CHUCK D DROPS THE BOMB

Chuck D of Public Enemy spoke last Thursday at Shoreline Community College in Seattle on "Rap, Race and Reality." The lecture, which was webcast live worldwide on Rapstation.com, lasted for nearly three hours and covered an immense range of topics.

A crowd of over 1,000 listened to Chuck elaborate on the "death of the CD," the future of digital distribution, fantasy vs. reality in society, thugs, the murders of Notorious B.I.G. and 2Pac along with many other imporant subjects. Most importantly, he stressed that people have the ability to think and act for themselves using logic and rationale. "Common sense today is not common. Some people got sense, some people got nonsense," says Chuck. After a 30 minutes Q & A session with the audience, Chuck stuck around and signed autographs and chatted with fans for an hour.

He even joked around about the region and showed a solid understanding of the area. Undoubtedly his message came across loud and clear in Seattle. Chuck also broke down the difference between rap and hip-hop. "Hip-hop is the umbrella of culture," states Chuck. He continued on to discuss how rap is vocal interpretation over instrumentals, "Rap music is really rap over music." But what stood out the most was when he said, "You can't freestyle knowledge." Although Chuck did state this in a certain context, it could be applied to anything in life.