “Public Enemy No. 1,” which was a tape I made for WBAU in ’84 that automatically set fire and which made Rick Rubin want to sign me in the first place. Our thing was not to make music, it was to make un-music. We knew all the hot records… that were out at the time. So, I wanted to make something that actually stood out. When I made “Public Enemy No 1” at the end of 1984, I was living at the end of Roosevelt, next to a busy street. We would monitor the radio show by how many people wanted to make tapes from it. So, when a car goes by you can usually hear a car go by [makes booming noise], it could be anything. I used noise because I wanted to be able to take a real good survey. We knew it was hot when a car would go by and the beat would go [makes booming noise again followed by noise], and that’s how we knew “Public Enemy No 1” was hot. And it was hot for two years before it became a record, and that’s what made Rick Rubin say, “I want to sign this guy.”

Me and Flavor [Flav] were driving trucks, delivering furniture and I was making this tape and “Blow Your Head” by the JB’s was always a record I liked... There’s a whole other story behind me getting that record, which involved me going over to some chick’s house and asking her for the record after I didn’t get what I came for [laughs]. “OK, baby, whatever, can I have this record?,” and I took the record, I was blown away by it. It was a record that was always played in the roller rink, but the DJs didn’t have enough skill to extend the break, it’s a tough break, it’s [imitates “Blow Your Head” synth intro], and I thought, “If someone would keep this shit going…”

It wasn’t until you had machines like the Emulator II, and guys like Marley Marl made it hot, and happening, and, later on, the Akai, that we were able to extend that song. But the truth is, I made the first demo by pausing a cassette, like people made the old pause mixtapes, just by going over and over two tape decks [imitates intro], so there were a couple of glitches because it wasn’t perfect timing, but I could rhyme over it and the rhyme connected the pieces together seamlessly. When we tried to make it in the studio for our first Def Jam release, we were able to make this song and duplicate it. But Hank and I considered it too clean, because the breaks in the pause tape gave it that funkiness of feel and direction, that’s what made it a totally different thing. So when we made “Public Enemy No 1” it was a two-inch tape cut by Steve the engineer , and we made a natural loop around the mic stand going back into the Studer heads, so it had that feel of a band [imitates “Public Enemy No 1” intro], so that’s how it was made to capture the feel of the original demo tape, which had a lot of funky feeling and dirt and grime in it.

So, we realized we were going to make some noise by bringing the noise and we were going to bring some different records, and make some abrasive records. The goal was to make some music that your girlfriend was going to hate [laughs]. That was definitely the goal for me, because my girlfriend, who later became my wife, I knew if she doesn’t like it, then we’ve got some hot shit here, because she was into Luther Vandross and all that other shit. I was like, “I’m making some shit that makes you say, ‘Turn that shit off.’”

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Let’s listen to a couple of seconds of that.

Chuck D

You can download that original demo on Slamjamz.com, I’ve still got it up there. It’s the original from ’84 where I say, “I can go solo like a Sugar Ray bolo.” Sugar Ray Leonard was dominating boxing at the time, so when I had to make the record it was, “I can go solo like a Tyson bolo,” so it went from Sugar Ray to Tyson. I went from welterweight champ to heavyweight champ. But I know y’all are going to say Chuck is talking about all this and we haven’t got past 1986.

(music: Public Enemy – “Public Enemy No. 1”)

Chuck D

People got into making structured rap records – eight bars here, counting in four bars – we felt that could lead to burn-out for the audience. You might offer different sounds, but if every song you deliver is three-and-a-half to four minutes, and they begin the same way... People talk about hot 16, but why can’t it be a hot 17 or a hot 13-and-a-half? Because people are afraid to go outside the structure they’re comfortable with. Our whole thing is, how can we present something that will make you feel uncomfortable? Don’t deal in comfort – and don’t deal with a Mac so close to water, Jeff [laughs and moves water away from the laptop].

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

So was that the record Mr Magic smashed on the air?

Chuck D

Yeah, Magic smashed it because he thought we were dissing him out with Dré and Scott La Rock. Scott La Rock and KRS-One were going after him for some other beef, and they came out to talk to Dré on WBAU and he considered us down with the whole posse, which we were, but we had no time to go after Mr Magic like that, but we got dragged into it. When he heard that, he thought Dré was involved in it, which he had, but we weren’t coming after Magic like that. I still feel happy to be associated with the “Blastmaster” KRS-One to this day, so it was pretty good.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

So, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back – often cited as the greatest hip-hop album of all time, how do you feel about that?

Chuck D

When we first made the album, it was after a year of touring, and I noticed one thing rap artists seemed to be victimized by – slow tempos. They worked well on record, but not so good in live performances. When you go into a live arena, people are amped up to see you. That’s why bands usually play their music five to ten BPM faster, because everyone’s all amped up. That’s why records stood out more than the band. A perfect example is the Ohio Players. On the record you hear: “[Sings in mid-tempo] Skin tight, skin tight.” Then you check them out in concert it’s: “[Fast tempo] Skin tight, skin tight.” Damn, slow their ass down! But they’re amped up, bands are amped up. We realized, when we went into a performance, the crowd was amped up and you can only pitch a record up so much. So we thought we’ll make faster records.

It comes out of doing “Rebel Without a Pause” at 102 BPM. BPMs meant a lot to us because we were DJs, and Hank had these digital Panasonic turntables. “Bring The Noise” was 109 bpm, at the end of 1987, for the Less Than Zero soundtrack. That was like going into light speed. We had faster songs than that, like “It’s Like That”, 125 bpm, but that was a different double speed. But 109 meant: rap on it, take the fast beat, ride it like a saddle and get this crowd throttled up. Right in the middle of the days of crack, we made a fast record for the time. Crack was the type of drug that wouldn’t slow them down, they’d be like, “Yo, yo, play that shit again for real!” Cats would be all nervous and fast, and the speed we took it to matched the drug of the time for people who were around the hip-hop circle. The songs on It Takes A Nation… were 112, 110, 113 bpm.

Sonically, it said all the things we grew up with in the ’60s and ’70s, all the voices from that time that were forgotten in the ’80s. In the ‘80s, Hank and I were hanging a flyer on a pole of Malcolm X looking out the window with a rifle, defending his house – which is a famous shot later used by KRS-One – and some guy came by and said, “Who’s this Malcolm the Tenth?” Me and Hank said, “Shit, we need to let these people know in the middle of Reagan and Bush where we come from.” That had been forgotten, and it was only 10 or 15 years prior, 20 years prior to him being killed. That’s what gave the meaning to Public Enemy even further. So, sonically, meaning-wise, performance-wise and even rap-wise, It Takes a Nation of Millions was the juggernaut that established us. It was something where we said to ourselves, “This is our thing: jack up the noise, rap fast and strong, bring some noise and be powerful with it.” I tell people all the time, “We’re the Rolling Stones of the rap game.” You might find better flows, more individual achievements, but you won’t find power and speed like PE present it. Some people might say, “Cool, but I don’t want power or speed, I want the smooth, funky shit, the lyrics to be hitting tight.” No, this is power and speed, it’s Metallica and rock & roll – get the f--- out off the way, this is gonna run you over.” That’s why for years Public Enemy could go head to head with thrash metal bands and hold our own, with turntables and then with some instruments – that’s the only thing you can compare it to. It might not be nice, it might not be pretty, it might not be digestible, but it’s gonna wear the f---ing place out. And that’s what established us.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

You guys performed the album in its entirety in concert this last year. How was it?

