Public Enemy @ ABC, 27 May
Still funky, still hilarious, still partying for your right to fight -- where would hip-hop be without them?
“I don’t even know that damn record!” Kool Keith (***) shakes his head in disbelief as yet another Dr Octagon lyric slips his mind. The madcap emcee later confesses that he can’t even remember how many records he’s made. Luckily, KutMasta Kurt seems more familiar with the catalogue and jolts Keith's memory into action with a scattershot megamix to set the requisite house party aesthetic for tonight’s hip-hop nostalgia fest. Ultimately, Keith ‘kills off’ Octagon with a few verses before he walks off stage, by which point the love/hate relationship he’s alleged to have with the most successful of his alter egos appears blatant.
P.E’s one time production team, the Bomb Squad (***), keep the room bouncing until Keith Shocklee stops the show to make a risk assessment and remind the ABC of “the big-assed disco ball” overhead. They up the tempo anyway and Shocklee plays hype man while brother Hank chronicles their progression as minimalist, soul sampling mavericks to dubstep spouting renaissance men in a 45 minute sized nutshell. The incongruent worlds they explore somehow mesh and it’s clear that the 'Squad still have a few new tricks up their sleeve.
Two questions linger in the air before tonight’s finale kicks off: Will the resurrection of protest hip-hop appear contrived in such a depressingly apathetic age, and, perhaps more to the point, will that sample of a whistling kettle in Rebel Without a Pause suddenly sound all dated and shit?
Like all past participants in the Don’t Look Back series before them, there’s little doubt that Public Enemy (*****) have approached the reprisal of their most revered era with some element of trepidation. Chuck D hints at his own hesitance when he talks about this revival of It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back as “a promoter's dream, a fan's fantasy and an artist's challenge.” But any fears are almost instantly allayed when Flavor Flav straps on his clock and reinstates his pledge to Bring the Noise before crowd surfing his way through many of the ensuing 120 minutes. Chuck chuckles and the ever militant SW1s scowl disapprovingly as their clown prince snatches the limelight. Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos is ever their vital, ‘screw the man’ centrepiece, and the sense of panic they invested in She Watch Channel Zero back in 1988 remains vivid to the point that not even the deranged band of overzealous, beer chucking, slam dancing morons in attendance can derail this train. Still funky, still hilarious, still partying for your right to fight – where would hip-hop be without them? (Johnny Langlands)