Can't Stop Won't Stop

by Jeff Chang

  When Sal refused Buggin’ Out’s demands and forced Raheem to turn off his radio, the two teamed for an impromptu protest in the pizzeria. The result was a battered, silenced boombox, a do-or-die struggle between Sal and Raheem and a chain of events that would lead to Raheem’s death, Michael Stewart-style, at the hands of NYPD. Only then would Mookie finally take a stand, tossing a garbage can through his employer’s window. A riot ensued, culminating with Smiley, the neighborhood idiot who never smiled, striking the match as the block chanted, “Howard Beach! Howard Beach!” In this climax, Lee brought together newsreel images of the northern Black power riots of Harlem and Newark and the southern civil rights demonstrations of Birmingham and Montgomery in the context of the fraught new era of brutality and reaction.

  Stuttering Smiley, whose very speech seemed paralyzed by the grandiloquent inquiries of Martin and Malcolm (“The ballot or the bullet?” “Where do we go from here?”), stepped through the flames to pin a postcard of them on the Wall of Fame, depicting the two unredeemed martyrs laughing and shaking hands in their only historic meeting. Then he allowed himself a private, inscrutable Sly Stone smile. The movie closed with opposing quotes from King and X on the question of violence as protest. Lee had offered no solutions. The power of Lee’s statement lay in its dead-end generational rage and confusion.

  Through no fault of Lee’s, the movie opened on June 30, just two months after the sensational Central Park rape case, in which a group of Black male teenagers from Harlem were accused of a “wilding” rampage through the park culminating in a gang rape of a white female investment banker. (Years later, DNA evidence led a judge to overturn the five convictions, after each of the boys had become men, serving between seven and thirteen years in prison.) Do the Right Thing was greeted by a spasm of panic. Jack Kroll wrote in Newsweek, “To put it bluntly: in this long hot summer, how will young urban audiences—Black and white—react to the film’s climactic explosion of interracial violence?”24

  Lee’s film turned mild-mannered film critics into political prognosticators. New York magazine’s David Denby wrote, “[I]f Spike Lee is a commercial opportunist, he’s also playing with dynamite in an urban playground. The response to the movie could get away from him.”25 Political pundits turned film critics, too. In a famous column, New York magazine political writer Joe Klein argued, “His film . . . is more trendoid than tragic, reflecting the latest riffs in hip Black separatism rather than taking an intellectually honest look at the problems he’s nibbling around.”26

  Klein wrote that white liberals would passionately debate what Lee meant to say. “Black kids,” he wrote, “won’t find it so hard, though. For them, the message is clear from the opening credits, which roll to the tune of “Fight the Power,” performed by Public Enemy, a virulently anti-Semitic rap group: The police are your enemy . . . White people are your enemy . . .”27

  But objections to Lee’s film were not just racial, they were generational, too. In The Village Voice, Stanley Crouch compared Lee to Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl, and wrote, “Do the Right Thing, for all its wit, is the sort of rancid fairy tale one expects of the racist, whether or not Lee actually is one.”28 If Chuck D had pointed the finger at Crouch’s generation for selling the race down the river, Crouch pointed the finger back. He wrote:

  Intellectual cowardice, opportunism and the itch for riches by almost any means necessary define the demons within the Black community. The demons are presently symbolized by those Black college teachers so intimidated by career threats that they don’t protest students bringing Louis Farrakhan on campus, by men like Vernon Mason who sold out a good reputation in a cynical bid for political power by pimping real victims of racism in order to smoke-screen Tawana Brawley’s lies, by the crack dealers who have wrought unprecedented horrors and by Afro-fascist race baiters like Public Enemy who perform on the soundtrack to Do the Right Thing.29

  The further critics got from the theater, the more the question hardened: come on, Spike, just exactly what is the right thing? In these upside-down times, political pundits and cultural critics wanted what they had little right to expect. Pundits snorted at platforms and proposals; instead, they turned politicians like Jesse Jackson into tragedies, and forced them to beg for redemption. Critics wanted from Spike Lee and Public Enemy the bland precision of diplomacy; instead, they got messy, plexus-pounding, fire-starting art.