Chuck D

A lot of fun. Those records aren’t easy, like someone standing in one place and singing, “Throw your hands in the air,” and walking side to side. If you don’t prepare to do those records, then those records will do you. “Louder Than A Bomb” is no joke. It’s going on, “This style seems wild…” And, at the same time, Public Enemy was never one of those things where you can just stand there looking at the crowd, you’ve got to get it moving. It’s like punk – that’s one of the things that separated us from the pack. There’s only one MC, in my book, who could do power and speed, because his music was jacked up and he could dance, do it all at the same time: Big Daddy Kane. His voice comes like this (lowers voice), and he’s able to do it fast and he’s able to keep moving. I tell people all the time, “If you want to sit and smoke weed, this ain’t your thing.” Later on, when Dre did The Chronic with Snoop Doggy Dogg, he developed a whole different thing, slowed it down, because weed was the drug of choice in rap music. If you did something 112 bpm in ’94, people would be like, “Oh my god, get that shit out of there.” We understood that, I just didn’t feel it as much, as far as me to do it.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

I know you’re such a fan of hip-hop, do you concur that it’s the greatest hip-hop album of all time? There have been panels about it, there have been dissertations written about it…

Chuck D

I believe if you saw it performed, you’d say, “Damn!” When we first set out to make it, there weren’t that many rap albums out – maybe 20 in your hand. To me the greatest rap album that signified rap as an album format in the marketplace was Run DMC’s Raising Hell. That signified to me power, and Run DMC being able to handle a stadium. When we made Takes a Nation, we knew what we were not going to make. I was setting out to make the What’s Going On of rap music then. It has a lot of things going on – it had the sonic changes, it was the first album that said we’re not going from track-to-track – before De La Soul put skits in there, it was the first album that broke the monotony of going track-to-track – it had the meaning, the voices, the arrangement of samples. It was the first album unto itself, the juxtaposition so it plays like a radio show. We wanted to make it exactly 60 minutes, so it’s an hour of introduction into the world of 1988.

Calling it the greatest rap album of all time, that’s someone else’s call, but I know if someone was to see it performed, they would understand. They would have to see it, feel it, take it in and then say, “OK, watch someone else do an album.” That was a thing I was critical of when I first heard the “Don’t Look Back” series of concerts, when the promoter would tell the performer, “Do the album, don’t do anything else.” I thought that sounds like a fan’s dream, it doesn’t sound like an artist’s dream, but when we did it, and actually played along with the Bomb Squad with Hank and Keith Shocklee, it was a treat and a challenge. We stepped up to the challenge.

We’re going to play it all year long – we’re touring in Germany, Greece, doing some more shows in the UK, then capping off the tour in Australia. That will be tours number 63 and 64 for Public Enemy. It’s fun to do, because we say we’ll do the album, then we’ll do some other shit, which is another hour of showtime. It’s fun. What wouldn’t be fun getting down next to Flavor Flav? He’s the greatest hype man, because he invented the role – he’s brought so much to the game. Young cats just think, “He’s a TV personality, what does he do?” They asked what Flavor Flav did from the minute we signed and introduced him to Rick, and said, “You’ve got to sign him too,” he said, “What does he do?” “We don’t f---ing know, but you’ve got to take him.” He’s had many imitators, never a duplicator, there’s nothing like him. What he brings to the table, what Griff has brought to the table, what Terminator and now DJ Lord brings, it’s a fun thing to get down with, like being in U2 or something.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

I want to ask as a side note, when you and Flav moved furniture for your dad’s business and imagined that you and Flav did a TV show together…

Chuck D

That would be fun, but that was just work. He had to work, I had to work. Looking back, people say, “Would you like to do a TV show?” But I’m the kind of person who says, “Get that camera away from my house, you’ve got five seconds.” I don’t like being photographed, I never liked doing videos, I’m different when it comes down to that. But Flavor is made for camera, you can’t take your eyes off him. No matter what he does on TV, he’s going to obliterate everything else. If he talks science or foolishness – and he does a blend of both – you can’t change the dial because you’re just, “What the f--- is going on with this guy?”

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

One of your famous quotes is about hip-hop serving as CNN for black communities. What is serving that purpose now, if not hip-hop?

Chuck D

Hip-hop is a worldwide cultural religion, simple as that. It’s everywhere, it’s in more than 150 countries, and I think the biggest misnomer about hip-hop is that people talk about hip-hop like it has to have a New York state of mind. That’s been over since the ’80s. People started asking if it’s a global scene in 1999. The first statement on Nation of Millions is “Good evening, London.” We were telling the US then, “This is already happening in London, so if you aren’t up on hip-hop, and this is already happening in London, then New York, Philly, you better get up on it. We’re letting you know this is how much we’ve got going on. This is no bullshit.”

It was sort of like introducing the first live concert element to hip-hop. People can say, “OK, you guys are making up your own world, f--- the BPMs, all that crazy noise, you’re making up your own shit, you’re believing your own hype.” Nope, this is London [imitates cheering crowd], “I’d like to hear that from the people up top, check this out.” We’re fans of music, like when Earth Wind & Fire came out with [the 1975 live album] Gratitude, it boosted their concerts, because you had to become part of what the f--- was going on. Live, as far as ’70s bands are concerned, they just dominated. So, OK, say what you want, but this crowd is bananas, and you’re not used to hearing that recorded in hip-hop, maybe in a club, but not in a stadium or enormous building.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

I asked you about this yesterday, but PE were always the biggest champions of hip-hop, always fighting for acceptance and recognition for hip-hop because it was such an underdog culture for so long. I remember seeing interviews with you back in the day, when you were very proud because hip-hop had its own section in the record store. Now, obviously, hip-hop has become mainstream, popular music.

Chuck D

Well hip-hop is bigger than the record store now [laughs].

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Do you feel as though hip-hop has won that war, and at what cost?

Chuck D

Hip-hop hasn’t won any war, because if you talk about it from a United States state of mind, people don’t realize that they fell off a bit, politically. It’s like Michael Jordan in the 20th century, like, “Oh my God, you won world wars, you’re post-Teddy Roosevelt, beating everybody with your big-ass stick and you’re swinging it like ‘What, what!’”

