New Orleans under water, a rapper's anger overflows Chuck D voices his frustrations on 'Hell No.' Fish gotta swim. Birds gotta fly. Musicians gotta write songs. When the first television images made it clear what the wake of Hurricane Katrina was doing to New Orleans, Chuck D, longtime frontman of Public Enemy, couldn't swoop in with a rescue chopper or patch up the levees. He could, however, write a song. "Hell No, We Ain't AllRight," he called it, and he finished it a day before fellow musician Kanye West remarked during a relief fund-raiser on national TV that "President Bush doesn't care about black people." That's no coincidence, since "Hell No" springs from the same frustration. While Chuck D's song is less directly personal about George W. Bush, he's just as angry about the government George W. Bush leads. New world's upside down and out of order/ Shelter? Food? Wassup, where's the water?/ No answers from disaster, them masses hurtin'/ So who the f- we call - HalliburtonNo diplomatic niceties here, not that we'd expect any. Public Enemy has always been a locomotive in whose path one stands at one's own risk. But regardless of how powerfully he writes and raps, Chuck D wouldn't matter if he weren't saying something his audience wanted to hear. In this case, after the country saw fellow American citizens pleading for food and water while their government was apparently taking a nap, Chuck D and Kanye weren't the only viewers who got angry. Chuck D calls rap "the CNN of black America," and while rap hasn't been very topical lately, that doesn't mean its fans didn't care about what was happening in New Orleans. Writing a song like this also ties Chuck D squarely into one of music's oldest traditions. Before radio, television and sound recordings, songs were a mass medium used to spread information and points of view. Slaves spoke among themselves for generations in a whole language based on songs and percussion. Partisans during the Revolutionary War put their arguments to music, and sympathetic minstrels went to taverns and town meetings to sing them. In "Hell No, We Ain't All Right," Chuck D also calls out artists who care more about flashy jewelry for televised awards shows than their brothers and sisters. But he's a media guy himself these days, with a regular show on Air America radio, and like CNN, he returns in the end to his real point: Now what's over here/ Is a noise so loud/ That some can't hear/ But on TV I can see/ Bunches of people/Looking just like me. And they ain't all right. Here's the song with the expletives deleted.
Sunday, September 18, 2005
Hell No, We Ain't All Right
New Orleans under water, a rapper's anger overflows Chuck D voices his frustrations on 'Hell No.' Fish gotta swim. Birds gotta fly. Musicians gotta write songs. When the first television images made it clear what the wake of Hurricane Katrina was doing to New Orleans, Chuck D, longtime frontman of Public Enemy, couldn't swoop in with a rescue chopper or patch up the levees. He could, however, write a song. "Hell No, We Ain't AllRight," he called it, and he finished it a day before fellow musician Kanye West remarked during a relief fund-raiser on national TV that "President Bush doesn't care about black people." That's no coincidence, since "Hell No" springs from the same frustration. While Chuck D's song is less directly personal about George W. Bush, he's just as angry about the government George W. Bush leads. New world's upside down and out of order/ Shelter? Food? Wassup, where's the water?/ No answers from disaster, them masses hurtin'/ So who the f- we call - HalliburtonNo diplomatic niceties here, not that we'd expect any. Public Enemy has always been a locomotive in whose path one stands at one's own risk. But regardless of how powerfully he writes and raps, Chuck D wouldn't matter if he weren't saying something his audience wanted to hear. In this case, after the country saw fellow American citizens pleading for food and water while their government was apparently taking a nap, Chuck D and Kanye weren't the only viewers who got angry. Chuck D calls rap "the CNN of black America," and while rap hasn't been very topical lately, that doesn't mean its fans didn't care about what was happening in New Orleans. Writing a song like this also ties Chuck D squarely into one of music's oldest traditions. Before radio, television and sound recordings, songs were a mass medium used to spread information and points of view. Slaves spoke among themselves for generations in a whole language based on songs and percussion. Partisans during the Revolutionary War put their arguments to music, and sympathetic minstrels went to taverns and town meetings to sing them. In "Hell No, We Ain't All Right," Chuck D also calls out artists who care more about flashy jewelry for televised awards shows than their brothers and sisters. But he's a media guy himself these days, with a regular show on Air America radio, and like CNN, he returns in the end to his real point: Now what's over here/ Is a noise so loud/ That some can't hear/ But on TV I can see/ Bunches of people/Looking just like me. And they ain't all right. Here's the song with the expletives deleted.
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