DISGRACELAND - Bonus Episode: Rap-Metal Schlock, A DAT Dilemma, and It's All Folk Music

Episode Date: April 25, 2024

This week in the After Party, Jake talks collaborations, new genres, this week's DISGRACELAND episode on Public Enemy, and of course your emails, texts, DMS, and voicemails. Which artist has best represented the world in a "folk music" way? What are your thoughts on PE's Fear of a Black Planet? Let Jake know at 617-906-6638, [e-mail], or on socials @disgracelandpod, and come join the After Party.To hear an extended version of the After Party with a story about Public Enemy's engineer getting mugged and almost inadvertently leaking Fear of a Black Planet, and more from the DISGRACELAND community, become a Disgraceland All Access member at disgracelandpod.com/membership. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is exactly right. Double Elvis. Hey, discos, you can listen to an extended version of this after-party episode by becoming a member of Disgraceland All Access. Just go to disgracelandpod.com slash membership for more details and to sign up. Hey, guys, welcome to the Disgraceland podcast, which is brought to you by Double Elvis. This week, we have a brand new episode on Public Enemy in the Disgraceland feed.

And for our All-access members and our Patreon, and Apple subscription feeds. We've got a brand new episode today on Basquiat. So be sure to make sure you're all signed up for our all-access content, either on Apple Podcasts or on Patreon, to hear those episodes. And over in The Shred with Shifty Feed, that's our show hosted by Chris Schifflett of the Foo Fighters. He's talking with guitarist Phil Collin from Def Leopard about Def Leopard's

incredible song, Photograph. Go check that out. Hey, Discos, need a little more disgraceland in your life? Just a touch to get you through. Yeah, me too. This is the podcast that comes after the podcast. Welcome to Disgraceland, the After Party. Welcome to the Disgraceland bonus episode.

A little thing we like to call the after party. This is the show after the show, the party after the party, the bridge to get you from one full episode of Disgraceland to the other, the backyard to dig into the dirt. On this episode, we are talking about public enemy, the sources that we used for this public. enemy episode, which helped us uncover an insane story that we weren't able to use, but you're

going to hear about it here. And of course, your voicemails, text, DMs, and more. And as always, a whole lot of rosy. All right, discos, let's get into it. Hybrids, mashups, collaborations. On the whole, when it comes to artists we love, these are usually positive efforts. The band in Bob Dylan's basement tapes, Robert De Niro, and Al Pacino and Heat, Taylor Swift and Post Malone, I guess. But sometimes the melding of two different artists or artistic elements is not so great. Metallica and Lou Reed come to mind as does the sight of Mick Jagger and David Bowie dancing in the street, but sometimes, in the case of Public Enemy anyway, the collaboration is a massive head fake. When Public Enemy and anthrax released their collaborative version of the PE song, Bring the Noise, If you were me,

17 years old, when this happened, the world stood still. It may seem cheesy, now in retrospect, but I am telling you back then, hearing Chuck D. rap over the massive groove that a thrash band was providing for him. It was as if a whole new musical dimension had been discovered. I couldn't fucking believe the awesomeness that I was hearing. Rap and metal, together, are you kidding me? How would no one ever thought of this before? Sure, the Beastie Boys came close with their Slayer samples on license to ill, but that was more of a wink and a nod. And you got run DMC with Arrow Smith and walked this way, but honestly, that felt more like a novelty song. Chuck D. and Flavriff, earnestly rapping, the hard-hitting lyrics of their tune bring the noise

with anthrax killing it underneath, rap in metal together for the first time in a serious way, sign me the fuck up. What kind of gilded path of creative genre-bending enlightenment were the 90s about to thrust upon us? How good could the future of music be if this public enemy in anthrax rap and metal were the vanguard? I was pumped. This was revolutionary shit. My parents might have had the 60s in Motown and Crosby Stills and fucking Nash, but I had Hank Shockley and Charlie Bonante, so suck it, hippie.

If the blues came together with country music to create rock and roll, what were rap and metal going to create for us? I didn't know, but I was there for it. And then, rage against the machine. Okay, yeah, this, this is the shit, this is what I'm talking about. Rage was the natural next step from public enemy in anthrax, a revolutionary combo of genres, and revolutionary lyrically just like P.E. was.