  Lee himself presented a strange mix of unblinking sincerity and brusque impenetrability that made him a seductive mainstream media subject. Suddenly Lee seemed more in demand as a race man than even Congressional Black Caucus head Ron Dellums. Once again, the questions haunted: Who speaks for young Black America? Were Black artists the new Black leaders? If they were, what did they really have to say?

  Representing New Black Militancy (1989 Version)

  Lee had commissioned Public Enemy to do the title track, for which Chuck, Keith and Eric put together “Fight the Power.” His idea for the video was to stage a “Young People’s March to End Racial Violence.” Ads went out on urban radio to drum up turnout for the event.

  On the day of the march, “Fight the Power” T-shirts were handed out to the youths, as well as placards featuring images of Angela Davis, Jesse Jackson, Paul Robeson, Frederick Douglass, Medgar Evers, Thurgood Marshall, Marcus Garvey, Muhammad Ali and the Public Enemy logo. Pickets reading “Brooklyn,” “Montgomery,” “Selma,” “Philadelphia,” “Wash. D.C.,” “Miami” and “Watts,” as well as “S1Ws,” “Flavor Flav” and “Terminator X,” were distributed into the crowd. Then they marched a mile up from the Eastern Parkway to the block where the movie had been shot.

  There the group performed the song on a red, black and green stage framed by a large photo of Malcolm X, as the crowd danced and mugged for the cameras. The presentation was street demonstration, Black pride march and rap concert, as if the 1972 National Black Political Assembly had been transformed into a millennial Brooklyn block party.

  Lee opened the video with historic footage of the 1963 March on Washington. Chuck broke in, “Young Black America, we rolling up with seminars, press conferences and straight-up rallies. Am I right? We gonna get what we got to get coming to us. We ain’t going out like that ‘63 nonsense.” Then it began with Chuck proclaiming, “1989! The number, another summer,” marking the moment for history.

  It was just a seven-minute short to promote a record, a group, a brand. But the video also seemed to firmly establish Chuck’s cultural authority. Public Enemy’s first video, for “Night of the Living Baseheads,” was amateurish, almost a parody of Chuck’s rap-as-CNN idea. But on “Fight the Power,” Lee placed Chuck in the streets amidst the likenesses of Black power fighters, one new Black icon anointing another.

  Chuck was reluctant to be seen as his generation’s Malcolm X or Paul Robe-son. He wanted to provoke, not to lead. But after this video, the question would be out of his hands. Public Enemy had gone, as Bill Stephney says, “from a rap group playing the Latin Quarter with Biz and Shan and Run and Whodini to now being the saviors of the Black community.” Soon they would be forced to confront a crisis that would test both Chuck’s leadership of the group and the group’s leadership within the community.

  The Enemy Implodes

  As the summer of 1989 opened, Chuck was ready for controversy. He says, “I remember specifically when I did ‘Fuck him and John Wayne.’ I was totally prepared to handle all that shit.” Then Professor Griff gave an interview to David Mills of the Washington Times.

  Chuck recalls, “It was almost like I’m going in to make a tackle and I get cross-body-blocked by a 500-pounder like out of nowhere, man, knocking me entirely out of the play. I was ready to go after John Wayne and Elvis with a vengeance, and then all of a sudden—blaaaau! Now I’m fucking getting chased. I’m scrambling in the pocket, man. I’m like, what the fuck? I can’t throw this shit out of bounds!”

  In fact, by the time they shot the “Fight the Power” video, Public Enemy was beginning to unrave
l. It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back had gone platinum and raised the industry’s expectations for the group. But the original decision-making core of Chuck, Hank and Bill was coming apart.

  Hank was in demand because of a run of number-one singles through his Bomb Squad production work for Vanessa Williams and Bell Biv Devoe. Bill was consumed by his duties as vice president of Def Jam, which itself was melting down. Rick and Russell were in the process of splitting, the Beastie Boys were suing the label for unpaid royalties (while trying to hire Stephney away) and the label’s artists were accusing Stephney of playing favorites with Public Enemy. The solution was for Hank, Bill and Chuck to set up their own label.

