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Monday, April 11, 2005
It's About Time the Library of Congress Carried "Pollywanacraka"
To quote Chuck D, "Now that's progress."
Along with forty-eight other new selections, Nirvana's Nevermind and Public Enemy's Fear of a Black Planet have been preserved at the Library of Congress in its National Recording Registry. The fifty additions to the registry also include the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds and Al Jolson's "Swanee," but it's the two most historically recent choices that were part of the soundtrack of my life.
If Nirvana were still around today, what would they be like? Kurt Cobain's suicide still feels like a major loss. It's one of the few celebrity deaths that I remember where I was exactly and how I heard the news.
And as for Public Enemy... Fifteen years ago, it would have been impossible to name a rap group as influential or as politically significant as PE. (And personally, I prefer the black punk of It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back over Fear of a Black Planet, but will admit the latter is more historically significant and more influential.) For that matter, it was impossible to think of the rap landscape without Public Enemy taking a central role. Chuck D was the one who claimed rap music was the black CNN and today it's even bigger than that, the most important pop cultural movement of the past decade.
Chuck D was a major lyricist, erudition and playfulness being as important to him as passion and righteous anger. The Bomb Squad pioneered a noise ethic that still sounds fresh and powerful today - loving noise from the likes of Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr, it was amazing hearing the way sampling was used by the Bomb Squad and later to hear similar use of dissonance by the likes of DJ Muggs and the RZA.
And the songs... I still feel a rage and sorrow when I think of the lyrics from "Welcome to the Terrordome": "First / nothing worst / than a mother's pain of a son / slain in Bensonhurst". (Does anyone even remember what happened in Bensonhurt so many years ago?) Not surprisingly, I can still recite huge chunks from Nation of Millions and Fear even now. Just a snippet of a line can get me reeling stanza after stanza.
But musically, something happened with PE. Fear of a Black Planet was followed by Apocalypse 91, a strong album but admittedly not matching up to Fear. And that was followed, if memory serves me correctly, with Muse Sick in Hour Mess Age which simply didn't click. I never picked it up and had moved on to gangster rap and hardcore soon enough, Cypress Hill and Ice Cube's solo work. When I returned to rap after a few years stuck on alterna-rock, it was Wu-Tang Clan and Mobb Deep. And throughout, Public Enemy struggled to be recognized again, never mind being socially and politically relevant.
Now if you hear about Public Enemy it'll probably have to do with Flavor Flav's reality series with Brigitte Nielsen. It's a shame, really, and I feel the shock of the culturally ancient when youngster who claim to like rap music don't even know who Public Enemy are.
Maybe that's what progress is all about. I wouldn't like to think it, but obsolescence is as much a fact of life as forward movement.
And hey, if there wasn't fear of obsolescence there wouldn't be the national registry in the first place...
Along with forty-eight other new selections, Nirvana's Nevermind and Public Enemy's Fear of a Black Planet have been preserved at the Library of Congress in its National Recording Registry. The fifty additions to the registry also include the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds and Al Jolson's "Swanee," but it's the two most historically recent choices that were part of the soundtrack of my life.
If Nirvana were still around today, what would they be like? Kurt Cobain's suicide still feels like a major loss. It's one of the few celebrity deaths that I remember where I was exactly and how I heard the news.
And as for Public Enemy... Fifteen years ago, it would have been impossible to name a rap group as influential or as politically significant as PE. (And personally, I prefer the black punk of It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back over Fear of a Black Planet, but will admit the latter is more historically significant and more influential.) For that matter, it was impossible to think of the rap landscape without Public Enemy taking a central role. Chuck D was the one who claimed rap music was the black CNN and today it's even bigger than that, the most important pop cultural movement of the past decade.
Chuck D was a major lyricist, erudition and playfulness being as important to him as passion and righteous anger. The Bomb Squad pioneered a noise ethic that still sounds fresh and powerful today - loving noise from the likes of Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr, it was amazing hearing the way sampling was used by the Bomb Squad and later to hear similar use of dissonance by the likes of DJ Muggs and the RZA.
And the songs... I still feel a rage and sorrow when I think of the lyrics from "Welcome to the Terrordome": "First / nothing worst / than a mother's pain of a son / slain in Bensonhurst". (Does anyone even remember what happened in Bensonhurt so many years ago?) Not surprisingly, I can still recite huge chunks from Nation of Millions and Fear even now. Just a snippet of a line can get me reeling stanza after stanza.
But musically, something happened with PE. Fear of a Black Planet was followed by Apocalypse 91, a strong album but admittedly not matching up to Fear. And that was followed, if memory serves me correctly, with Muse Sick in Hour Mess Age which simply didn't click. I never picked it up and had moved on to gangster rap and hardcore soon enough, Cypress Hill and Ice Cube's solo work. When I returned to rap after a few years stuck on alterna-rock, it was Wu-Tang Clan and Mobb Deep. And throughout, Public Enemy struggled to be recognized again, never mind being socially and politically relevant.
Now if you hear about Public Enemy it'll probably have to do with Flavor Flav's reality series with Brigitte Nielsen. It's a shame, really, and I feel the shock of the culturally ancient when youngster who claim to like rap music don't even know who Public Enemy are.
Maybe that's what progress is all about. I wouldn't like to think it, but obsolescence is as much a fact of life as forward movement.
And hey, if there wasn't fear of obsolescence there wouldn't be the national registry in the first place...
