Public Enemy --

Apocalypse ‘91... The Enemy Strikes Back

(Def Jam / Columbia 47374)

In early September, a Hasidic Jew alledgedly ran a red light in order to catch up with the lead cars in a three-car motorcade. As he went through the intersection, he collided with an oncoming car and careened into two children, killing one and critically injuring the second. Both the children were seven years old and both were black.

The incident occured in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, a neighborhood of middle-class blacks and jews. Immediately after it happened, a visiting Jewish student was knifed to death, and rioting ensued. Peace, as tenuous as it had been for the past 10 to 15 years, was lost in that neighborhood. Sticks, stones and epitaphs were thrown across police lines for three days. Mayor David Dinkins, himself an African-American, tried to bring the sides together but was shunned by the blacks and totally ignored by the Jewish community.

Such is the state of race relations in New York City. With eight million people it is expected that not everyone will get along. In some cases, there is outrageous and inexplicable antipathy from group to group, which has no bearing on reality other than the myth of that hatred perpetuating itself.

Such is the state in which Public Enemy’s new disc has been released. Filled with questions, comments and demands, P.E. makes, again, a Statement. But for the first time in their five-year history, they have released a record which is not better than the last. The rhymin’ is strong, the rhythms loud, but the energy, anger and rage which drove Fear of a Black Planet just isn’t there. Of if it is, it’s so diluted int the impeccable producton that it is nearly unheard.

But that quality production goes a long way to make up for the lack of passion. Like the Clash used guitars, P.E. uses samples, scratches and other sounds to irritate, and to drill a small hole in your head through which the messages can enter.

Like their other discs, this one is long when fewer songs would do... but it is densely packed. (The information provided is fantastic. If NPR were all-rap and Chuck D. hosted "Morning Edition," this is what we’d hear. Give them 22 minutes they’ll give you their world.)

The group brings on Anthrax on the closing track, to provide a grungy riff to back up "Bring Tha Noize." But even given the unusual collaboration, the song just doesn’t steamroll forward in the way other P.E. efforts have.

Could Public Enemy be losing ground to the more radical, and far more angry, rap stars like Ice T and Brand Nubian? And can the dialogue of race relations be so far gone that it takes a riot to wake us up?

--- George Paaswell a.k.a. Clark Street / Catharsis #22 - Nov. 1991