  When word got out that they were plotting to leave Def Jam a number of offers came in, the most serious a multimillion-dollar proposal from MCA Records, a company that had just purchased Motown—Chuck’s personal ideal of Black business. In the late spring of 1989, Bill quit Def Jam, and he and Hank formalized the deal. Then they worked on setting up the new label, called “SOUL: The Sound of Urban Listeners,” and waited for Chuck to return from tour. These new label duties took them further from the daily activities of the group. As Public Enemy fulfilled a heavy schedule of touring and appearances, Chuck had become the de facto leader of the crew.

  Public Enemy was carefully balanced on a set of dualities, with Chuck at the center of each. Chuck and Hank constituted the musical axis. Chuck and Flav were the focal sonic and visual points of the group. Chuck and Griff confronted the media. In 1988, Chuck had described his role in the group to New Music Express:

  I’m like the mediator in all this. Flavor is what America would like to see in a Black man—sad to say, but true—whereas Griff is very much what America would not like to see. And there’s no acting here—sometimes I can’t put Flavor and Griff in the same room.

  I’m in the middle. When Griff says something too much, I come to the rescue of white people; when Flavor does something, I come to the defense of Black people. I do constrain them, but not much, because Public Enemy are the only Black group making noises outside of their records.30

  In their Hempstead studio, these tensions worked together to create magnifi-cent art. But the day-in, day-out stresses of the road made these same tensions crippling.

  The disciplined, temperamental Griff had been given the role as road manager, and he began resenting the elusive, disorganized Flavor for ignoring group rules. Flavor’s problems seemed complicated by his addictions. He was prone to disappearing for hours. When Flav showed up late for one show, Griff blew up and kicked him in the chest. Flav quickly got lost.

  Griff’s abrasiveness had even alienated the S1Ws, jeopardizing his road manager responsibilities. He wanted more involvement with the Bomb Squad, but the production team was already self-contained and Griff was always away on tour. He wanted a larger role as Minister of Information, and resented Chuck’s role as chief spokesperson. He was becoming increasingly isolated from the crew.

  On the other hand Chuck would ignore the problems until they became unbearable, frozen by loyalty to each of his old friends. In decision-making, he was reluctant to dictate terms. He preferred a democratic process of consensus-making. In any case, he figured, everyone was supposed to play his position. They knew their role. He sighs, “I thought that men could fix their problems amongst themselves, and I kinda like would be the guy in charge. But see, how the fuck can a man be in charge of men?”

  A crew of old friends had suddenly been thrown into the spotlight of massive success. Amidst incessant touring and fishbowl scrutiny, the personal and the political quickly became intertwined and threatened to blow.

  Over the Edge

  Def Jam/Rush publicist Bill Adler had tutored Chuck in how to become adept at playing a kind of brinksmanship with the media. When reporters tried to pin him down, Chuck flipped the question into a big-picture statement or a personal story. Griff thought Chuck was becoming soft. The more distanced Griff was from the crew, the harder the line he wanted to take.

  From the earliest tours, Chuck had included Griff in Public Enemy interviews. After some disastrous early British interviews, Chuck took up the primary press role again.31 But as Public Enemy took off, Chuck’s leadership responsibilities, which included handling tour scheduling and details Griff’s refusal to continue as road manager, and the extraordinary media demands caused Chuck to delegate some media duties back to Griff. When Public Enemy toured through Europe and America in the summer of Nation of Millions, Griff’s rhetoric began to overheat. “No more of this media darling this and darling that,” he told British reporters, “let’s turn it up a notch.”32

  In Switzerland during May to promote the record, Griff led the discussion like a wild goose chase, jumping from apartheid in South Africa to the origins of the diamond and slave trades to the ethics of the intifada to whites mating with monkeys. Some of Griff’s opinions were confrontational, lots of them were just weird, but none of them would be as explosive as this one reported by Melody Maker in its May 28, 1988, issue: “If the Palestinians took up arms, went into Israel and killed all the Jews, it’d be alright.”33 To this day, Chuck traces the beginnings of 1989’s meltdown to this very moment.

