By: Jen Paulson
Chuck D started his Minneapolis weekend presenting the new Public Enemy documentary at the Oak Street Cinema on Friday night as an event for the Minneapolis/St. Paul Film Festival, rounding it out with the anticipated music and interview event that is Fakebook. An evening with the rap music innovator, activist and artist had been announced months back and induced quite the flurry of excitement.
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Chuck D and Brother Ali - Photo by Jon Behm
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And rightfully so—this excitement was just as palpable in the crowd as it was from interviewer, Mary Lucia, and our local hip-hop innovators that shared the stage with him. Brother Ali seemed visibly nervous as he opened with “Truth Is,” one of the killer singles off last year’s release The Undisputed Truth, but not even jitters can take away from the sheer awesomeness of Brother Ali. Admittedly, his DJ, BK-One could have used a little more volume from the Fitzgerald’s sound engineers. But it was still tight and delivered in their trademark in-your-face, thought-provoking and unique style that Minneapolis is proud to claim as their own.
Introducing Chuck D was obviously a very personal, career moment for Current DJ Mary Lucia—who has always been a dial staple with her radio personality-slash-super-fan persona. The interview itself had many moments of off-track commentary by Chuck —who was humble about the half-participated standing ovation that was given to him upon his arrival onstage. He was full of all kinds of sage advise, while also discussing his tenure in Public Enemy and how they started, first with years of being approached by Def Jam’s Rick Rubin to be one of their artists, to the compilation of the entire crew, including Flavor Flav who ended up being an object of many chuckles, including his still undefined role in the group. It was a history lesson, a future primer and waves of shout-outs to many other rap and hip-hop pioneers from Mr. Ridenhour—along with an unending sea of quotable life and game lessons from our Saturday night life-coach.
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| Chuck D and Slug - Photo by Jon Behm |
After a short intermission, it was time for Slug to take the stage as he played “Guarantees” from the new album If Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint that Shit Gold and then he followed that up with “Not Another Day” off the Sad Clown Bad Spring EP with only Nate Collin’s guitar as accompaniment. I think a lot of the crowd was feeling a little dumbfounded by the enchanting grittiness of these new tracks, complete with Slug singing instead of rapping, and his singing voice is just as unique and poignant as the rapper can be.
After the powerful, yet lower key set of songs Slug took the interview couch with Chuck D, complete with his own rambling, which included a way too long story about how Tom Waits ended up on his newest album that ended in a quote or punch line to bust the crowd out in guttural laughter. Longwinded as it was, I highly recommend that you check out the Current’s rebroadcast of the event when it airs.
The evening ended on an overwhelmingly high-powered note with BK-One laying down some hardcore beats while Slug and Brother Ali’s freestyle brought the house down, and ended with everyone on their feet in a standing ovation. In so many ways, this effect truly personifies the impact of rap and hip-hop on the hearts and sleeves of so many people, not only in Minnesota, but also all over the world. And I wanted to rush home and lay down some old rap records and stomp around my apartment while making grand, assured hand movements and preaching the gospel of all those pioneers from days gone by. My mind keeps going back to a moment early in the show when Mary Lucia presented Chuck D’s role in Public Enemy, and described them as “One of the most important groups of our time.” I keep trying to come up with a way to rationalize that this might be a lofty descriptive, but I really can’t back it up. Frankly the effect that Public Enemy had on the evolution of music, how politically influenced it was for its time, serves as a reminder that we really did spend our time in the presence of a true legend.
Location Info:
Fitzgerald Theater
Artist Info: Brother Ali, Chuck D, Slug
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