Cool, but it’s the 21st century. The US must realize it has to work hard to be one of the top 20, not that it dominates over the whole space. That has trickled down into all culture. Look at basketball: started by a Canadian in the University of Massachusetts to teach this sport to Americans, then it’s dominated by Jewish and white Americans, then black Americans dominated it. And it had its time, just like boxing – all the best boxers are coming from Lithuania, the Ukraine, because, “[Affects East European accent] I come from nothing, I’ll kill you. I knock you the f--- out, I come from nothing.” So boxing has a different zone now.

The United States has been full of its own hype for so long. But if you took the four elements and had an Olympics, America wouldn’t get the gold, silver or bronze in graffiti, in breakdancing – although it’s coming up a little bit – turntablism, not winning the gold, silver or bronze for the last 20 years. So, that’s three of the four elements. Then you have MCing. Now MCing is all subjective. I explain to people in the US when they want to watch BET, or The Basement, formerly Rap City, or watch hip-hop from a United States state of mind, hip-hop is all over the planet, cats can spit three languages, sometimes in the same verse. That’s super rapping. Now, you tell that to the average American, they’ll say, “That don’t mean shit, because I’m an American and I’m f---ing great, because I am.”

Same thing they did in basketball, “We’re the f---ing NBA, we’re great because we’ve got marketing and contracts and we’re rich.” You better work at that shit if you want to get the gold again. You better work at the fundamentals, and throw all that ego shit out. Hip-hop in the United States has been in the lazy zone for so long, it thinks it can win because the record company says you win. Or you think you’ve got a large demographic, you’re from New York, you can talk like this, and swing like that and automatically you’re going to win. Yes, you could’ve won in the 20th century, but 21st century is a different way to win. If you want to characterize it as winning or losing, you have to figure out what’s the global atmosphere of hip-hop, what’s the global condition of people saying, “We have to live here together and share.” The hip-hop state of mind is to unite and to embrace.

Culture is the thing that brings human beings together for our similarities, not for our differences. This is what makes culture diametrically opposed to government. Governments like to categorize, put people in groupings so they can take advantage of us. That’s why when a government says it’s in charge of culture, you’ve got to watch out for that shit. Culture and governments are diametrically opposed. Governments are the cancers of civilization, all governments, f--- a government. “What are you gonna do, Chuck? You need governments to keep people in check.” Well, that’s government’s f---ing business. The one thing that’s derogatory to human beings is that you need a passport to travel to the place that God gave everybody. If we don’t fall in line with the planet and take care of the species… If the animals had a language they’d be talking crazy right now, they’d be saying, “You human beings are f---ing this planet up. What’s going on with y’all?” Anyone hear the story about the penguins who had to get some help going back south because the atmospheric conditions have been altered by the greed of humans and the audacity of our stupidity?

Hip-hop has this organic sense of trying to culturally bring us together and try to figure this place and ourselves out. Beyond hip-hop as a term, it’s the beauty of culture and the beauty of music and art and expression, to say we’ve got to share this thing. Americans have watched hip-hop through the portal of corporations have actually accepted the cycle of greed. So, when you see hip-hop in the States, it’s not the ability of the MC but the size of his watch that makes people go, “Oh my god, look at that watch! Did you see that fur helicopter? Oh shit!” It’s bringing the awe out of an audience in a manner that’s got nothing to do with cultural expression, while the rest of the world realizes it has to be able to at least exude some of those qualities. It has to be within me, it can’t come from the outside of me. You go to Brazil, you can’t be coming out of the favelas laced with diamonds and shit; cats would be like, “We’re robbing this motherf---er.” You’ve got to represent the people and global hip-hop has stuck to this fundamental over the last 30 years. I’m not saying it’s been a solid connection, of course, it might be shaky sometimes. Someone coming from Spain or Italy might look at a video screen and be like, “Look at this cat, he’s riding around and he’s got this big house, he’s got all the women…”

The women never MC, there always just there, like there are no women involved in hip-hop, which has also hurt hip-hop. Women are the underdogs of hip-hop. The biggest vacancy is the lack of [female] cohesiveness. Women crews, you could name five or six of them in the ’80s. But if I asked you to name the women crews – meaning the producers, engineers, remixers, DJs, MCs, the record company owners, you know, women in a collective – it’s far and few. Even males, the males are not groups anymore. The absence of collectives and groups is one of the biggest problems right now. If you have a group, it’s going to make any individual think, “I can take this solo, but I can’t do what this group is doing.”

I have this all-women autonomous hip-hop unit on my label called Crew Grrl Order, and I’m trying to get behind them without being this male on top of them. They’ve got it mapped out for themselves. I’m just trying to fight through all the testosterone to help them make their statement and do their music and to come in a hip-hop state of mind.

These are some of the things that are missing in US hip-hop. America has been taught to be arrogant to the rest of the world, to stick their heads above everyone else and say, “We’re always better because we’re American,” which comes from that British state of mind, anyway. And I think the last eight years of “son of a Bush” has signified the ugly American. Once, black people had this ghetto card from the US because we signified people going through that struggle. “Oh yeah, black people from America, you’re the underdog, you were slaves there, we accept you because we understand where you’re coming from.” But they’ve co-opted that imagery, so you have the black American almost seeming like he’s the arrogant American as well, so that whole ghetto card has disappeared. You can’t just say, “I’m black, I’m from America,” because people will say, “Oh yeah, you show off, you throw money at the camera.” Because they’ve seen the videos from the ’90s when they were throwing money, which ain’t worth the paper it’s printed on right now, because it’s all collapsing. When it collapses, it comes down to people’s insides instead of their outsides. That’s my belief.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Just to play devil’s advocate for a quick second: is there something wrong with aspirational motivation?

Chuck D

There’s nothing wrong with aspirational motivation, as long as you have reality glued into it and as long as you can spread it. If you spread a fantasy without answers for the reality, then you’re bound to have side-effects. The side-effects that we’re witnessing now, there aren’t enough therapists for. There aren’t enough therapists, but there’s a growing prison-industrial system which houses more people than any other country on the planet. America doesn’t brag about that. When you talk about the percentage of people in the prison-industrial complex, black people make up 12.5% of the population, but they’re 50% of the prison population… Why isn’t that a story in the human rights crusades that America claims they’re at the forefront of? OK, we want to bring people to aspiration, but do we want them to aspire to greed, rather than just being able to handle yourself? Maybe that’s hip-hop’s motive, maybe it should be. But you just asked me about when hip-hop was the underdog, when we were broke in the Reagan and Bush era.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

It was the underdog, but if you look at an Eric B & Rakim album cover, and they’re very proud of their…

Chuck D

Fake gold. That real big thick gold chain is real, real, fake and light. They were aspiring, but when we look at it, were they really paid in full? No, it was a nice thought. Everyone can wish. When they say that Jay Z is worth $300 million, I don’t know what that means, or where it comes from, if it’s a weapon of mass distraction. What does that do when someone is trying to learn their craft? “Wow, I’m gonna be an MC because Jay Z’s got $300 million and Beyoncé.” If you don’t get Beyoncé and the $300 million, are you still going to learn the craft to make that feed your soul? And if a person says “No,” then, OK, I can accept that. You’ve got to do something, either you’re awake or you’re asleep. The beautiful thing about art is that it enhances you and fills your time. If everyone here says, “F--- music, f--- that,” what are you going to fill your time with?

