Ice T is among performers in the “Art of Rap” tour.
From the first ad libs of hype man Flavor Flav in “You’re Gonna Get Yours” on the 1987 debut album “Yo! Bum Rush the Show,” the hip-hop group Public Enemy established itself as a pioneering collective, combining the politics of the street with some of the hardest beats in the genre, thanks to the producing collective known as the Bomb Squad.
Today, the group continues to innovate, even as commercial radio is more likely to celebrate rap songs tested in strip clubs than on boomboxes. Almost 30 years removed from that debut album, Public Enemy is charting a path for the genre’s elder statesmen, while answering an important question: In hip-hop, where “new” is the coin of the realm, how does one sustain a lifelong career?
“We couldn’t really look at rap artists and say, ‘What do you do after 15, or 20, or 25 years?’ ” said the band’s lead MC, Chuck D. “You’ve got to look at the Bowies, at Black Sabbath, at Deep Purple, at Rush. They’re doing music on their own terms.”
Public Enemy is back on the road, headlining much of the Art of Rap music festival, with a collection of groups and MCs from the golden age of hip-hop. Artists rounding out the bill at San Francisco’s Warfield on Sunday, July 24, include Ice T, Naughty by Nature, and Grandmaster Melle Mel & Scorpio.
The event, much like the Kings of the Mic tour that featured Public Enemy, LL Cool J, Ice Cube and De La Soul in 2013, is an embarrassment of riches for a one-night affair, the type of event that is a throwback to rap’s earliest super tours, like the Fresh Fest tours of the ’80s.
“Rap music really grew out of people coming out and paying $10 or $20 to a venue to check out a show that was from the beginning to end a variety of great acts,” Chuck D said. “It was a high point of the music.”
Those times may have been high points for Public Enemy, but they were only a few in a 30-year career of accolades. Its most-streamed song on Spotify was released not in 1987 but rather in 2007 — “Harder Than You Think,” which became the theme song for the 2012 Summer Paralympics in London and turned into the band’s biggest hit in Britain. The next year, Public Enemy became the fourth rap group to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Part of that continued vitality comes from the group’s ability to integrate its belief system into its songs, creating polemics for the dance floor. In “Do the Right Thing,” Spike Lee’s searing examination of racial relations on one Brooklyn street, Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power” is both a call to action and the soundtrack to the opening choreography, performed by actress Rosie Perez.
On the group’s most recent effort, 2015’s “Man Plans God Laughs,” Chuck D covers corporate greed (“Corplantationopoly”), music being co-opted (“Lost in Space Music”) and white supremacy (“No Sympathy From the Devil”). The music video for the album cut “Me to We” features several shots of Chuck D, framed by a noose, with the names of re-
“It was us against the world when it came down to us and LL and Ice Cube, De La Soul, because we were rappers and we were scrutinized from the beginning.” Chuck D
cent victims of police violence like Tamir Rice and Eric Garner on either side of the screen.
“What happened in Minnesota, in Baton Rouge, in Dallas — individuals took it amongst themselves to create the worst thing that could happen,” he said. “You’ve got to listen to the team, to the crowd, when it comes down to everybody trying to figure out how to come out right together.”
Embracing that idea of “we,” the MC said, is how Public Enemy has survived so long.
“It was us against the world when it came down to us and LL and Ice Cube, De La Soul, because we were rappers and we were scrutinized from the beginning,” Chuck D said. “We were ostracized from a music standpoint. When some of the artists started to become big, especially in pop culture, this ‘me’ mentality started to happen. And we want to let everybody know that this (tour) is a total aspect of a genre in its diversity, not some kind of individual thing.”