Fight the Power Rap, Race, and Reality [Paperback]

Chuck D, one of the pioneers of Rap music, is the founder and lead rapper for Public Enemy, which has a fan base of over twenty million people.  Aside from his work with the "Rock the Vote" campaign, for which he was honored with the Patrick Lippert Humanitarian Award, he recently signed on as a reporter for the Fox News Channel.  He also acted in his first film,An Alan Smithee Film--Burn, Hollywood, Burn.  A new Public Enemy album was released in late 1997.  

Yusuf Jah is the author ofUprising: Crips and Bloods Tell the Story of America's Youth in Crossfire.  He has also written two other books relating to the Black community and has lectured in colleges across the country.I always looked at playing in different places and in front of different audiences like waving the flag of Rap.  My goal was to go around the world and stick the flag in the ground.  I don't understand people not wanting to travel, explore, and see different cultures and lifestyles.  If you believe in something, you should fight for it and fight to make it known.  I've never been afraid to go places, that's what it's about.  If this planet is to be explored and I only have so many years on it, I could never be satisfied by just being in one spot.  I'm not saying that everybody has to go skydiving, but you haven't fully lived if you're only living in a limited way.

In 1991 we went on three entirely different tours, playing in front of three entirely different audiences in order to expand our audience without alienating any of them.  In the span of six months we knocked out an Alternative tour with the Sisters of Mercy, a Thrash Metal tour with Anthrax and Primus, and from December to January we did "The World's Greatest Rap Tour," which featured Queen Latifah, Naughty By Nature, Geto Boys, A Tribe Called Quest, Jazzy Jeff and the FrlãN