Are you a creator or a consumer? How many of you have friends who cannot get away from the PlayStation and are lost in the video game instead of designing one? That’s a reality, too, you can get lost in your zone. You don’t have to be a productive person, you can get lost in your zone and that’s cool, too, I guess. But the beauty of hip-hop comes from looking inside yourself and at the terrain and coming up with something you think is brilliant, and trying to push that into the forefront to entertain and inform people. Bottom line, people at the end of the week, if they work hard… this place [that we’re sitting in] used to be a textile plant. Do you think of that, how 20 years back inside these walls they were working their ass off for 40 years, eight hours a day, punching the clock? At the end of those weeks, people still flocked to something that made them feel better, and that was entertainment, that was art, that was music. There will always be room for people to say, “I want to release myself from everyday work and enjoy myself.” I think everyone in this room has the ability and the love to create something that gives others a breath of fresh air in their life. That’s the beauty of it – the release.

When you’re grown, pull out all the stops, your kid days are over, you’re not 14 years old with a thumb in your mouth or a lollipop like Lil Wayne. Seriously, it’s time to be grown, which means what? You’ve got an apartment, gotta pay rent. You still live with your mom? How long are you gonna do that? You’ve got a girlfriend or a boyfriend, might have a baby. Who’s gonna take care of the baby? “Oh, I was out there skateboarding, I broke my leg.” Got insurance? Mom and dad, they passed away, who’s going to bury them? You get an introduction into adult life that might not cater to your tastes, but somebody’s got to do it. Welcome to adulthood, so you can be an adult, but you’re also able to give people a break. This is the advantage we have as producers, DJs, engineers, MCs. Because a lot of people don’t have your abilities or your flexibility, and there’s a lot don’t have your insight. So, always keep the music with you, because people will need it more than ever, this year, next year, and in the years to come.

This isn’t a thing to give up because you can’t make a living, just figure out how to parlay the tools: work in a textile place, but still do your music. The minute the music gives you the answers of where you spend your time, “Oh, I’ve got a chance to work in this club, and I get to pay some of my bills.” You’ll see it, instead of saying, “I’ll just not work and I’ll wait for the music to pay me.”

April 1st, 1987, our first tour with the Beastie Boys, I worked at a job until that Friday. I wasn’t leaving my f---ing job until I’d seen a clear answer, that I could make a living and support my family doing rap. And I’d already made a record. I wrote Yo, Bum Rush The Show while I was driving and working. I wasn’t waiting for music to pay me, I better see it work. When I could see a little bit I put in my resignation, worked until the Friday, and was on tour Monday. I had two days from going to a job to my own business. There are only three options: you have a job, you have a business or you ain’t got no job. The only other option is death. I was a grown person when I made my first record, and it had to be serious to me. For me, to do music full time I had to see it. Last day of work, March 1987; my first day of my business, April 1st, 1987. I’m not making kid-ass moves, I looked at with a realistic approach. I was going to do music anyway, but I was going to do it in my time around my life as an adult. I don’t know if y’all can relate to that, but that’s my story. Everybody here over 16? Everybody over 18? I don’t have to tell you where you are in your life as adults. [Applause] I know I might have been running my mouth, and it’s 95 degrees up in here.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Maybe some questions.

Chuck D

Questions are good. And tell me where you’re from and your name. The Red Bull Music Academy is one of the wonders of the musical world, and you should realize that.

Audience member

My name is Michael and I’m from Tel Aviv, Israel. I’m a hip-hop producer and MC, and I wanted to ask you, if Obama is elected in November, how will it affect the world of hip-hop or black culture?

Chuck D

Just him running changes the scape of how we think, but that’s just how we think. How do we live and how do we act? Let’s break this down. As a black man in the United States, I’ve never seen anything like this, but history tells me if he gets in, day two, be ready to work and to understand that the good and the bad is going to happen, with people looking at it the wrong way. Although I’ll vote for Barack Obama, I know there are things he’s going to do as president of the United States that I definitely won’t agree with. People say, “He’s a black president, what’s he going to do for black people?” No, he’s President of the United States, so for black people as a collective, because we’re judged by our characteristics rather than our character, to be able to influence a decision that will help us as a people at the bottom of the pit in America for a lot of different things – education, health, all that – that must come up as a collective because we still live collectively in our neighborhoods.

Barack Obama is a big opportunity for the planet. Number one, you all know it’s the biggest reality show in the world. Everyone’s looking at the US right now. Coming from George Bush to this, how do we operate knowing what’s going to come out of the big bear? I can’t tell you what’s going to happen in the next 24 days. If John McCain gets in, you know the rest of the planet is going to be, “Oh shit!” because he talks foreign conflict rather than foreign policy. Number two, I don’t think he’ll be in the job for long. His first day will be April, then by June he’ll be thinking “Man, I’m 73, this is a crazy job, I introduce the world to the next President of the United States, Mrs Sarah Palin.” That’s the reality. She’s like, “F--- that! Bomb! [pushes button]”

So, Barack Obama is an opportunity for the United States to adjust its image for the rest of the planet, to say we’ll find ways to fit in, instead of dominating and beating your ass. I can’t say what’s going to happen, I always consider myself a citizen of the planet instead of the United States and I think this global picture has to be looked at for the existence of the planet. They’re saying there won’t be any ice in the Arctic next summer. What does that tell you? Do you know what that means? That means if there’s war in the Middle East over a whole bunch of resources, underneath that Arctic ice is the oil of the future. The oil of now is oil. Already they call the G8 the G7, because Putin’s Russia is renegading. They’re up in the Arctic with Canada, with the US on Canada’s back saying, “Get out of the way.” We plan to go into the Arctic to get that oil.

