Fight the Power

1989: Carlton Douglas Ridenhour and William Drayton have just released a song that will mark their spot on the hip-hop history timeline forever. Succinctly put in 3 lines of a song: "We got to fight the powers that be/Lemme hear you say/Fight the Power" became the mantra for Ridenhour's and Drayton's career. Those lyrics should sound familiar, being as they come straight from the mouths of the front men of the hip-hop group Public Enemy, Chuck D (Ridenhour) and Flavor Flav (Drayton). Their single, Fight the Power talked about everything the group stood for.

The group had a clear message they wanted to convey through its

politically charged lyrics. Its urgencies to "Fight the Power" of American media and unfair treatment of the African American community could be detected in all of the songs. Ironically however, the group was signed to the most widely known hip-hop recording label: Def Jam Records. The group rapped about standing up against media, but it was actually a player in the game. Def Jam was responsible for getting the music out, distributing cd's, organizing concerts, etc. Public Enemy needed Def Jam to be able to spread its message.

This unfortunate reliance is not surprising. As George Lipsitz states in "Diasporic Noise: History, Hip Hop, and the Post-Colonial Politics of Sound," "Post-colonial literature, Third Cinema, and hip hop music all protest against the conditions created by the oligopolies who distribute them as commodities for profit. They express painful recognition of cultural displacements, displacements that their very existence accelerates. yet it is exactly their desire to work through rather than outside of existing structure that defines their utility as a model for contemporary global politics [...] the desire to work through existing contradictions rather than stand outside them represents not so much a preference for melioristic reform over revolutionary change, but rather a recognition of the impossibility of standing outside totalitarian systems of domination" (510). This is the same kind of thing we see in more contemporary music as well. People speak out about the very same "oligopolies" that give them the opportunity for their message to be heard. Many share Public Enemy's dissatisfaction with the system, but few do anything about it other than sing.

Public Enemy is not however, one of those groups. They duo left Def Jam Records in 1999 after disputes over free downloading. Turns out, Chuck D is in favor of file sharing and online sites such as Napster which allow the music to be shared free of charge. At least to this group, taking action to support their claim is more important than the profits that come with it.