dunno how many pe fans we got up in here...
but ohh shitt public enemy are back
the new album revolverlution is out july 23
it features 8 new tracks 3 live tracks and 4 remixes
if u sign up to www.slamjamz.com u can download the 1st single "give the peeps what they want" for free..
i liked their last album "theres a poison goin on" but this shit is classic
whats interesting..their fans at their "enemy board" 50 regulars chose the final 4 remixes 4 the album out of 462 submitted remixes(they had a pe remix contest where 11, 000 ppl downloaded chuck ds acapellas)
and one of the PE fans designed the artwork, and another PE fan did the liner notes
below is chuck d's latest terrordome
And the sh#t hits the fans, indeed... Now with the release of Revolverlution this month I’m about to hear it from all angles, and yes I expect whatever comes this way. Peeps, I can handle it and you better believe it’s gonna be giant sized criticism by both cats that never understood and even those that thought they understood. I mentioned this last Terrordome about, yup, I dig the fact that KOCH has stepped to the plate to distribute SLAMjamz, and that was the paramount issue here. Our goal is to eventually release 8 albums a year, and KOCH’s ‘world vision’ to see the planet as a whole, ran alongside our Internet online delivery ideology perfectly. However, realistically I believe the CD 12 track album is dying in favor of people putting together their own albums to their own design. Thus we will expound upon shorter, to the point, albums or undeniable deliveries and specialty product at SLAMjamz. It is here that I discuss the anatomy of an album project from an old school rap artist making headway into a corporate dominated hip hop mainstream. Again I’m gonna mention how and what we think of this record entering the land of a zillion CDs.
GROUNDBREAKING The REVOLVERLUTION disc is groundbreaking in the fact that the Internet is still putting the gun to the heads of the industry. Regardless of what we think, increasingly, the album format is outdated and dead to a certain degree, like I said up top, but still albums can be specifically packaged and designed to be collectable…
CAN’T BRING BACK THE TIME Really, who gives a damn about anything anyway if you don’t focus upon the time surrounding it. For 14 years people have been waiting for another ‘Takes A Million...,’ and I’ve said repeatedly that even if you brought back the same recording techniques, people and energy you still can’t bring back the year that defined the cause of the sound in the first place. Just as you can’t bring back 1968 either. Still, cats wanna compare, and that’s cool cause if I’m checking out ISSAC HAYES I wanna see him do ‘WALK ON BY’ because he’s bringing back a piece of 1969, which my old ass remembers well. I remember the effect of JAMES BROWN's music, just as people remember the effect of PE classics. Real heads will remember that PE music wasn’t no instant rah-rah music during the years of 1987-1989. Nope. It wasn’t until "FIGHT THE POWER" that the reluctant heads started to nod, and by then it was too late because we specifically made that song to be a theme for a movie so we couldn’t get ourselves twisted like MILES on our own planet. FEAR OF A BLACK PLANET was formed off of "FIGHT THE POWER" on one hand, "TERRORDOME" on the other and the recording unveiling of FLAVOR FLAV, who at the time gave me an enormous amount of relief.
Yet it was about this time it was determined that it was necessary to add 5-6 tracks per album to our show. We couldn’t get to the other jams like "WAR @ 33.3" and "Power To the People" in the past, so they were forever tossed to the bench as filler. My point is that we set out like rock cats to never repeat ourselves, and to make records, not count them, or figure out who’s’ gonna like them or dislike them. JOURNALISTIC LAZINESS Although I mentioned this in the last T-dome, lemme laser focus this nightmare that the music press is experiencing.... Already journalists have 50 CDs on their desks complaining about overworked and underpaid. Reviewing an album these days is like working the housewares section in WAL-MART. Why? Because technology has allowed anyone to create an album. Think back when we was doing BUM RUSH THE SHOW, we felt privileged to be able to go in the studio and put together an album. It was an expensive and complicated thing to do that required all of our BOMB SQUAD time and effort. At that time even recording 3 songs to be released was a big thing. When you delivered an album to a journalist, rap-wise, it was probably one of 3 on their desk. Not only was the journalist listening to it more than 3 times, thoroughly, but they were taking it home as well. In that time we concentrated on making the cassette so perfect, we wanted to make sure the a-side and the b-side were to the exact second in length so there wouldn’t be any dead air (radio technique).
