Public Enemy’s 1990 anthem Fight the Power stands as a powerful testament to the band’s fierce social and political activism. The track owes its origins to filmmaker Spike Lee, who sought out Chuck D to provide the title track to his movie Do The Right Thing. “I wanted it to be defiant, I wanted it to be angry, I wanted it to be very rhythmic. I thought right away of Public Enemy,” Lee said.
The film centred around worsening relations between an Italian-owned pizzeria in an African-American neighbourhood, tackling racism, police brutality and the systematic oppression of black people. For such an important message – the need to “do the right thing” by standing up for your community, no matter the cost – there was no better candidate than Public Enemy, still hot off the release of 1988’s incendiary, defiant It Takes A Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back.
When initially brainstorming the track that would play in Lee’s movie, PE’s leader Chuck D was brought back to a single by The Isley Brothers written in response to the group’s negative experience with local white authority figures, which fit in line with the themes of Lee’s movie. That song was Fight The Power, a No.4 hit in 1975 notorious for its use of the word “bullshit” – which was censored during radio airplay.
Anchored by the much-sampled James Brown Funky Drummer beat and a riff lifted from Different Strokes by Syl Johnson, it wasn’t long before Public Enemy began work on the reimagining of the classic. “The new version was pretty much radicalised, and that was the theme. We weren’t trying to do a cover but trying to interpolate the meaning of it,” explained Chuck D.
Composed primarily of samples layered over each other by the group’s production team, The Bomb Squad, together with scratching from PE’s DJ Terminator X and driving saxophone work from Branford Marsalis, the song unapologetically tackles issues of racism and social injustice head-on.
“It’s really the most important Public Enemy record. We’re a kick-ass group, so we’re going to kick ass,” Chuck D has said.
Marsalis’ contribution is crucial. Hank Shocklee of The Bomb Squad told Rolling Stone: “I wanted to have a sax in the record but I didn’t want it in a smooth, melodic fashion; I wanted someone to play it almost like a weapon, and Branford was the guy.”
Marsalis remembers: “Hank did something that I’ll never forget. He made me do one funky solo, one jazz solo and one just completely avant-garde, free-jazz solo. And I said, “Which one them are you going to use?” And he said, ‘All three of them motherfuckers,; and he threw all three up. And the shit was killer.”
Chuck D’s commanding vocal delivery infuses Fight the Power with an undeniable sense of urgency.
The song begins with a sample from activist attorney Thomas ‘TNT’ Todd calling for action: “Yet our best trained, best educated, best equipped, best prepared troops refuse to fight. Matter of fact, it’s safe to say that they would rather switch than fight”.
The call to action is clear and throughout the song, Chuck D draws inspiration from past activists and revolutionaries, infusing their legacy into the track’s message. The line “our freedom of speech is freedom of death” harks back to Frederick Douglass’ famous words: “If there is no struggle, there is no progress”, warning their group’s listeners that by standing up for their rights as human beings, the system will attempt to silence them, but that it is the only way they will be able to see justice done.
The lyrics like “Elvis was a hero to most but he never meant shit to me” act as a call to arms against the appropriation that many black artists historically faced within America, Elvis himself taking rock ‘n roll away from the many black artists who initially cultivated it. Elvis was initially sold as a “white boy who could sing like a black man”, and while his inspiration from black artists may have been earnest, his legacy as The King firmly cemented him as a figure within debates of cultural appropriation. “Fuck him and John Wayne” is another key statement, dismantling two beloved icons of the American south and the era of racism and oppression they stood for.
“Elvis and John Wayne were the icons of America. And they kind of got head-and-shoulder treatment over everybody else,” said Chuck D later. “It’s not that Elvis was not a talented dude and incredible in his way, but I didn’t like the way that he was talked about all the time, and the pioneers, especially at that time, weren’t talked about at all… John Wayne is “Mr. Kill All the Indians and Everybody Else Who’s Not Full-Blooded American.” The lyric was assassinating their iconic status so everybody doesn’t feel that way.”
“Most of my heroes don’t appear on no stamps” sums this up and signifies America’s history of silencing black voices, all too keen to instead endlessly venerate the problematic history of the American south.
Though the song is full of righteous fury, it is ultimately uplifting, encouraging PE’s core constituency to stand together in solidarity against their oppressors.
In no way is that better showcased than in the song’s iconic music video, directed by Spike Lee as a thank-you. It shows the band performing a concert that seems more like a political rally, then walking through the streets of Brooklyn, a massive crowd following behind them. The video stands for the black community within the Bronx, many holding up signs of Martin Luther King and other iconic figures within the black civil rights movement. The crowds eventually join in the cries of “fight the power”, symbolically giving the people back their voice, the song itself ending while their voices can still be heard chanting along.
Chuck D says of the day: “It was like a rose really sprouted in Brooklyn. It was seriously a black movement of just being able to stand up and demand that the systems and the powers that be don’t roll you over. And this was a threat to America and it was a threat to the record companies at the time. That video was really powerful.”
Decades after its release, “Fight the Power” remains an enduring symbol of resistance and a call to action, pointing, as Chuck D has said “to the legacy of the strengths of standing up in music.”
It is also a turning point in hip-hop history. As Shocklee told Rolling Stone, it awoke “the black community to a revolution that was akin to the Sixties revolution, where you had Martin Luther King or Malcolm X. It created such an energy surge throughout the community that it became the template for every artist, every filmmaker, every rapper, singer, and it also sparked community leaders and teachers to understand the power of hip hop.”