1987 ER OCTOBER – DECEMB

February 11, 1987: Public Enemy’s Chuck D on stage with a member of Security Of The First World at Hammersmith Odeon, West London

Chuck D’s belief in a continuity between R&B and hip hop is a kind What happens technically? of moral conviction (Chuck sets great store in blacks having a “The sampled sounds come from anywhere. Take ‘Rebel Without A consciousness of their history). I can’t see any precedents in black pop Pause’. A lot of people said that noise came from a James Brown grunt, but for the harsh drone-squall of “Terminator X Speaks With His Hands”, what they didn’t realise was that it was a blend of the grunt and a Miles for the piercing blare of unidentifiable sound on the extraordinary Davis trumpet, which produced a sound that wavered. And then we took “Rebel Without A Pause”, nor for the way these noises are repeated that tone and stretched it. The drone on ‘Terminator X Speaks’ and ‘MPE’ mechanically, inexpressively, without inflection, wholly alienated from is a backwards fire truck!” the human touch, in an endless cycle of attrition. Amazingly, “Rebel”, the B-side from the last single that has now become Chuck, where soul and funk are about getting loose and grooving, your a club sensation and a highly sought-after rarity, isn’t going to be given kind of hardcore hip hop is wound up, clenched; it’s hardly a release, more another push, although it is appearing on the next album. Instead, there’s like further harassment. another single off the Yo! Bum Rush The Show album: “Sophisticated” “What we like to do is take elements from soul that make you feel good (the “Bitch” of the original title and “all the curses” have been excised to and draw you in, and put those sounds and beats next to noises that are court radio) backed by a new track, “Bring The Noise”, which is appearing gonna push you away. So the listener is kind of coming and going, on the soundtrack of the movie of Less Than Zero. walking a line, thinking, ‘Oh lord, turn that off’, and at the same time not “It’s a pumpin’ track, 109 beats per minute, which is fast for hip hop. It’s wanting to turn it off.” a gamble.” This is the opposite of fusion: a kind of suspended-animation fission, where inconsistent sounds are frozen in mutual contradiction, within Death to disco the same soundspace. CHuCk D aDHEREs to the Def Jam party line: that rap is black “It’s a conscious process. Records like ‘Public Enemy Number One’ take rock’n’roll, that it’s based around rock’n’roll’s 4/4 beat rather than disco’s a helluva long time to mix, ’cos it’s very easy to turn people off, but not so pulse beat, that its renegade, vandalistic attitude is the antithesis of easy to get a balance between turning people on and harassing them.” disco’s aspirations to showbiz acceptance.

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