Well if anybody has understood time changes, it would be us. I expect some backlash simply because we press for futuristic innovation on all fronts. We have over 267 journalists worldwide to correspond with about this release, thus we set up a special FTP interactive journal spot to check it and all the parts, instead of mailing the CD out the ‘OLD’ way. There are some writers who are not in this future, so we’ll be sending them cassettes. I expect that some peeps will not like this, but what do we do this for if not for innovation purposes. For all. Today fans can get albums from anybody, and a lotta people care little about the ‘title of the song’ rather calling it by its track listing instead. POPULAR CHOICES BASED ON POPULAR EXPOSURE Some cats said that maybe we should’ve gotten big dollar producers for this. Well obviously they didn’t know what this project was about in the first place. The PE acapellas were downloaded 11,643 times and 462 mixes were submitted. Why would anybody in their right mind not use this as a research pool? Names like CEM, Blackington and others made their mark with incredible innovative works. We could only pick 4 winners, but the point was to interactively involve them in today’s locked and closed circle, the so-called record business. Rockwilder and the Neptunes are good, but I guarantee that in 2002 a good 50 cats evaluated across the world are just as good. The industry is lazy, and innovation has to be developed past the song itself. I have 15,000 submissions at www.rapstation.com of artists doing their thing, and a lot of it ‘reeeeeal goooood’ so why would I go backwards to stale industry standards. As far as production in 2002, as with most art if you have equal tools, then...
SON OF A BUSH Well this song has been suggested for the rock stations across the country because of the sound and topic. Just because it was leaked first didn’t mean that it was representative of the sound of the album. I think the second I heard Griff put it down in the ATLStaxx studio, I decided to create SON OF A BUSH. I hear that I’m not flowing on top of it, well the fact is that you don’t flow to a metal track you ‘rock’ it and phrase roll with it. There’s only one cat that I loved his flow over rock tracks and that is RATM's ZACK DE LA ROCHA. Other than that there’s only one way to rock a rock track and that is to overpower it. As far as the song itself, it addresses the almost forgotten governor term that launched him into cheating the presidential election in the first place. Cats also forgot that PE will always twist itself into a rockish cut once every album or two, and never be afraid to take chances.
ONLY 8 NEW TRACKS? Now a journalist such as AMY LINDEN from XXL Magazine says that only 8 new tracks exist , but as opposed to how many? Classic albums from the past would be 7-8 cuts deep, where as ISSAC HAYES’ HOT BUTTERED SOUL only had 4. Did yall know that the majors, in cahoots with the retail outlets, made an early determination with the CD that all major recording contracts include that the artist deliver a minimum of 12 tracks. They did this so that the lowest suggested retail price of $11.99 would constitute the public paying 1 dollar per track? Still, whereas I have to think somewhat like a consumer, I’ll deliver some aspects of choice from a so called ‘classic group’. Besides, at SLAMjamz.com we give away many songs that are unreleased, remixed, live and brand new on the regular, so if one really was in touch with our online world they’d realize it was no big deal.
SLOGUNEERING I’m also accused of coming up with slogans instead of addressing issues and concerns. I’m confused by this comment. I think I’ve always phrased slogans and strayed away from making a thesis on music. Eventually when you stop taking chances with music, and become predictable in marketing as well, the average listener can and will be able to equal or surpass what they once thought of as great. Simplifying the music is great for popular expansion, but in rap and hip hop, a genre which dodges the difficult task and skill of singing notes and playing them on instruments, eventually simplifying it will have your average 6th grader flowing just as good as a signed rapper.
What separates a 6th grader from the average 20-something signed artist? It should be wit, intelligence, seasoned ability and the understanding of where and how to take the craft to the next level, in recording, and performance.
WOULD WE LISTEN TO THIS IF IT WASN’T PE? Maybe. Maybe not. Thus we are blessed to have evolved in a different era in music, where the differences and the performances determined our identity. But you can say the same thing about the BEATLES, ROLLING STONES, RUN-DMC, etc. It’s difficult to compare different eras during a group’s career, that’s why the show is the blood. We’re performers and artists so our art is most likely gonna end up in a performance. Past? Yup, we’re always up against our past but we’ve learned long ago there’s nothing you can do to better it, just roll with it. No one can take it away. But all our new material has to do is just fit in. So instead we use our past to our advantage like a seven-footer would use his height in the post. I think seasoned artists should take note from shows of course, but now in album arrangements too. Use your past, as many will use it against you.
Whichever way you get it , REVOLVERLUTION is at a head near you. It’s both revisionist and revolutionary for classic acts to remain relevant in today’s marketplace. Plus a new PE album is always a passport to the 53 countries... we’re set to travel across the world, thank you.