Then, the oil of the future is water. Canada’s right up in there and the United Sates’ relationship with Canada will change. All this for greed, and you’ve got the economic system shutting down all over the place. Some people ask if artists should speak to this. Yes, we’re in the days of MySpace pages, Facebook, all the social networks for presenting your music. YouTube is a fantastic medium. I never understood, if we’re in the audio-visual age… [To participants] How many of you make your own videos? Making music has become easy, shooting and cutting video is a bitch. To put yourself above everyone else, how can you say you’re in the music business when you’re denying the audio-visual dominance of music? Music is seen as much as it’s heard today, and for the last ten years, so you better get into it… “Well, I did this track.” So where’s the visual? “We don’t do videos.” You better get into it.

You know what I do? Let me take this out [removes camera from bag]. I want you all to say, “What’s up Chuck?” This is my little Flip cam – real simple, USB, goes right into a Mac or PC. First of all, say, “What’s up, Chuck?”

[Audience responds]

[Speaking to Flip camera] I’m at Red Bull, I’m one of the keynotes, this is the future of the music world, and they are definitely doing it right now on tours, rhymes and life, with your man Chuck D.

[Speaking to audience] You better be multimedia, set up your own stations and your own networks. Making beats and making music, cats have been doing that for 20 years. How many MCs have we got out there? One, two, three, if you’re making eight tracks for your album – you’ve gotta get out of the old idea. “Yo, I’m making an album.” [To participant] Say you’re making an album, how many tracks would you put on an album?

Audience member

There were 17 tracks on my last album.

Chuck D

So you’re making an album for 1992. Ask yourself why there were that many tracks in the first place. Because there was an appetite.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

The format could only sustain a certain amount.

Chuck D

Right, but also you were being released once every two years, and the appetite for rap music was [nods]... There was more appetite than material, that’s why we released 16 tracks on It Takes a Nation, because the appetite for it was there. Who said the album had to have 12, 13, 14 tracks, anyway? It was the major record contract that specified you had to produce 12 sides – that’s 12 tracks. That was in the ’80s; then the CDs took over in the ’90s, and that’s why people put all their songs on an album. But, if you know your musical history, in the ’60s you had albums that had how many cuts on it? Isaac Hayes’ Hot Buttered Soul, how many tracks on it?

Audience member

Four.

Chuck D

The Doors, how many tracks? Some of them had six. But, in the ’60s, they’d release three albums in a year, because that was the marketplace coming into the birth of albums and the album-oriented marketplace had started to accept that. We’re in a different marketplace now than the ’90s, so 17 tracks in the digital world can be three albums. Who’s to say one album can’t be seven tracks, one six and the other one four? You put your artwork and concept behind it, and you can make a digital release of it.

Of course, you might have to put 17 tracks on a CD, if you believe the CD is the format of the future. The CD is the format of now, but blank CDs are the ones that sell most. So, get yourself out of the ’90s way of thinking and develop your own way. Now here’s another thing, if you do a four- or five-track album you should do a video for every single album. What’s your standard of video? Doesn’t have to be what you see on television. It could be that you’ve got a bunch of stills going on and Mac has a program that lets you do that, but you’ve got to present your music visually and audibly.

When I was growing up, you heard the music, then you saw it on television: Soul Train, American Bandstand, Ed Sullivan. Seeing it reminded people of the audio presentation because people used their imaginations more. Or maybe you heard it in the club and your experience goes back to going to get that record because you had a great time in the club. But in the audio-visual age, people see music first, so when they hear music on the radio, it reminds them of what they saw first. Imaginations work in a whole different way. I wouldn’t say it’s better or worse, just different. So when it comes to making your music, you have to also think from a visual state of mind and start cutting vision as well as cutting audio. You’ve got to be equally skilled or find a partner.

That’s how it works – if you can’t do it all yourself, you’ve either got to pay for that service or collaborate with someone that can do what you can’t. That’s why you have a team. With The Bomb Squad, we had four or five individuals who were skilled in different areas and came together as a team. One person cannot do it alone. In the audio-visual age, you should be a person who can do it all, but you’re not going to be the person who can do it all the best all the time, but that’s a good way to look at your future. What separates you at Red Bull Academy from someone who just happens to be making beats in their crib and says, “I don’t need no school,” is your collective study of this while you’re going to try to make a calculated move for where you should be in the future. That’s a skill. When I say, “How many people make music?,” a lot of hands went up. When I said, “How many make video?,” only a couple. You know why? Because that’s a hard-ass motherf---ing thing; if it ain’t hard, then... It should be. Master it, figure it out, learn how to cut edit pro, take simple devices, this is a simple device, only about $100, so that’s about €3 [laughter]…

It’s not how much you have, it’s what you’re willing to take on up here. I got my degree in design in 1984. By 1990 everything I had learned was obsolete, because I learned how to do it by hand, cutting and pasting. The 1990s was the beginning of computer graphics, I had to learn Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator in the late ’90s, and it bled my f---ing brains. One of my buddies, the producer Carl Jason, he was in the studio in the compound in Long Island, he was learning Cubase and I was learning Photoshop. We’d be taking a lunch break going, “[Head in hands] This is f---ing killing me.” But when I got over the hump, I was like “Yes!” I don’t have to wait for a person and try to guide that person, I know it. The advantage you guys have is that you’re in a study collective, so you can learn under the system, but you can buddy up with somebody to teach you the ropes. That’s why a collective is important, especially in music which is still renegade and unorganized.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Who else has a question?

Audience member

My name’s Reggie and I’m from Perth, Australia.

Chuck D

Perth, the most remote city in the world.

Audience member

That’s right. I make hip-hop beats. “Fight the Power” is mostly everyone’s favorite. What was that day like, and what was it like working with Spike Lee? It’s a hype video.

Chuck D

I can’t take credit for that because Spike Lee was an innovative renegade filmmaker who dared to do in film like we dared to do in music. He took Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, brought the movie industry there, had the momentum of making a statement in a very politically charged New York at the time, made the statement worldwide in Do the Right Thing. He made “Fight The Power” what it was. He shot it first in film clips, then followed it up with the Public Enemy version, which he extended. It was signifying that hip-hop was visual as well as audible. It wasn’t a song that was head and shoulders above what we did, but as far as “Fight The Power,” its meaning, the film, Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, Spike Lee, New York City, making a statement at that time, its meaning is well beyond the sonics. And when we performed it live, we always stepped up to the plate. Half of a song, beyond the lyrics and the sonics is the spiritual meaning behind it. You can have lyrics that say one thing, but the meaning is always something else. I always tell MCs not to stay locked into what you think something is – gravitate into other spaces, because that record is going to be there for the rest of time. When you come back to it, you’ve got to feel it came from you. We can all make excuses. There are songs I’ve made that I’m like, “Yeah, that’s hot at that particular time.” Do you feel great about it? “No, but this is the meaning of it…” But you want to make most of the songs in your career represent where you’re going to be in your life because it’s an extension of you and your soul. That’s “Fight The Power.” It was a collaborative effort, it had a lot of help. Everything I’ve done in my career has been a collaborative effort, even this conversation with Chairman Mao.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Pass the mic along to the next person.