I could definitely get with this. I saw Rage the first time, the second time, the third, and probably the fourth time that they came to Boston. I saw them open for House of Pain that first time. House of Pain, jump around Guinness fights in Southie. It's not my thing, but it made sense. Okay, I'm not going to love every child that spawns from the beautiful rap metal marriage.

from our public enemy in anthrax, mommy, and daddy. But okay, what's next? Who else you got? And the next thing we got was the Judgment Night soundtrack, shitty movie, on paper, an incredible soundtrack of rap and metal collaborations. The aforementioned House of Pain with Helmet, De La Sol and Teenage Fan Club,

Cypress Hill, and Sonic Youth. But, wait a minute, this actually wasn't that good. It was more Run DMC, Aerosmith, Schlock, than the genre-busting revolution that I was waiting for post-public enemy in anthrax. Surely, though, it would be coming soon. This new music, this second coming of culture-defining tunes that would take the world by storm, and that we would name organically and irreverently at a later date of our choosing. In other words, when the musical Messiah appears,

he who shall be named will be done so whenever the fuck we of the generation known as X get around to it. And then he appeared. Not as a pure natural revolutionary progression from public enemy to rage against the machine, but as some red-hatted clown with pussy and weed only on the brain. It was Fred fucking durst of limp biscuit. This, this, this doing it all for the nooky bullshit was basically all we had to show culturally from the promise of the public enemy and anthrax collaboration. rap and metal had gone horribly wrong like some fucked up cannibal Frankenstein descending upon our village to feast upon our souls how how how is this the outcome how did something with so much promise and so much awesomeness produced basically garbage the answer i don't know public enemy and anthrax's incredible melding of rap and metal with bring the noise was basically just lightning in a bottle those two groups were

basically from the same place. And though musically, one was Venus and the other Mars, rap and metal from New York City at that time, it wasn't all that different. The sensibilities were very similar amongst the kids who were making that type of music, but spread out culturally from Sir Mix-a-Lot all the way to fucking mud-honey and back again, things got entirely fucked and ended with Fred Durst running the music industry for a minute. But, hey, that wasn't all that bad. At least it resulted in some awesome queens of the Stone Age.

but I digress. For more on Public Enemy, you can listen to this week's disgrace an episode on PE and for a taste of another bonkers collaboration. You can listen to our All Access members' episode this week on Baskillat to hear about, among other things, Basquiat's collaboration

with Andy Warhol. I'll be back in a flash. All right, let's talk for a minute about the sources we used for this Public Enemy episode. First, I have to mention Can't Stop, won't Stop, History of the Hipop Generation by Jeff Chang, and also check the technique liner notes for hip hop junkies by Brian Coleman.

Two books that any hip hop fan should have on their shelf. These are full of a ton of history, a ton of insight into hip hop that any time we make an episode on a hip hop artist, honestly, we're cracking these books. Like we did for this episode, Chuck D himself, this is very helpful. Chuck D himself is super vocal out there, giving lots of interviews, lots of talks.

So we used his appearances on shows like People's Party with Talib Qauli and Drink Champs to get inside. inside his head and formulate his point of view, which drives a lot of this episode, which was not an easy episode to write for a ton of different reasons. The primary biography of the group that we used for this episode is a book called Public Enemy Inside the Terror Dome by Tim Grierson. This had so much information in it from how Chuck D found his voice by doing an imitation of sportscaster Marv Albert to Flavor Flaves numerous run-ins with the law. Inside baseball stuff here too, like how you're going to get yours to kick off track on PE's debut album was originally titled,

you're going to get yours, as in Bernard gets, the vigilante, the white vigilante who shot four black men on a New York City subway train in 1984, saying that they tried to rob him. It was later, of course, found not guilty of attempted murder. Public Enemy's music was literally ripped from the headlines music. It's part of what made it so fucking awesome. You could feel it back then. You can feel it now when you listen to. And we try to illustrate that with the way that we arranged the narrative of this episode,

to have public enemy story told in a way that weaves these other stories about the death of aspiring artist Michael Stewart at the hands of the New York transit cops. There's a secure dramatic jailbreak in the case of the Central Park 5 for research on all of those things who went outside the public enemy bios to some great articles in the New York Times and elsewhere. But I want to know. This is, try to make this question as direct as possible. I'm going to give a little more background here.

