If anyone is going to deliver hip hop’s state of the nation address in 2020, it should be Public Enemy.
One of the most empowering voices of the Eighties and Nineties, they have always tackled oppression and racism in their music. They’re hardly short of inspiration on their first album for Def Jam in more than 20 years. Grid tells of pandemics, police brutality and the degeneration of society, while State of the Union (STFU) takes aim at Maga rhetoric.
But the highlight is Fight the Power: Remix 2020 — a new take on the group’s 1989 anthem, reimagined in the light of the Black Lives Matter movement and the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. Rapper Rapsody steals the limelight on her guest verse, telling how “George [was] killed for a 20,” before reminding us it’s our collective duty to “fight for Breonna and the pain of her mother.”
It’s a powerful record from the masters of political hip hop.
