HIP-HOP AT 50:
THE RISE OF REVOLUTIONARY RAP
The first time Russell Simmons heard Public Enemy was at Rick Rubin’s dorm room at New York University, where the 21-year-old aspiring producer had set up shop, laying the foundation for Def Jam Recordings.
According to Yo! MTV Raps co-host and former Beastie Boys DJ Doctor Dre (not to be confused with Dr. Dre of N.W.A fame), “When I first played Public Enemy for Rick and Russell, Rick heard it and said, ‘Yo, this is a’ight.' But Russell got up, walked to the tape deck, took out the cassette and threw it out the window. He said, ‘This is garbage, man—nobody’s ever going to listen to that.’”
Little did Simmons know that Public Enemy would become a rap powerhouse. Despite Rubin's enthusiasm, Chuck D initially refused to sign with Def Jam, wanting to focus on his radio career instead. But after months of prodding, Bill Stephney—Chuck’s classmate at Adelphi University and a future president of Def Jam—was finally able to convince Chuck to leave his radio ambitions behind and pivot to a career in rap.
“Me, Bill and Hank [Shocklee of producers The Bomb Squad], we sat in the car and Bill convinced us that maybe this should be the move,” Chuck D remembers. "What kicked it over was that Run-DMC was being blamed for the violence at a concert in Long Beach. They came at us kind of harsh, and they were just young Black street kids who were rapping—they didn't have the sophistication to deal with a harsh press that was reducing rap to its lowest elements. I came out and said, ‘Well, if they fuck around with me, they’re gonna get the wrong person to tango with.’ That’s why I decided to do it.”
Formed with the loose idea that they could be rap’s version of The Clash, Chuck D, Flavor Flav and Terminator X exploded on the scene with 1987’s Yo! Bum Rush the Show, which featured the single “Public Enemy Number One.” Their mission became abundantly clear: The revolution would be televised. Rap videos, which had been nearly impossible to get on mainstream TV, began popping up. Public Enemy’s second album, 1988’s It Takes a Nation of Millions… To Hold Us Back, produced videos for “Don’t Believe the Hype,” “Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos,” “Night of the Living Baseheads” and “Bring the Noise.” The group's military aesthetic (akin to that of the Black Panthers) and Chuck D’s incendiary lyrics centered on the polarizing socio-political topics of the era set a precedent.
“I grew up alongside the Power to the People movement of the '60s and '70s," says Chuck D. "Applying it to rap was a no-brainer. Rap is the best call to answer authority—it’s direct, no chaser.”
Public Enemy’s first four albums—which also included 1990’s Fear of a Black Planet and 1991’s Apocalypse Now… The Enemy Strikes Black—sparked a revolutionary movement. Soon, it wasn’t just Public Enemy “fighting the power” and shouting “can’t truss it.”
On the West Coast, Paris (né Oscar Jackson Jr.) was waging his own war against the establishment. Fueled by Public Enemy’s outspoken stance, Paris, a former member of the Nation of Islam, started putting pen to paper.
“I grew up in a household with constant messages in the music my mother listened to—Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Gil Scott-Heron and Curtis Mayfield stayed in rotation in my house,” he recalls. “I never really thought about marrying messages to music with hip-hop because I did not initially start out wanting to do hip-hop. But I realized early on that I was at least as good as some of the rap artists I heard being celebrated, so I figured I'd throw my hat in the ring. It wasn't until Public Enemy came out with the perfect fusion of music and message, though, that I considered going that route with my own music.
“LL COOL J and Rakim were also influential. I’ve been told many times that people hear those influences, so I suppose that's a good thing because those artists' catalogs still stand the test of time. But Public Enemy was the blueprint for me. Our first interaction with each other was my cameo in their ‘Anti-N**ger Machine’ video. Then we ended up working together on subsequent projects.”
Paris released his debut album, The Devil Made Me Do It, in 1990. The video for the politically charged "Break the Grip of Shame" was infamously banned from MTV for its “controversial” imagery. “I was a brand new artist, so just being on TV and the radio was a high back then,” the rapper recollects. “Younger me was concerned about being banned from a major outlet like MTV, but the controversy just fueled record sales.”
Things came full circle when Chuck D asked Paris to work on Public Enemy’s 2006 album, Rebirth of a Nation. He notes, “Chuck trusted me to come up with and write his parts for the project. It made perfect sense.” Released on Paris’ Guerrilla Funk Recordings, the project featured like-minded guests such as dead prez, MC Ren of N.W.A, Kam, Sister Souljah, The Conscious Daughters, Immortal Technique and Professor Griff, illustrating the sheer number of artists who were using their music to invoke change. Some dubbed it “revolutionary rap,” but Paris landed on another term he felt was more descriptive of the music they were making: "reality rap."
Karryl “Special One” Smith and Carla “CMG” Green—better known as The Conscious Daughters—were among the first women to align with the work Paris was doing. In 1993 he was handed a demo by the Oakland duo one night at a club and quickly signed them to his Scarface Records. “I loved the Conscious Daughters,” he says. “They were talented, had a fierce work ethic, were willing to go in different directions and try new things, had a unique female-centric perspective and were funny as hell. To this day, I know that no female hip-hop group has been better than them. Of course, there have been great solo MCs who are women, but there's never been a female hip-hop group better than or more genuine than The Conscious Daughters.”
Their debut album, Ear to the Street, peaked at #25 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart and #7 on Heatseekers Albums. Produced solely by Paris, the project produced two singles: “Somethin' to Ride To (Fonky Expedition)" and "We Roll Deep,” both of which charted. The Conscious Daughters rapped unapologetically about their reality, blazing a path for female rappers like Mia X and The Click’s Suga T. “The music was a vehicle for the group to present a strong, assertive woman’s perspective in hip-hop,” Paris says. “They were making hardcore street shit that emphasized female unity and showcased rhyme skills instead of sexuality," itself a political act.
The Conscious Daughters delivered two more albums for Paris, 1996’s Gamers and 2009’s The Nutcracker Suite. Two years later, however, Smith died of a pulmonary embolism at age 44.
In 2016 Compton artist YG and his label, Def Jam Recordings, came knocking on Paris’ proverbial door for a song called “FDT (Fuck Donald Trump)” featuring Nipsey Hussle. They needed a sample cleared—and fast. “The music for ‘FDT’ is from ‘Somethin’ to Ride To (Fonky Expedition),’ which I produced,” Paris explains. “When Def Jam hit me up, I was unaware it was out and being performed worldwide. We worked it out. I’m grateful the music continues to be used in the way it was originally intended—to be subversive and call for justice and equality.”
Despite today's tumultuous political and socioeconomic climate, revolutionary voices in music are few and far between.
In 2020 Lil Baby released “The Bigger Picture” in response to the police killing of George Floyd. “Protests and growing national outcry continues,” he raps, “Over the death of George Floyd/ Last night, people protesting in Minneapolis escalated/ As demonstrators were lashed by tear gas and rubber bullets/ The main message here, the main message here, the main message here/ Is that they want to see those officers involved/ They want to see those officers arrested/ Officers arrested/ (I can't breathe, I can't breathe).”
Heralded as a modern protest song, it was a fleeting moment; Lil Baby soon retreated from his position as a leader. As he told GQ in September 2020, “The more I’m seeing what’s up with all that shit, the more I’m, like, ‘Let me back up off politics. I don’t want to be no Malcolm X or Martin Luther [King].’ I stuck my nose in it. I’m good on that.”
Needless to say, the door remains wide open for the next generation of rappers to effect change—all it takes is a mic.
