Lengthy Island, New York political hip hop icons Public Enemy now consisting of frontman Chuck D alongside Flavor Flav & DJ Lord placing out their seventeenth LP on Bandcamp with none prior announcement. Their first 5 albums are hip hop necessities as what Chuck & firm have been saying on all of them are nonetheless very a lot related at the moment. They ended up leaving Def Jam Recordings in ‘98 after releasing the He Acquired Recreation soundtrack, placing out a complete of 10 full-lengths independently till returning to Def Jam posing the query What You Gonna Do When the Grid Goes Down? throughout the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. Radio Armageddon marked Chuck’s official Def Jam debut as a solo artist final month & is transitioning that vitality onto Black Sky Over the Projects: Apartment 2025.
“Siick” produced by C-Doc comes out the gate with a consciously charged rap rock intro observing the world being stricken in hate because of the present political local weather till Flav joins Chuck on “Confusion (Right here Come the Drums)” buying and selling a verse with each other to speak about being the final of a dying breed of emcees. “What Eye Stated” instrumentally feels reminiscent to The Bomb Squad asking if anybody can write a verse with out cursing when Method Man & No Malice are the perfect fashionable examples of that, however then Flav pops again in on “C’mon Get Down” to hit y’all that old skool shit.
In the meantime on “Evil Methods”, we’ve the rhyme animal himself self-producing a rap rock reduce of his personal preaching that even the baddest savages ultimately get humbled by the averages simply earlier than “Sexegenarian” works in additional closely sampling to speak about being 65 & talking to each 35-year previous on the market strugglin’ with hopes of makin’ it. “Messy Hens” marks the primary of two solo cuts Taste Flav lays down refusing to fret about suckas since his legacy’s removed from phony, however then “Fools Fools Fools” will get Tré Cool of Inexperienced Day on stay drums for Chuck to name out the frauds mendacity behind their likes on social media.
“Public Enemy Comin Throoooo” finds Flav rightfully rubbing the group’s legacy in everybody’s faces & Mistachuck being the mad thinker to the “swinger” mentality of his hype man & “Ageism” commendably expands on the very matter that was addressed on Radio Armageddon final month with a cool pattern backing him. “The Hits Simply Carry on Comin’” brings the pair collectively 1 final time to plead for our nation to get up within the midst of the timeless revolution & “March Insanity” closes with 1 extra Taste Flav solo observe attacking gun violence & crooked politicians.
Seems What You Gonna Do When the Grid Goes Down? was initially meant to be a reissue of Nothing’s Fast within the Desert therefore why a few of the songs on that polarizing effort have been combined with newly recording materials on their Def Jam comeback practically 5 years in the past this fall & Black Sky Over the Initiatives: Condo 2025 seems like a broader extension of what PE’s frontman did 5 weeks in the past in the very best method possible. It’s refreshing to listen to each of their core MCs over manufacturing paying homage to their early years & the message of their existence must felt now greater than ever.
Rating: 8/10