While most of Public Enemy’s biggest songs — including “Fight the Power” and “Don’t Believe the Hype” — tackle social injustice, systemic racism, media bias and other socio-political topics, Chuck D and Flavor Flav have other, equally timely concerns on their minds on Black Sky Over the Projects: Apartment 2025, a new album surprised released yesterday (June 27) on the eve of an international tour opening for Guns N’ Roses.
Chuck D tells SPIN that Black Sky songs such as “Siick” and “Ageism” focus on the pitfalls of a technology-obsessed society and discrimination against our aging hip-hop elders. “There’s so much to say because there’s so much that we’ve seen and experienced in this world over the last five years, so to say that you’re an MC that can’t come up with enough topics is absolutely fucking crazy,” he says. “So many artists operate off of self-interest to the point where there’s a fear of saying anything outside of that self-interest.“And I’m not trying to show or prove anything,” he continues. “The only thing I’m trying to prove with this record is me and Flavor could work together — and it sure did come out that way.”
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However, it was a long time in the making. The 12 tracks on Black Sky Over the Projects, the follow-up to 2020’s What You Gonna Do When the Grid Goes Down?, are divided into two parts in a fashion Chuck D likens to Outkast’s Speakerboxx/The Love Below. “Me and Flavor said, you’re going to do your productions and I’ll jump on it, and I’m going to do mine with my team. Then, the teams came together. It was also kind of my test to see how serious Flav was.”
Rumblings another Public Enemy album could be on the horizon began earlier this year, when Chuck D hopped on Flav’s single “Everywhere Man.” Their chemistry, established in the 1980s as students at Long Island’s Adelphi University, was still there, but they had to iron out some of the kinks that initially led to their most recent hiatus.
For his part, Flav had to sober up after years of substance abuse, but Public Enemy’s 2023 performance during the Grammy Awards’ 50th anniversary of hip-hop segment, Chuck saw how committed he was to getting back on track. “The hip-hop generation and a lot of black folk, we try to tell people that longevity is the key and health is wealth,” he says. “Public Enemy was, regardless of all the other parts, going nowhere if Flavor wasn’t right. And that was one of the best things that he could have done — get his health right.”
Black Sky is available via a pay-what-you-wish model through Bandcamp and arrived hours before Public Enemy’s show last night at London’s Royal Albert Hall, where attendees were gifted a CD copy. The group begins a run with Guns N’ Roses tomorrow in Viby J, Denmark, and will return to North America this summer for appearances at the Newport Folk Festival in late July and Shaky Knees in Atlanta in late September.
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