Believe the Hype: Stations aren't airing Public Enemy, Conscious Rappers

by Dionne Muhammad

ATLANTA--Despite the success of Spike Lee's latest film, "He Got Game"--at Final Call press time the movie was number one at the box office and made $8.1 million in its first week--the movie soundtrack by hip-hop masters Public Enemy is getting little or no play in major cities across America.

Public Enemy (PE) is widely acknowledged to be the most important group to emerge in the rap medium since the mid-'80s. The group has sought to become a major force of social change, disturbing white America's complacency with highly-charged political statements reminiscent of the 1960s Black Power movement.

A source within Polygram Records (the company that distributes records for PE's label, Def Jam) said, "Public Enemy is not considered as hot as they used to be (commercially) even though lyrically and musically, they've grown significantly--so they (stations) are not pushing them as hard as they probably can."

But PE fans counter that the big record and media conglomerates set a lot of trends, making hot whatever becomes hot.

Conscious artists in the Black community [like Public Enemy, Poor Righteous Teachers, Boogie Down Productions/KRS-One and countless others] almost never get a prominent place on the radio waves each day, PE's Chuck D told The Final Call in a phone interview.

"Local urban radio stations are usually owned by white corporations. So radio stations, even if they are so-called Black-owned, have no accountability to the community," Chuck said.

Atlanta radio personality Princess Ivory, formerly of Black-owned Hot 97.5 FM, said, "The radio industry does not want to play positive rap that will educate the community. ... If the song is not talking about sex, becoming intoxicated or killing someone, then they won't play it.

"Station owners are in it for the money, they are not for the people. They have to answer to their sponsors and owners," Princess Ivory said. "Black people need to manage and distribute their own resources to get the right type of music and image to the public."

Chuck D further pointed out that, of the "Big-6" companies that play a major role in the Black-music industry none are owned by Blacks.

"Sony is Japanese-owned, Polygram is Dutch-owned, EMI is British-owned, MCA is Canadian-owned, Time Warner is American-owned and BMG is German-owned. There aren't any Black music moguls that come close to their wealth and power," he said. It is this power that PE is attacking in their latest lyrics. The "He Got Game" album is a rap-opera reflecting America's social malaise and Public Enemy's ongoing challenge to political and economic systems that have dehumanized and exploited non-whites for years.

On the track "Is your god a Dog?", the group is condemning polytheism. They say people are bowing down to the good life, material things and other idols--things that constantly let them down and "dog" them out.

In the song, Chuck-D also charges that BMG and Arista are among the winners in the aftermath of the murders of rappers Tupac Shakur and Biggie Small.

The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan warned hip-hop artists of this very topic during the historic rap summits held in Chicago last year. The Minister spoke of the "hidden hands" of power that exploit young Black artists in the music industry while they profit off of their lives and even their deaths.

Many young Black men so eager for a buck are unaware of the powerful forces behind the music they make, said a producer, who requested anonymity.

"They think they are signing a contract with one company, then they find out that so many different entities are involved in making money off of them," the producer said. For instance, Public Enemy's label, Def Jam, is owned by BMG, Chuck D said. BMG owns Arista as well as RCA and many other independent labels and distributors who specialize in Black music.

But what is more interesting is BMG's parent company. According to a business profile provided by Infoseek, German-owned Bertelsmann AG, with $14.7 billion holdings, is the third largest media empire in the whole world, behind Disney and Time Warner. The private company has interests in television, music and publishing (Bantam-Doubleday & Dell, Gruner & Jahr).

Through these corporations the company operates Europe's largest free TV company, sells records, publishes the books of Danielle Steele and John Grisham, operates more than 10 newspapers and 70 magazines. Further, Bertelsmann AG is acquiring Random House in a move that would create the largest commercial publishing house in the United States.

"They have a lot at stake" the producer said. "They have their hands in every form of media that Black people are exposed to. That's why our images on radio, TV and in print are all the same ... because you have one tycoon calling all of the shots." "These people want to feed our people nothing but filth," Princess Ivory added. "They can't afford to let us experience the waking up message that Public Enemy is bringing." In another track on the album, Public Enemy attacks the retail industry in a song titled "Politics of the Sneaker Pimps." They expose the corporate hands that exploit athletes to endorse their shoes, while Black children are killing each other to get a "$200 pair' of leather kicks that they pay "$8 dollars a pair" to foreign manufacturers who make the shoes.

"I received numerous calls at the radio station to play the new album," Princess Ivory said. "But DJ's can only play what the program directors put on their logs. The programming directors are supposed to base the music logs on listener requests ... but how can people request what they have never heard.

"There is so much corruption in the business and most songs that do get aired are played because of shady deals made between the radio stations and the labels," she continued. "It's all about whose check has cleared the bank. Labels are actually buying airtime for the artists they want the public to hear."

The practice of record labels buying air-time on radio, much like the infomercials that pepper TV programming in the wee hours of the night, is spreading fast, sources said. To many, the practice known as "pay-for-play" sounds suspiciously like a broken record from the bad old payola days. In the early 1960s, payola scandals rocked the nation when legendary disk jockey Alan Freed, father of the phrase "rock 'n roll", and hundreds of other radio employees admitted taking bribes from record companies to play their songs on the radio.

Public Enemy addresses this corruption on their song "Resurrection".

The apparent reluctance by radio stations to play PE's album was part of a discussion on the Internet by Final Call On-line web producer Barnar C. Muhammad. He asked members of an internet mailing list whether they have noticed what he calls a "boycott" by the music industry of conscious rap music.

Replies from Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, Atlanta, New York ... all said the same thing: Public Enemy is not getting any airplay on their local radio stations.