So public enemy to me have always been. I recognize this, even at a young age, they've always been folk music. Okay, clearly they're rap, they're hip-hop. I get it. And revolutionary at that, you know, their genre defining at that. But still, lyrically, they are folk music, even more than NWA. We talked a little bit earlier about how, you know, their, their songs. were ripped from the headlines.

NWA's were more caricature-based, I think, is the way to put it. Public enemies was just so much more real. Their stories were so real, so representative of what was happening culturally to the members of that group and to their families at the time that that music was being made

in the place that it was being made in New York, in America. So public enemy, to me, were always, they had as much akin to Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan as they did with NWA and Ice T, even more so in some ways. So to me, folk music, okay? And that's the question I want to get at. We asked a while back, I think it was during,

yeah, it was definitely, it was during hip-hop's sort of 50th anniversary thing that was going on last year. We asked what was the greatest hip-hop group of all time. and I think we landed on NWA, Public Enemy, probably a close second. I can't remember, honestly. And instead of asking that question, I want to ask you, who is the greatest folk artist of all time? And I don't mean Newport Folk Festival, 2004,

not that there's anything wrong with that. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about which artist, was it Chuck D, Woody Guthrie, Nina Simone, Bob Dylan, Chenate O'Connor, Bob Marley, Pick Your Poison, who best represented the people, folk, as in people. Which artist was the wolf blitzer of their day in the music business, out there on the street reflecting back to the people,

their world through the music they were creating? To me, it takes a nation of millions to hold us back by public enemy is the most compelling representation of that type of, folk music that I've ever heard. Maybe if I was born 40 years earlier, I'd say the same thing about Woody Guthrie or 20 years earlier. I'd say the same thing about Bob Dylan. But I wasn't. I came of age with that public enemy music. So to me, it was like, fuck, we're not hearing this shit anywhere but here on record. And it was revolutionary. It was awe-inspiring. And I want to know from you guys, who has done that for you? Which artist has best represented

the world at large to you in a journalistic folk music type of way. Let me know. 617-90666-6638 text, voicemail. Hit me out. Just like the 206 who called in with this voicemail here. Hey, Jake. I know it's been a while. It's Tony from the 253.

Hope everything is going well. Listen, I just got done listening to the public in the episode. Man, I tell you, I have it takes a nation of millions to hold us back. on vinyl and I have it on CD. But you also mentioned a group on that episode and that was Millie Benilli and I was just wondering

is there any chance we might get a Millie Vanilli episode in the future? If you haven't done so, please check out the documentary that they did on Paramount Plus. It is M-a-Chess Kiss. You have to check it out, my brother.

Much love from the 253 and yeah, I'll look forward to hearing from it. Also, dug back into the archives and heard the Marvin Gay episode. Man, oh man. I'm about to listen to what's going on album right now. All right, big man, I'll talk to you later.

Bye. Tony from the 253, awesome message. Thank you. First of all, Stoke, you liked the Public Enemy episode, and good to hear from you again. Millie Vanilli, no, you know, this has been requested from way back, and I've never really given it any serious consideration

for an episode until, The last couple weeks, I saw this really funny meme that sparked something in me. There was like, ah, that would be a cool angle into telling the Millie Vanilli story. And it's basically Millie Vanilly standing next to each other, those two dudes looking pissed. And it says, Millie Vanilli standing by watching people get famous for lip syncing on TikTok in 2023. And I just thought, oh, that's too good. That irony is too good. I didn't know there was a documentary on Paramount.

I'm stoked to watch this now. Thank you for hitting me to that. And also, thanks for getting back into the archive there with Marvin Gay. All right, 617-906-6638. Call, leave me a voicemail, whatever you want. This one comes from the 5-6-3. This is Tarantino film. Top 5.

I was with you. I was right there with you, side by side, on your list until you move Jackie Brown down to 5. I get it. I understand. Why reservoir dogs is, you know, it's undeniable. But I relate to Jackie Brown so much more. So I would have to go, Hulk Fiction, Jackie Brown, once upon a time in Hollywood, Resort Dogs, and I don't know, we'll just, wild card for number five, whatever you want.