  First Fallout

  Three weeks after the Melody Maker article ran, Chuck showed up at the New Music Seminar in New York City to find the crowd holding flyers that read “Don’t Believe the HATE,” and listing some of Griff’s more outrageous quotes. John Leland, whom Chuck had threatened in NME some months before, sat with Chuck for an interview:

  Q: Chuck, what’s your reaction to the handbill distributed at the New Music Seminar?

  A: They’re making a whole lot of shit about nothing. A lot of paranoia going on. People think I got the ability to fucking turn a country around.

  Q: Do you back the statements that Griff made?

  A: I back Griff. Whatever he says, he can prove.

  Q: You mean he can prove that white people mated with monkeys? That it wouldn’t be such a bad idea if Palestinians were to kill all Jews in Israel?

  A: Now that was taken out of context. I was there. He said, by Western civilization’s standards it wouldn’t be bad for the Palestinians to come into Palestine and kill all the Jews, because that’s what’s been done right throughout Western civilization: invasion, conquering and killing. That wasn’t mentioned.34

  Bill Adler was concerned. He says, “I had no trouble repeating what Chuck said vis-a-vis the criticism that Public Enemy was anti-white. They’d say, ‘No, we’re pro-Black.’ Fine. Their racial politics I had no problem with. The problem for me was when Griff began giving anti-Semitic interviews.

  “Griff is sober, disciplined, clean and well spoken—soft spoken, too. Not a screamer, not a ranter. He’s got every appearance of rationality, sobriety and thoughtfulness and yet, in this very calm voice, he’s going to say the goofiest shit in the world about how the Jews are in a conspiracy, and have been in a conspiracy forever, to destroy the Black man.”

  Adler confronted Griff about his quotes to Melody Maker. He was worried these kinds of statements could become a serious flashpoint for the group. But rather than deny that he’d said them, Adler says, Griff dug in his heels. “I said to him, I said ‘Griff, where did you hear these things?’ And he said, ‘The International Jew.’ I said, ‘The International Jew, the book by Henry Ford, right?’ He said ‘Yeah.’ I said, ‘Griff, you know about Henry Ford. Henry Ford is a guy who established two cities for his workers on the outskirts of Detroit. One was for white folks only and it was called Dearborn and the other was for his Black workers only and it was called Inkster. Understand, he would as gladly have upholstered the seats of his Model T with your Black hide as with my Jewish hide.’ And Griff shrugged. He was absolutely unmoved. He said, ‘I’m sorry, Bill. It’s in the book.’ ”

  The Interview

  When the band came to Washington, D.C., a year later, on May 9, 1989, tensions within the group had only increased. The band had been on t
he road for months, and the personal issues were taking their toll. “The split in the ranks, I just kind of left alone. Like, oh it will handle itself. And it never did,” Chuck says. When he needed to attend a meeting about tour scheduling, he sent Griff to meet with Black reporter David Mills from the conservative, Reverend Sun Myung Moon-funded Washington Times newspaper. By this point, Chuck says, “I guess Griff really felt like, ‘Hey, I’m not getting no love out of this group.’ And now Chuck is telling me to do this damn interview.”

  Griff had just given a TV interview in which he stated he did not wear gold chains because of Jewish support for apartheid.35 Mills pressed Griff on this point and Griff, citing the Nation of Islam’s recently published book, The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews, became more insistent:

  Professor Griff: . . . Is it a coincidence that the Jews run the jewelry business, and it’s named jew-elry? No coincidence. Is it a coincidence to you that probably the gold from this ring was brought up out of South Africa, and that the Jews have a tight grip on our brothers in South Africa?

  David Mills: What do you mean “the Jews”? Are the Jews in America responsible for that? Are Jews as a totality responsible for that?

  Professor Griff: No, because there are some Jews that are righteous, that are following the Torah given to them by Moses . . . I’m not saying all of them. The majority of them (laughter), the majority of them, yes.

  David Mills: Are what? Are responsible for—

  Professor Griff: The majority of wickedness that goes on across the globe? Yes. Jews. Yes.

  Spin Cycles

  On May 11, in an effort at damage control, the crew invited Mills to meet them in Hempstead. Mills accepted. “We’re not hung up on Jews. We’ve got no time to get hung up on Jewish people,” S1W James Norman told Mills. “We’re battling to try to regain a Black consciousness for our people.”36