Audience member

Hello, I’m, Sarah from London. You said the current state of American hip-hop is all about showing off. Is there any new hip-hop you’re feeling at the moment?

Chuck D

Here’s another thing that doesn’t line up with new questions, or rather old questions about new ways of taking on music. The iPod comes out, and you can put 10,000 songs on an iPod. Someone says, “What are you listening to at the moment?” F---, there’s 10,000 songs on my iPod. If I give you a top 20, do I give you the top 20 of the last five minutes or the last year or month? But there’s a lot to choose from. To answer your question, I think there are a lot of acts who don’t get great exposure. MySpace has been a great vehicle and moving into iLike will be a great vehicle for people who don’t have the traditional record company representation. I like NYOIL, because he’s saying things I’m familiar with at my age and stage. The Roots are the epitome… they’re kicking into the second phase of their career, which speaks to me even more. Questlove is going into that second zone of confidence as a bandleader with hip-hop sensibilities and futuristic thoughts, and a passion for the past and a legacy. He’s going to a place that few people are venturing into.

Crew Grrl Order, being one of the few autonomous female situations, I’m getting behind them this year, because I think they speak to the unspoken and the voiceless. If you say women in hip-hop, that’s the underdog. Another cat who’s coming out, “Yo, I’ve got it rough today, I’m 18, I can’t figure out where it’s at.” I understand, but a lot of MCs don’t listen to each other, so when they come along and say, “Yo, I’ve got this shit you’ve never heard about, son, for real,” it’s the reason why you’ve got 655,346 MCs saying exactly the same thing, with exactly the same type of beats, exactly the same beats per minute, exactly the same beginning and ending, with eight bars or 16 bars, four choruses, and one break. Not to say it’s bad, but there’s just a lot of similarity, so when I’m listening to different things, an all-female group is going to spark me. A cat like NYOIL, who reinvents himself, is going to spark me; a group like the Roots, who take it from a band to a hip-hop aesthetic with Black Thought riding these different waves, it’s going to spark me. But then, Big Joe Turner is turning me out too, for some reason.

Music from the past is just as unknown to me as music from the future. Now that you can have it on a device and say, “Let me hear some James Moody and let me hear some Flobots.” The fact you can go from James Moody to the Flobots, and let it fit into your day, is a good thing, it widens your terrain. I would tell people in London, there’s a lot of MCs coming out in London that need to relate to their surroundings, whether it’s Sway or Dizzee Rascal, I would tell them, “Don’t get strung onto New York, speak from a global standpoint and you’ll swing into the United States, one way or another.” Also, the US is not New York and LA. It’s 2,000 by 3,000-square miles on the lower 48, which most Americans don’t understand. Americans are poor in history and geography. One of the biggest things that shocked Americans was the number of black people televised in New Orleans with Katrina. White people in Wisconsin were saying, “I never knew there were so many black people in New Orleans.” That’s because you don’t know your history and geography. History will tell you it’s a slave port, geography will tell you it channeled people and goods up the Mississippi, which goes from New Orleans up to Minneapolis, where a bridge collapsed last year. You’ve got to keep dumbassification in order to maintain the weapons of mass distraction to get them to come out and vote for John McCain and [laughs] Sarah Palin. You’ve got to keep the masses dumb. You know what they say, take the masses and just move the “m” over, consider that the crowd so you can pimp them out and control them. We hope music and culture goes the opposite way to that.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Can you foresee anything like the Public Enemy, KRS-One era – which was a very unique time and place – happening again?

Chuck D

Things like that are happening right now. We’re in a time we’ve never experienced, but is there time for people to corral and navigate that to a popular understanding? Is it too big for people to project it as they did back then?

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Not that it doesn’t exist, but as the dominant cultural force like it was back then?

Chuck D

I think the technology is dominant, the hardware, not the software. Serato’s the revolution, iPods have been a revolution, before that Napster was a digital revolution. The software that rides it is widespread, it’s vast. So, I think the revolution will come to explain all these big-bang effects all around the scape. The information to the masses about what’s happening has to be better. We’re having all kinds of artistic explosions and vocal forwardness. You must agree with me, radio tells you nothing, and although there have been small steps in national satellite and an aspect on digital radio.

Even what you were doing as a writer and with Ego Trip and the Book Of Rap Lists, you don’t see a parallel component of that explaining to the masses what this shit is about. That’s a big problem, it’s like watching sports with no broadcasting and no statistics. Sport is all about dates, history, where it’s at now and in the future, stats every day, abilities weighed, judgment, comparative analysis, and non-stop sportscasting. In the US they have Sports Center, which shows the same one-hour show six times in the morning before they get into the news of the day. That means they’re giving you the chance not to be stupid, meaning you can’t make shit up. We have nothing like that explaining music to the detail that you are studying it or taking it in at Red Bull. That’s a big thing that’s missing right now. The more you know about the music the more you find yourself alone. Go up to some old lady, “Oh, my son’s a DJ. What do you do? You make beats? He makes beats. And he’s 12.” [Laughs]

Audience member

My name is Vanise and I’m from Brooklyn, New York, and I am a producer, representing that underrepresented section in hip-hop. First, I want to say kudos for Public Enemy for adding such a political twist, which is very important, and it’s something we’re missing right now. I grew up on hip-hop, and was able to see the fun part and the political part and really understand how important it was, as life and a culture. When I do my live show, I try to incorporate more political aspects because I realize how important music is as a culture, even though in the States it’s become laughable. I believe it has become a big corporate entity, where ego and greed is a huge problem. There was a time when there were many political hip-hop groups, and then suddenly you didn’t hear much about them. Do you think it was a matter of taste in the audience, or was it a strategic move within the industry to take away a powerful voice and to keep people stupid? Or was it just focusing on whatever was making money? Was it something that just happened, or was it a strategic move? I do believe everything, like the mass media and the education system, everything in the States is made to make us “sheeple.”

Chuck D

All of the above is accurate to the point, and it becomes hard to discuss with the masses because it’s very detailed and intricate and very easy for someone to put up a red flag and call it a conspiracy theory, “Oh, so you think you know what’s going on?” Make no mistake, corporations are in business to make money for themselves, therefore they’re not talking about the quality of anything as opposed to the quantity. Quantity rules the roost, especially in the major corporations, at that time, where they actually have musical chairs for the people at the top. So, they don’t worry about things long-term, because they don’t even know when their term as president of Sony, or this record company underneath one of the majors, will end. So their whole job is to do numbers. So, in the ’80s, you got $10,000, you can make a million off that, but if you don’t understand that it’s a business, where you’ve got to watch out for diminishing returns, then you can fall into a situation of not paying attention to the quality that got people listening in the first place. That’s what happened to hip-hop. More of it’s going to come, knowing you can put $10,000 in to make a million, which is the story of Ruthless Records. Then you get the situation where you put $1 million to make 10,000 records, which is where it’s at now. It’s totally reversed, so it’s no longer based on quantity. I’ve always thought if the community doesn’t support you, then the [record company] is going to just place you in a record store and sell you. Once you’re in the position of selling, then you fall victim to all those capitalistic rules that put you in the same position as mufflers. “We’ve got to move these mufflers, these loaves of bread, these CDs, this music.” Once you’re in that model, then the spiritual aspect of what you do goes out the window. It’s like, “If you don’t sell these units, then you’re out of there.”

