[reprinted from HardC.O.R.E. vol. 2 no. 5 -- September 1994]
 
 

Interview with Chuck D, conducted at Colby College in September of 1993.

Russell A. Potter  

Contents copyright (c) Russell A. Potter; any re-distribution must

include this notice; no redistribution for profit without prior

permission.
 

After trying to track Chuck down for an interview for over a

year, trading faxes with Harry Allen and hoping at best to arrange a

phone interview, I was fortunate to have the chance to interview him

in person. Kebba Tolbert, a student at Colby College (where I teach),

got together funding to invite Chuck to Colby to speak, and last

September I went down to the local Holiday Inn to pick him up and

drive him to campus. There was something surreal as I stood waiting

in the lobby, where a group of dull-looking businessmen had gathered

to chat over the _Wall Street Journal_ and coffee, wondering what to

expect. Eventually, Chuck came on down the hallway, looking a bit jet-

lagged. He told me later that he just came from giving a lecture at

another college, where he was also invited to student meetings, taken

out to dinner and then a football game. He looked tired, and I felt

tongue-tied -- after all, when you get to talk with Chuck D, what do

you say?.
 

Arriving on campus, we walked up to my office relatively

unnoticed by students (that's Maine for you). I asked Chuck about PE's

next album, and he said that part of it was recorded, but they were

still working on it, and it would probably not be out until sometime

in 1994. After settling down in a chair, and checking out my wall

posters (I suddenly realized I had no PE poster up there with Paris or

Ice-T), Chuck seemed to get a second wind; by a few minutes into our

interview, he was warmed up, and soon we were having a wide-ranging

conversation, especially about the ins and outs of the music business,

label deals, artist rosters, and the past and future of hip-hop. After

talking for about forty minutes, Chuck had to move on to get ready for

his lecture, which amplified his message about the necessity of re-

investing black capital in black communities. Since Chuck, unlike

some rappers, has been in one aspect or another of the music for over

twelve years, and because of his position as one of its most respected

artists, his message has the kind of depth and knowledge that commands

attention, and by taking it to college audiences he gets it out

directly in an academic setting. Chuck talked for over an hour, took

questions for forty minutes, and still took time to sign autographs

for students, including several dozen local high school students who

had been given the morning off for this educational experience.

Thanks are due to Chuck for generously granting the interview, and to

Kebba Tolbert for making it happen.
 
 
 

C = Chuck D

R = Russell Potter
 
 

R: One question I had is, since as you say, you're touring twice --

you're doing hip-hop, and that's educational, but then you're talking to

an audience, you know, just talking -- is there anything different that

goes through your head, in terms of how you prepare?
 

C: Yeah, there's two different preparations. When you do a concert, I

work more with my team. It's a team type thing, you know, fourteen

individuals, all in synch, one operation. You know that you have an

audience that's hyped for the music, which means that you have a lot

of people that are there for the music, and you have a lot of people

that are there for the point of view; people know what to expect, they

wanna hear some songs, and my dialogue to the audience is short bursts

of, y'know, you know the music, go with the music. But when it comes

down to doing a lecture it's sort of more like an individual point of

view, and I know I'm not really here to give my personal point of view

all the time, but I also pretty much lay a lot of things on the table

and have people pick and choose and use their own opinions, and pretty

much explain the thrust and the aura around hip-hop, and this thing

that we call rap music and stuff like that. I try to get some

definitions clear and straight, and I try not to have people just

leading on to the vibe of the moment without having some facts

straight about the past.
 

R: I think that's really important.  You don't get a whole lot

of history in this country, or you get the old account of history, the

standardized whitewashed account of history.
 

C: Well, I think, you know a lot of things, like in this music, they

might have covered guys that did the music in the early days, but just

because they did the music doesn't mean that what they did was actual

fact, or defined in terms, y'know. Like for example I say that hip-

hop is the culture, I mean, even Mingus could've been hip-hop, you

know. Hip-hop is the culture of whatever black people create and do.

Grandmama . . . you see Larry Johnson in commercials, that's hip-hop.

Rap music is clearly definable, right there, it's like rap is a vocal,

it's the use of a vocal; the reason it's so strong 'cause it's one of

the few vocals ever created, you know, for recorded music -- you know

you have talking, you have singing -- rap borders that in-between; you

have to talk about another vocal you have to talk about maybe humming --

but, I mean it's rap, singing, and there's talking, and along that

spectrum; and when people talk about, will rap music ever die, you're

talking actually, they're stupid, it's like saying will the vocal ever

die, it's like the silliest thing -- when will all this singing just

stop [laughter] Y'know what I mean. So it's a vocal. And rap music

means a vocal over music, you know; it started as an overdub, it

always will be an overdub, it always will be a vocal music. That's

why, you know, rap can use rock'n'roll, jazz, fusions of rhythm &

blues and different aspects of different musics that it hasn't even

gotten to yet. So rap music actually is a vocal over borrowed music,

or fusions of music -- so it's not goin' anywhere, because it's a

vocal. So those are the types of things that I kinda set the table

with to make people have a clearer understanding on where this form of

music is going.
 

