ALBUM REVIEW: Public Enemy - How You Sell Soul to a Soulless People Who Sold Their Soul???

Public Enemy
How You Sell Soul to a Soulless People Who Sold Their Soul???
Slam Jamz, 2007

To be called an elder statesman in any artistic genre is usually a tacit, patronizing acknowledgment that the best years are long gone. Elder statesmen are like Old Major in Orwell’s Animal Farm; they have lots of wisdom to impart, but are usually ignored. In the case of Public Enemy, if How You Sell Soul to a Soulless People Who Sold Their Soul??? is anything to go by, this is an injustice.

How You Sell Soul… (which must be the least snappy album title since Fiona Apple’s When the Pawn Hits the Conflicts etc…) contains moments of typical PE Bomb Squad brilliance, strident hard funk military beats, clarion air raid horns, and passionate, intelligent rapping from Chuck D. Unfortunately, however, it has more middling fare than you’d expect from Public Enemy, and even some ill-advised cuts from Flava Flav’s eponymous 2006 solo record.

The standout track is first single “Harder Than You Think”, and it’s one of the best songs that Public Enemy has ever recorded. From Flava Flav’s intro recalling 1987 single “Public Enemy #1”, “Harder Than You Think” manages to tie PE with their history and mythology, including career-high, 1990’s Fear of a Black Planet. Lyrically, Chuck D lays out his thematic stall: the corruption of rap into a vehicle for large corporations selling lifestyles, and the African American community’s unwillingness to see this co-option for what it is, and hence take action against it.

From “if you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything”, to “keep those crime rhymes on the shelf”, Chuck D cuts through the lies he perceives, from gangsta rap being sold as glamour, and drugs being tacitly used as vehicles of oppression. When the music matches the stridency and urgency of the message, as on “Between Hard and a Rock Place” or album closer “How You Sell Soul (Time is God Refrain)”, it stands next to anything any hip-hop artist has ever released. “Radiation of a RADIOTVMOVIE Nation” even sounds like a Last Poets off cut, which isn’t such a bad thing.

However, the creeping feeling of elder statesman-ness is found in a number of tracks, from the Run DMC sound-alike “Black is Back”, to rumoured second single, “Amerikan Gangster” Here, the ubiquitous Bomb Squad sound is replaced by a shiny but bland modern hip-hop sheen. As well, their cover of Barry McGuire’s 1965 folk ballad “Eve of Destruction” is ill-advised, for the simple reason that its verses don’t contain nearly the lyrical density of Chuck D’s own rhymes.

It’s been twenty years since their first album Yo! Bum Rush the Show, and How You Sell Soul… is a good testament to the longevity, vitality and importance of Public Enemy. However, as Plato once said, “When the mode of the music changes, the walls of the city shake”. And for all that they once shook the rap world to its core, we can now firmly consider Public Enemy elder statesmen of hip-hop.

Review by Greg Hood-Morris

Agree? Disagree? Email Greg at criticizegreg@gmail.com

Comments

[ksquires]

This CD is a bit early for me to judge yet. I agree that Harder than You Think is awesome and that Flavor tracks are annoying. I've never cared for Flavor, but at least some of his early stuff was tolerable. I've got to play the CD a few more times before I comment too much more. It takes a number of listens to PE tracks and Chuck's lyrics before I form my final opinions.

[ta'payo]

(a) There is no more Bomb Squad
(b) Flavor Flav isn't "recalling" anything on the first track -- he's been directly sampled from "Public Enemy # 1" because he barely shows up to the studio these days