Audience member

People can’t support it if they don’t know it exists.

Chuck D

I don’t understand.

Audience member

You say if the audience isn’t there, if the music you’re delivering isn’t heard. It’s different now, because the business model is independent.

Chuck D

Because it’s never been supported by education. Education is a system that supports books. When you were in the 7th, 8th, 9th grade, and ask, “Why am I reading Huckleberry Finn? Why did the school system buy 336,000 books? Where does this money go to, and why does it come from our budget? And why hasn’t black music been a part of the curriculum ever?”

Black kids are part of the American system, so American culture would be subsidized, wherever that money might go to. So you could read Ethan Frome, or even Charles Dickens Great Expectations. They’ve got to buy the books for you to read. All the music we’ve had, let’s not sleep on it, it’s black music. Black people being involved because all those other portals were shut to us, so we expressed our story and our history through the music. All you’ve got to do to study our history is study our music. You can go back to the first recording, Thomas Edison, 1877, singing “Mary Had A Little Lamb,” and not far from there are black people singing spirituals or whatever – music that will tell you about that time, be it ragtime, blues, jazz, whatever. You get this history by default. You get all the images of how you’ve got to learn what you need to learn. But if you don’t include it in the education system, you as a person bringing across something good for people, well, it’s not included in education, so it ain’t in the community.

So, you’ve got to sell yourself next to a bottle of vodka. Yo, from nine o’clock until three o’clock in the morning, this is our time, and you’ve got to sell your orange juice in a bottle of vodka time. And at a party, the orange juice is only going to be used as a mixer. So, the art is not supported by the community, by the education system, so therefore it’s levied into companies and [is dependent on them and] how they deliver art. And that’s an unfair comparison. It’s like offering a little kid a choice between “Mary Had A Little Lamb” or Playboy [laughs]. It’s the lowest-hanging fruit, and it’s easy to sell “n---a” in America, because America’s built on the treatment of black people as n---as. So, it’s more familiar than the upward understanding of where we are in the world, because it’s been saturated inside Americana. And whenever you come up with something that speaks for blacks, education, women, human beings, it’s going against the grain, because it has to be sold.

Really, it should be given away. If your music is upwardly favorable – if that’s the right term – then the school system should buy one-million CDs in the Brooklyn area and subsidies it so you don’t have to sell it in HMV. “Oh, I’ve got to get this airplay, so the community can hear I’ve got something good.” Why’s the community going to get something better? Because on those airwaves, this is what moves, the one that’s most familiar. That’s the one that’s going to get picked up.

People say, “Why do they have these chicks in the video, why’s it derogatory, why are they showing this?” Who can’t sell sex to a 12-year-old kid? Who can’t sell the promise of a club to an 11-year-old? They can’t get in there, but ask if they know about it and they’ll say, “Hell, yeah! I know about the club, I know about 50 Cent, I know about Fiddy.” They’re six or seven years from getting in there, but they can tell you all about it. You ask them now about a strip club, and they can tell you about it, even though they’ve never been in one. They can’t wait to get in one, because they’ve heard what it’s like. These are the things that sell because it’s the lowest-hanging fruit. It’s where young people want to have that vice side, and think they’re finding their own identity.

The other side has to be given to them. Ask a kid if he wants vegetables or ice cream. Ask a kid. “No, I don’t want the ice cream. “I’ll take the asparagus, I’ll take the broccoli.” [Laughs] That’s the same thing that’s happening in music and culture. Culture, if it’s positive, has to be supported, but the community is already spending its money on education. The structure in America doesn’t consider black culture and black music as part of the education system, because it doesn’t speak to everybody. That’s crazy, because black music has spoken to everybody across the world. I go across the world, and they know everything I’ve been doing, go back to my own block and they don’t know who I am but an old man.

The reason it works in Europe and other places is because of the contrast, the curiosity. Nightlife was triggered by being broader than just, say, Germany only having German musicians. No, this comes from the black musicians who started coming over after World War One, playing and bringing some music. “Oh, that’s what you call jazz.” Because culture brings people together automatically, there’s something about the bite that you can’t fight. You have to be supported by a system that hasn’t had its doors open universally. Corporations are there to sell you and they’ve treated music like rims or hubcaps or sandwiches. Right now, people feel that they can get their sandwiches somewhere else. They don’t realize that before they were the only place that made the hardware to play the software. Now you’ve already got your hardware from computer companies and telephone companies, and now they’re dominating the software.

That’s why the record companies are screaming, “F--- the phone companies, f--- Apple, f--- the PCs, we’re the record companies, listen to us. You still want to sign with us, don’t you?” Yeah, I’ll sign if you give me some money. That’s why people want to get signed to a record company: money and exposure. But I’ll tell you this, welcome to the terrordome. If you sign to an urban division of a major now, can you wait for 24 months and then have them tell you what to do with it? They ain’t giving big advances like they did in the ’80s. “Here’s £10,000 to hold you off for 24 months until we figure out how to position you in the marketplace.” “Can I release my MP3s on my own, get my shit out there?” “No, we don’t want that, we want exclusive rights to have you with us.” So, say, it’s £10,000 or even £100,000 and you’ve got a group of five people, all co-songwriters, is that going to last for 24 months split among five and the making of the record? You might have made your music for nothing and shot the videos, but you’ve got to split with five people and figure all these other things into it. A lot of young people are, “I want to buy my mom her crib.” That’s £40,000. So you’ve got £60,000 left and it becomes a mathematical avalanche. That’s why it’s been an obstacle for women and great art to influence, because those areas are still closed.

Audience member

You were talking about…

Chuck D

Where are you from?

Audience member

Barcelona, I was born here. My name is David.

Chuck D

I’m always trying to be nosy and find out where people are from, so I can take it back home and say there were from Barcelona or Brooklyn.

Audience member

I got a Public Enemy record when I was 15. I didn’t understand any English at all. You talk about the power of the music, I want to ask about the power of the visual, too, the art and the design. Also the information you got from a Public Enemy record when you read the information on the sheet, lots of different bands. And the logo is a powerful logo, one of the best in music history, and also the concept of the organization, the shows. I want to know who came with the concept of the logo and the albums?

