Public Enemy - Harder Than You Think [HD]
From
2007 Album: "How You Sell
Soul to a
Soulless People Who
Sold Their Soul?"
Public Enemy's
Official Site:
http://www.publicenemy.com/
Get Public Enemy's
Music:
http://www.amazon.com/Public-Enemy/e/
...
&
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZ...
Public Enemy, also known as PE, is an influential hip hop group from
Long Island, New York, known for its politically charged lyrics and criticism of the
American media, with an active interest in the frustrations and concerns of the
African American community.
In 2004,
Rolling Stone Magazine ranked Public Enemy number forty-four on its list of the
Immortals:
100 Greatest Artists of All
Time.
Acclaimed Music ranks them the 29th most recommended musical act of all time and the highest hip-hop group. The group was inducted into the
Long Island Music Hall of
Fame in 2007.
Chuck D put out a tape to promote
WBAU (the radio station where he was working at the time) and to fend off a local mc who wanted to battle him. He called the tape Public Enemy #1 because he felt like he was being persecuted by people in the local scene.
This was the first reference to the notion of a public enemy in any of Chuck D's songs. The single was created by Chuck D with a contribution by
Flavor Flav, though this was before the group Public Enemy was officially assembled.
According to
Chuck, The
S1W, which stands for
Security of the First World, "represents that the black man can be just as intelligent as he is strong. It stands for the fact that we're not third-world people, we're first-world people; we're the original people [of the earth]."
On the track "
Louder Than a Bomb" from It
Takes a
Nation of Millions to
Hold Us
Back, Chuck D reveals that the D in his nickname stands for
Dangerous.
Developing his talents as an MC with Flavor Flav while delivering furniture for his father's business, Chuck D (
Carlton Douglas Ridenhour) and
Spectrum City, as the group was called, released the record "
Check out the
Radio," backed by "
Lies," a social commentary—both of which would influence
RUSH Productions' Run-D.
M.C. and
Beastie Boys. The group was signed to the still developing
Def Jam Recordings record label after co-founder
Rick Rubin heard Chuck D freestyling on a demo.
Around 1986,
Bill Stephney, the former
Program Director at WBAU, was approached by
Rubin and offered a position with the label. Stephney accepted, and his first assignment was to help Rubin
sign Chuck D, whose song "
Public Enemy Number One" he had heard from
Andre "
Doctor Dré"
Brown. According to the book The
History of Rap Music by
Cookie Lommel, "Stephney thought it was time to mesh the hard-hitting style of Run
DMC with politics that addressed black youth. Chuck recruited Spectrum City, which included
Hank Shocklee, his brother
Keith Shocklee, and
Eric "Vietnam" Sadler, collectively known as the
Bomb Squad, to be his production team and added another Spectrum City partner,
Professor Griff, to become the group's
Minister of Information. With the addition of Flavor Flav and another local mobile DJ named
Terminator X, the group Public Enemy was born." Public Enemy opened for
The Beastie Boys on some of their
East Coast concerts, including
Philadelphia,
Newark and
Brooklyn.
Extended & updated info at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_E...(band)