Halftimeonline: You guys were always ahead of your time and many people have talked about the thought that went into creating the image of Public Enemy. When you crafted that image how much of it was thought of prior and how much of it was just a result of the personalities in the group?

Chuck D: Well, the image of Public Enemy was crafted from the realities of who the individuals were. Flava is Flava 100% hands down and I’m pretty sure you have a better sense of who Flava is now after the TV show. Griff is Griff and everybody else is true to their makeup. My thing of encompassing what happened in my own home area is developing a morale that we had to what we are about and where we were from. We’re also children of the 60s so we could relate to a Civil Rights mentality. A Civil Rights mentality is simply thinking more about we than the individual. You notice you might be fighting for power but you’re not fighting for yourself. You’re fighting for a structure around you that has placed an investment in the legacy of where we come from. So therefore all the stuff that comes with PE was all ingrained because we all seriously believe in our background giving us an important direction in where we should go.

Halftimeonline: You mentioned Flav so I have to ask how did you two meet up and what made you say I want this guy down with my team?

Chuck D: Well, first of all when I met him I didn’t want this guy down with our team.

Halftimeonline: Hahaha

Chuck D: He came with Griff and them up to the studio. It was with some guy from the radio station and they brought him along. The first words out of my mouth to him were, “Dude you can’t smoke in here.” He had a black mustache, black jerry curl, black jacket, black hat, a black pair of jeans and a black keyboard and I looked down and he had blacked out all the white on the keyboard. I said whatever you gonna do you can’t smoke up in here. He would keep coming up with a guy, who would later become Son of Bezerk, and he became a mainstay at the radio station. One thing led to another and sometimes I’d have to give him a ride home or pass by Adlephi University. The main thing at WBAU was a focus on hip hop in Long Island and also Queens. One day Mr. Bill gave Flav a radio show in ’83 or ’84 and it had a large listenership. That kinda defied logic because the guys who brought Flava along treated him like he was a stepchild. So I kinda took a liking to him and we decided to work together. My father had a company where he moved furniture and we drove trucks together. We built a bond moving furniture. If I wrote a script for a TV show it would probably be about Chuck and Flav before we started making records driving a truck in Manhattan. Believe it or not it was Flav driving sometimes.

Halftimeonline: The story has always been told that when Rick Rubin offered you the contract you told him that you wanted Flava on the team and that you wasn’t sure what he was gonna do but he needed to be down. Is that how that all came out?

Chuck D: Yea, Rick was like well what’s he gonna do? I was like I don’t know he just gotta be there. I remember saying you’ll see. I was never trying to get a record deal. I was offered a record deal after Rick called my house for a year. I just wouldn’t take his call. I had interviewed 85% of the artists up to that point and I was like I ain’t trying to be one of them. Haha. No thank you. We were trying to do syndicated radio in 84-85 and people were like syndicated rap radio shut up. We were trying to be ahead of our time but it was premature. We were jealous of the rock guys [because] they had concert series and all that. We were like just as many people are loving rap but all of the business was bad. So it’s like getting into a 60 meter dash but you’re in diapers so you have to go through 1st-12th grade. So with Flava it was a simple thing. When we added him I told him that we were going to split 2% to hank as a production fee and for our first album it was a split of 7 points. We saw a two year window to get into all of those other realms of the music business. That’s why we called the first album “Yo, Bumrush the Show.” If you know anything about sneaking into a show where they aren’t trying to let you in you know you only need a toe and if you have fifteen people at your back you’re getting in there. That’s how we did the music business. They didn’t want us in the music business so we were like Chuck’s gonna get his toe into the door and we are gonna bum rush show business. We did that with all kinds of things, Dre and T-money on radio and television, Bill Steffany as executive, Harry Allen writing and Public Enemy as production. All the guys we came up with in the hip hop environment I found a crack in the door and we kicked it open. The first hype man in history is Flava. That came about because at the time Schooly D was making a record with Cold Money. Cold Money would open up the record like, “Hey Schooly tell them what you do, let them fucking know.” Then Schooly would do his thing. Also, it was the combination of James Brown and Bobby Byrd. Me and Flav both have voices that can cut but we had two entirely different voices that [were good] when put together. Same with James Brown and Bobby Byrd when they’d be like, “Everybody over there..Get on up.” You could hear the difference when they were coming at you. That was me and Flav with the trade off especially on the first album. We accentuated that talent right there.