Chuck D

We all came up with the concept, trying to present ourselves visually, and putting as much information on the album as possible. It was important because we didn’t have much time. This was before they made videos, so we had to be able to explain ourselves. We called it the “cereal box theory” – when you go in the store, and the most you can do is read the box, then when you eat the food, you want to read the box still, turn it around, read the ingredients on the back. We wanted to be able to get everything out in the artwork, the presentation. I designed the logo, I always liked to see the rock & roll guys – they had logos, so why couldn’t it be the same in rap? I wanted to make the music legitimate, as much as the other genres. Being a fan of history, you take and borrow from all the things you’ve seen to make a visual presentation. We didn’t make up anything, we just took and borrowed from the visual aspects that we’d seen all our lives.

Audience member

My name is José, I’m from Brazil. You said you started MCing because you went to parties and you were pissed off because they were so wack. How did you become so political? How do you feel about these other rappers who are just entertainment, no politics?

Chuck D

We were fortunate to come at another time, I was born in 1960. When I was born I had “negro” on my birth certificate. The Civil Rights Movement was 1965; Malcolm X was killed in 1965, I remember that. Martin Luther King was killed in 1968, I was eight. The Vietnam War was in 1963, all the way until 1971, I remember that very clearly. I wrote “Black Steel In The Hour Of Chaos” after my uncle who had an officer come to his house and told him he was drafted into the Vietnam War. He opened the letter and just dropped it on the table, he’d just graduated from high school. These are the things that are inside me, as well as the music, like [“Say It Loud ¬– I’m Black And I’m Proud” by James Brown, that said we’re black, we’re not colored or negro. We’re black, we speak to the world because this is how we look. Curtis Mayfield always spoke inspirationally. These are things that were inside me because music was always in the house. So, when rap music came out later on, you speak a lot of words and you speak where you come from and what you know. People say I’m political, but this is where I come from, and this is what’s inside me. I think a lot of the time rappers try to copy a political stance that wasn’t inside them in the same way. They may have been born in 1975 or 1982, with different things going on. You can read back, but you can’t actually talk from your personal experiences. That can help too, by reading back and talking to people.

Audience member

It’s not like living through the war.

Chuck D

But you’re watching it and reacting to people who are talking to you. That’s why when Reagan and Bush were around in the ’80s, they knocked out plenty of opportunities, so people were responding to having a lot of guns in the community from nowhere, drugs in the community from nowhere. All of a sudden, it goes from weed to cocaine in three years. How? So, you talk to people, but you also have people in your family who were wiped out from these things so you can comment on it.

Bill Clinton came along in the 90s, and it seemed like people partied for eight years. P Diddy might have partied in ‘96/’97, because Bill Clinton was going around saying he was the black president [laughs], so people kind of went to sleep and thought they didn’t have to be aggressively important. Also, Clinton cut off the rest of the world, he made America a focal point, so it was a party time, but around the rest of the world, policies were enacted that were very American-like. But it wasn’t reflected in the rap music, which was celebrating the good times. One of the reasons why I think America didn’t go for Hillary Clinton, but went for Barack Obama, is because America is tired – you’ve had Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Clinton? “No, we’ve had enough of that shit. We don’t want a dynasty.” That has something to do with it. That’s a good point you brought up – it was already inside of me, so I can’t ask someone who’s 10 years younger than me to share that point of view, because I remember seeing these things.

Audience member

I’m Natalia, from Mexico. I would like to ask, once you realized you had to deal with so many things around what you do, which in the beginning was just music, how can you deal with your inspiration? You have to do so many things and manage a lot of things – what happens when you are on the stage and you have something to say? Have you ever felt lost?

Chuck D

The thing that always gives you perspective is studying other musicians and what they went through – that enables you to see your surroundings a little bit better. When you’re making a record and you’ve done 15 or 16 albums, you might think that’s a lot. But then you realize someone like Duke Ellington has done 76 albums, and wrote when he was 76 on his deathbed, on matchsticks or something. Or someone was working on a plantation, then was finally able to record, then had to go to prison – the Lead Belly story. I say study other musicians and what they’ve gone through in the past, even in the present, and the other artists around you, and you’ll get inspiration from there. You’ll find there are artists that look at you and are trying to get where you’re at. It’s key for artists to talk to other artists. How do you do what you’re doing, how do you make it from A to B, how do you work at the same time and raise your kids, play a club, find time to be with your mother and father, wherever they might live? There are people in this room who you’ll get the most out of.

I traveled here yesterday, got here late after a long day at Heathrow, and I was knocked out. But I’m an old man, and I don’t understand how you can stay up until 4 AM and be up at nine. I did that for years, back when my kids weren’t grown, but I look back and think, “How the hell did I do that?” But you just do it. When they were single digits, I would go on tour, get back, I’d take them to school, finish coming out of the studio at 5 AM, take them to school at 7 AM, sleep for an hour, answer calls, do some interviews, pick them up from school at 3 AM, feed them, go somewhere at nine, and then back in the studio again. Then you’ve got to go the UK for three days, go to California.

But there are 24 hours in a day. You can’t master time, you can only manage it. Sometimes, you can’t share time, because time is different to other people. Sometimes, it’s easier to look at days as 24 hours and then break it down into minutes. Instead of saying you did it for an hour, break your hour into 60 minutes, and dedicate minutes to something, and break those minutes down to 60 seconds.

I tell artists to be fair to their fans, treat them like family, so they’re not fans, they’re “fams”. If you have bodyguards keeping you away, five people come to you, you’re keeping them away, but you can spend two minutes, give them quality time and they’ll remember it for a lifetime. You can spend ten minutes trying to keep them away. It only takes six seconds to shake someone’s hand. It only takes ten seconds to shake five people’s hands, look them in the eye and say hello. A lot of things this industry tries to do, like bodyguards, VIP sections, stay away – they spend more time and energy fighting people to make them stay away, instead of engaging them to come in and communicate. This industry has to work on better public relations, then the audience and performer become as one and you have something that lasts a long time which is some true respect. I see these people surrounded by bodyguards and there ain’t no one trying to beat up on this person. I could name some names, I’ve seen these people with bodyguards around to protect them from what? Saying hello? So, that’s how you guys want to treat them – your public is your relations. Look at situations carefully and manage time, too.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

So, on the subject of time, I think we’re out of time.

Chuck D

I also want to give out my email address, since I have no cards. MySpace is Chuckdpublicenemy and my email is mrchuck@rapstation.com. It’s been an enjoyable experience, thanks for the opportunity, keep doing the music, keep knowing how much fun it is, and keep that youthful spirit of knowing you’re cultural ambassadors, so when you go home to your countries you understand the music and the culture are the things that tie us all together on this very important planet. Thank you.