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.H I P H O P M AT T E R Stime.” Instead of boasting about himself, or battling other rappers, he wanted “to rap about battling institutions, and bringing the condi-tions of Black people worldwide to a respectable level.” Ultimately, the fact that Chuck D was modestly middle class, college educated,and older than most MCs did not diminish his voice in hip hop; itsimply produced a diƒerent cadence.Chuck D and Public Enemy seized pop culture as a stage to actout a daring yet mostly symbolic revolution.The group’s politically charged symbolism was its main source of currency in the world ofpop culture.Once Chuck D and Hank agreed on a name for thegroup every aspect of Public Enemy’s image was carefully chore-ographed for maximum eƒect.Chuck D’s public persona—bold,serious-minded, and keenly intellectual—was a calculated play onthe legacies and images of strong black leaders.His pensive stare and fearless voice personified Malcolm’s “by any means necessary” ex-pression of unassailable black masculinity and power.His forceful, though at times disjointed, message about economic freedom evokedMarcus Garvey and Louis Farrakhan.And his valiant plea for blackfreedom mimicked the spiritual legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr.Contrasting with the steely image of Chuck D was the jesterlikecharacter of Flavor Flav (William Drayton).Flav was comic relief to Chuck D’s tenacious hard-rhyming style.If Chuck D was shrewd andserious, Flav was ludicrous and lightweight.But underneath Flav’sclownlike caricature was an edge that remained faithful to PublicEnemy’s incendiary theater.Chuck D used his graphic design skills to create the famous Pub-lic Enemy logo of a defiant silhouetted figure caught in the scopeof a firearm.The logo, like the group, was rich with symbolism.It suggested that strong-minded blacks were “public enemy numberone” and, thus, one of society’s most visible targets.As a whole, the group’s eclectic mix of characters and iconography were nothing ifnot a critique of the very pop culture landscape it, ironically, became a part of.If Public Enemy understood the fine line between pop art and rev-116
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