Anyone want. I don't care. All right, that's the 5-6-3. Judy, I love the love for Jackie Brown. I'm actually stoked to hear you Reping Jackie Brown Because I figured I was going to be alone in doing that So yeah

Fuck yeah Appreciate it 970 Let's see what the 970s saying We talked about what the five greatest fight scenes were Why did we get into that? Was that because of Tarantino? It was Fight scenes came from Tarantino

Tarantino came from Kill Bill Kill Bill came from the Kobe Bryant episode We did okay This is the 970 calling it Hey Jake it's Dylan Five greatest fight scenes for me I'd have to say five would be Stephen Seagal and Marks for Death against the two twins

And then four would be Von Dam and kickboxer Three, Von Dam in Bloodsport at the end And two, I'd have to say Rocky Three was a good one for me when he beats Flubber Lane And number one, I don't know if anyone has said this yet But they live Keith David and Rowdy, Rowdy Piper. Probably one of the longest fight scenes,

but it's also one of my favorite. So there they are. Thanks, rock and rolling. All right, 9-70. You're into some deep fight scenes there. I'll take your word for it. I haven't seen a lot of those. Rocky three, of course, amazing.

781 calls in. Who's this? This is our boyish? I got three. So we'll go with Brad Pitt and Angelina. We're going to go Brad Pitt and Ed Norton Fight Club. And we're going to go Brad Pitt and some Pikey. Bear-knuckle fight.

and let me know what you think. You know, Ish, good to hear your voice, man. I hope things are eveninging out for you out there. They're a little less hectic. I love, you know, the concept of one of the five greatest Brad Pitt fights. That's a whole question unto its own. I think you knocked it down here. But I would add Brad Pitt and Bruce Lee, or I should say, Cliff.

Is he Cliff? Yeah, he's Cliff from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood with Bruce Lee. I would add that to the list, and I'm sure we can find a fifth as well. Good call. Good calls this week, guys. Good work. I want you to call back, and I want you to tell me who's the greatest folk artist. And you know what I mean by my definition of folk here, okay?

Again, I'm not talking, you know, just an acoustic guitar and an open mic inside a coffee shop folk music. I'm talking who's out there best reping the people, the folk, okay? Who's the fucking Wolf Blitzer, the CNN of music in your. your eyes. Who is best representing the world they come from, the world at large, the world we see and the world that is hidden from us. Which musician is that? Is it public enemy? Public enemy prompted this question. I want to know what you guys think. 617-906-66-38 voicemail and text. 716 text in, hey, I don't know about the top five fight scenes, but two of my favorite are the bride versus Oren and her entire entourage in Kill Bill and Peter versus the Chicken and Family Guy.

A great one, 761. 617-906-66-6-3-8. That's how you guys get in touch with me, all right? Also, at Disgraceland Pod on the socials. I'm going to take a quick break. Be right back. All right, we are back, and as I mentioned at the top of the episode,

not only do we have a new episode out this week on Public Enemy, but we also just dropped today another brand new episode on Basquiat. Maybe you're looking at your feed right now going, wait a minute, wait, where the fuck is this Baskiad episode that you're speaking about?

Well, here's the deal. The way to hear this Baskiot episode, as well as other disgraceland episodes that you may not have. having your regular Disgraceland feed, episodes on Hunter S. Thompson and Lane Staley, and upcoming episodes on Chris Cornell and Wayland Jennings. And more. In order to hear these episodes, you have got to become a member of Disgraceland All Access.

It's super simple. Just go to disgracelandpod.com slash membership. And for just five bucks a month, even less, if you sign up for an annual membership, you will get these exclusive full episodes of Disgraceland, one of them every month, and also weekly bonus content, like an extended version of this here afterparty bonus episode that you're listening to right now. That's right. I'm going to go a little deeper

with the All Access guys. Okay, you get a longer bonus episode. We're going to get into this insane story that we weren't able to fit into the Public Enemy episode. So you want to hear that? Just sign up. Just sign up become an All Access member.

It's easy. You can choose between Apple Podcasts and Patreon for your membership. But if you choose Patreon, you can also jump into an always-on chat with me and your fellow disco. So, to give you a little taste to what you're missing,

I got a clip for you here from the brand-new Basquiat episode that we just dropped in the All-access feed today. To give you some context, this clip takes place early in Jean-Michel Basquiat's career when he's still a struggling artist, but he's already part of the music scene and the art scene that's happening in New York's Lower East Side.