Halftimeonline: What are your thoughts on Flava of Love and how do you think it reflects on the Public Enemy legacy?

Chuck D: Well, first of all there are a lot of people who think they know PE but don’t know PE. Flava has been the same dude for 20-25 years. He was always the dude who would cut through to the audience that didn’t want to check anything out on the deep end. If Flava has his own show then Griff needs his own show on militancy but America will never let that happen. They are always going to take the easy and most comfortable way out and that’s someone of Flava’s ilk. But Flava ain’t ever changed. What shocks me is how the rest of black America has fallen off. If you go around the world people will be like, “What happen to black folks? We thought you were all about the rights and the struggle and we turn on the TV and you are throwing money into the camera.” So we’ve lost our international card. Civil Rights gave us our international card and aligned us with people’s struggles all over the world. Now that’s disappeared. That international card is gone!

It’s just like boxing. Black guys aren’t beating Russian guys because those Russians are coming from a real rough existence. I don’t care if you are from Baltimore, it ain’t rougher than Moscow or Lithuania. Those cats have nothing. The longest bus line I ever seen was in Moscow. There had to be 700 people waiting for the bus and it was 32 degrees in June. You hear me! Cats coming up to me like man Chuck its hard man. Put them up in Russia for a week, they’ll be back. Black America has gotten soft in a way so maybe it takes new measures to get it across. Flava is doing it and it’s up to the rest of Public Enemy to get more visibility in what we do.

Halftimeonline: When is Flava of Chuck coming?

Chuck D: I’m always on TV. You’ll see me in all of those avenues. I just finished up recording this ESPN Ali special for Muhammad Ali’s 65th birthday. I’m on ESPN, CNN, etc but you just won’t see me repetitively. If you don’t catch Flava of Love it’s on VH-1 so it will be on five times a day. I’m doing something with ESPN and you might see it a couple times but it’s not repetitive programming. Flava on TV is a two year phenomenon. I’m on radio, TV etc. Whenever hip hop has a problem you know they are gonna call my ass. I try to keep everything cool so it’s seamless but let me rob a gas station it would be everywhere. People would be like he’s jealous of Flav man he trying to keep up. It’s just like everything when it’s negative black news everyone knows about it. If it’s positive they like I don’t know what’s going on with it because there isn’t any drama. It’s smooth. If I went around smacking some chick’s ass then it’s like awww I never thought he’d smack some booty! Haha. Cats would be in the barbershop like I saw on TV Chuck D smacks some chick’s ass man. I don’t even know how to take that. I’m the cat to tell people nah, none of your business [and] get the camera out of my face. Flava is the cat who’s extroverted. He never changed. He’s the type of person to say my business is your business hope you like it. You know sometimes when we are doing shows all over the world it feels good playing the Scottie Pippen role. I know I have to dribble up court and do 80% of the job but its cool. It should be interesting. We’re going on our 56th tour so it should be real easy for me. With Flava Flav in the house Chuck D can do no wrong. With all the other dynamics the show we do is like one of a kind. I’m saying that not because I’m part of it but because it’s a new combination of a backing band with guitar, drum and turntablism that goes behind PE. It’s like Rage Against the Machine meets the Roots meets Run-DMC. You’re hearing classic joints, you’re hearing breakbeats, and you’re seeing Griff and the SW-1s in motion. One of the biggest things with Public Enemy is the minute we were able to get our passports in ‘87 we never stopped touring the world. Most Americans don’t even know. They ask when I’m coming out with something [and] I’m like Google me dog Google me. Go to Publicenemy.com. Youtube and Myspace have made it wonderful. Cats are checking out our old videos and our new videos. Then you look at a cat like L.A. Reid whose paranoid trying to sue Myspace because of Kingdom Come leaking. How stupid is that? You might as well yell at the clouds. The thing about it is I think Jay-Z is the greatest emcee of all time, you know why?

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Posted by Jbutters on Sunday, March 25th, 2007 and is filed under HIP HOP ICON SERIES.