publicenemy.com
Mixing politics and pop music can be a tough balancing act to pull off, and few have done it better than Public Enemy, who for over 30 years now have not only been fighting the good fight, but doing so in a way you can’t help but dance to. Never allowing the message to become more important than the music or vice versa, PE have managed to stay credible on both levels and even if Flavor Flav’s colorful, drug-addled extra-curricular activities, televised or otherwise, have at times received more attention than Chuck D’s more high-minded projects, their yin-yang dynamic remains remarkably productive. They may not be quite as dangerous as they once were, but they still pack a punch, as a small yet respectable crowd found out Thursday night at Summerfest’s Miller Lite Oasis.
Crammed in front of the stage, and much more loosely scattered across the far bleachers, was the expected assortment of nostalgic old-timers, general hip-hop heads and drunk teenagers—along with one guy elaborately dressed as some strange sort of leather-daddy/Batman hybrid for reasons known only to him—who collectively paid polite attention to the anonymous emcee attempting vainly to warm them up while the live band sound-checked, but immediately showed some more avid interest when he finally stopped talking and made way for the S1Ws. Chuck D and the prodigal “Minister of Information” Professor Griff emerged soon after, while Flavor Flav remained mysteriously absent until a song or two in (hey, just because you’re always wearing a clock doesn’t mean you’re always on time), which, obviously, was when the performance took off in earnest.
The setlist boasted basically every hit a fan could reasonably hope to hear: “Bring the Noise,” “Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos,” “911 is a Joke,” “Welcome to the Terrordome,” “Can’t Truss It,” the list of classics here goes on and on, but there were also strong samples from their upcoming 15th studio album, Man Plans God Laughs. The show did lose a little steam during the quasi-encore that followed their climactic, mic-dropping rendition of “Fight the Power,” which included an odd version of “Time Bomb” where the band took five and left Flav to play drums, prompting Chuck to memorably refer to him as “the Black Dave Grohl” but by and large it was a pretty powerful demonstration of the fearless iconoclasm that’s made Public Enemy a social and musical institution.
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