And by being a part of that scene, he's just managed to snag a cameo appearance in the music video that Debbie Harry and her band Blondie are filming for their soon-to-be smash-hit rapture. All right, take a listen. Within months, Americans were unknowingly getting their first look as Jean-Michel on MTV with the Rapture video, not only the first hip-hop video shown on the brand-new cable channel,

but one of the videos selected for the network's first rotation block. This was happening at the same time that Jean-Michel was feverishly working on a dozen pieces for his first solo gallery show. But he wasn't listening to Blondie while he worked, and he wasn't listening to the hip-hop currently dominating his home neighborhood in Brooklyn. He was listening to jazz.

specifically to the alto saxophone of Charlie Parker. Charlie Parker, aka. Bird, reminded him of childhood, a scribbling on scraps of paper while lying on the floor, his father in an armchair, his mother smiling, before her trouble started and she was institutionalized and before his father remarried. Jean-Michel Basquiat left home at 16, but no matter where he was sleeping or,

How he was scraping by, he always found a way to listen to Bird. Jean-Michel wanted to paint the way that Charlie Parker played the saxophone. Charlie Parker played his way, setting fire to the rules of jazz harmony. He wove bits of melodies from spirituals, show tunes, and Stravinsky into his playing, and then he shifted keys and bent them into something new. He played hard, and he lived hard, and he gave everything to his art. That's the way Jean-Michel would paint.

Bird blue sweet. Jean-Michel had long strokes of bright yellow acrylic across the canvas. Bird's horn picked up its pace, and Jean-Michel sketched a quick yard bird on the center of the canvas. That Charlie Parker bird was wailing now. Jean-Michel felt the energy surge from the speakers toward his canvas. He didn't think. He just let the feelings wash over him.

Swirls of notes filled the studio. Then his canvas. Then the whole city. All the way home to Brooklyn. Waking the dead in Greenwood Cemetery. Jean-Michel scrawled Paramora to die across the canvas and laid down his brush. He was finished. He called it Bird on Money.

Like Charlie Parker, Jean-Michel set fire to the rules. He gave everything to his heart. He lived hard and worked hard. It was 1981, less than seven months since he painted his first canvas, less than seven years

before we would paint his last. All right, that was a clip from our other brand new episode this week and episode on Basquiat, which you can hear in full by becoming a member of the Disgraceland All Access Club. Again, hop on over to disgracelandpod.com slash membership to sign up. It is quick. It is easy. And you'll be getting all this extra content.

We're dishing out to you on a weekly basis in no time. Okay? Okay. Hang tight. I'll be back in a flash. All right. Let's recap, shall we? Number one, there's more after party to listen to right now. All you got to do is go to disgracelandpod.com slash membership and sign up to become an all-access member. But if that ain't your bag, then number two. Right now in your feed, this week's brand new episode on Public Enemy, plus another brand new episode on Baskiat for all our all-access members. Number three, coming tomorrow, a rewind episode on Frank Sinatra, and one of my favorite disgrace land episodes of all time. Number four, over in the Badlands Feed,

we've got our classic two-part episode on Sharon Tate. Number five, next week in the disgrace land feed, a brand new episode on Garth Brooks. Number six, my number is 617-90666-6638. Call me on the telephone or text me in seven. Remember that no one cares about the music you love more than you do, and well, that is a disgrace. And now, my moment of bliss,

in honor of this week's episode on Public Enemy, me reading you, the Billboard Hot 100 from the week of February 10th, 1987, the week that Public Enemy dropped their debut album, Yo, Bumrush the show, and changed hip-hop in music forever. Number one, open your heart, Madonna. Last week, two, peak position, one, weeks on chart, 10. Number two, at this moment, Billy Vera and the beaters.

Last week, one, peak position, one, Weeks on chart, 14. Number three, living on a prayer, Bon Jovi. Last week, nine. Peak position, three. Weeks on chart, nine. Number four, change of heart. Sending love her.

Blastener us in the beat. Five, peak position, four. Weeks on chart. Weeks on sharp. Number five, touch me. I want a real body. Talking and start. Mixing.