R: So say if someone like Greg Osby, say if he does an instrumental,

it's still hip-hop.
 

C: It's hip-hop yeah. It's not rap music. It's hip-hop. It has a

slice of rap music in it -- but rap music is not really a music, like

I said, it's hip-hop.
 

R: Well it's like -- what was that thing you did about Charlie Parker,

that was really cool.
 

C: Thanks.
 

R: That was a totally different stylistic type of thing.
 

C: Yeah, I don't know what to call it.
 

R: Bop?
 

C: Maybe it was, like you said, bop, I mean you can call it hip-hop

because you had a hip-hop vocalist on it, or a rap vocalist on it, but

it was hip-hop just because it was created out of two black organic

things -- a rap vocalist and a jazzist.
 

R: That was a good project. An Jazzmatazz? What did you think of

that?
 

C: Yeah, that was a great experiment in sound and fusion, you know

what I'm sayin? Any time something is done for the first time I'm a

big fan of it -- it doesn't mean it had to blow up. It just means

that it was done, it was experimented with, it was fucked with, and

you know, here it is, you know?
 

R: Yeah it's back, I mean in some ways maybe it's like stealing it

back.
 

C: Uh-huh. I mean, I'm always a fan of things being done and

experimented with for the first time, for example, the RUN-D.M.C.-

Aerosmith thing . . .
 

R: Yeah, that had to be the first.
 

C: '86
 

R: Although weren't people using rock-n-roll for breakbeats and stuff?
 

C: Of course. That's what I mean by rap being an overdub thing. Back

in the late 70's you had guys like Grandmaster Flash and people like

that, getting a Billy Squier record, Thin Lizzy, and cuttin' the beats

in it. Because the rock guys gave the beats up, y'know, they would

have the beats. I remember one time, I wanted to get this record by

Jeff Beck, "Blow by Blow," 'cause he had this bass line in the middle,

I was like, ohhh . . .
 

R: Yeah, you're listening differently when you're looking for something

to cut up . . .
 

C: It's almost like, y'know, you goin' to a turkey, knowing that you

only want the stuffing. You don't want any of the meat . . .

R: Yeah. That brings up another question. I'm kinda curious -- I think

there is a real continuum, that's one of the things I'm arguing for in

my  book is that it's not like hip-hop arrived yesterday, it's continuous

with the whole black tradition. You look back to, like, talking blues . . .
 

C: Yeah
 

R: Laquan even samples Robert Johnson, reaches back into the thirties,

and it seems to work. So do you think -- I'm just tryin' to think back

to the first time, even before hip-hop was breakin' out, y'know, the first

time when you were growin' up and you're hearin' these tunes, before

the idea of cutting them up is there, is that where the continuity is?

I mean, what are some of the first things that you remember?
 

C: I'm a old guy. I'm like, thirty-three, so . . .
 

R: That's the same age as me.
 

C: Y'know, so what caught my fancy was this black music, y'know,

and also I liked a lot of the rock music in the early 70's, because

that's what was played in my area, WABC, y'know, it's a top-40 station, they

played everything. I always liked the drum beat, and y'know the rock

guys gave up a good beat too. Sometimes, y'know, if I wanted to hear

a drumbeat, I just didn't want to hear anything else, I didn't want to

hear vocal on top, or guitar or anything like that. But the beat is

what always made me go and move. But I first started really getting into the

rap music aspect of it, the hip-hop side of it, because of the

technology of two turntables, that really caught my interest . . .
 

R: Yeah, I remember in one interview you said you were at a basketball

game or something, there were people with two turntables, and the first

time you saw them you wondered, what, do they need a backup? Why

do they have two turntables?
 

C: [Laughs] That definitely caught my attention. It was this technical

aspect that first got me hooked into it.
 

R: And you did radio, didn't you, before . . .
 

C: I did radio in the early 80's; rap records came out in '79, and I got

involved with college radio in 1981, actually. Back then, all I wanted

to do was promote rap music from all other angles, other than

performing. So, that was interesting, for me, you know, to really

pick up on the vibe, you know, thrusting records into the market, and

getting feedback. I did that for about five or six years.
 

R: So what do you think now -- it seems the '80's have been a

pretty productive decade, and suddenly now, you've got people --

Cypress Hill, Ice Cube, Public Enemy, topping the charts, the record

companies are churning out new acts every other week, the audience is a

lot broader. Does that . . .
 

C: Do I think that hurts?
 

R: Well, yeah, it seems like it gets displaced in some ways. There was

this article in the New Republic, by David Samuels, and the cover

showed a white kid with headphones, with the caption "The Real Face

of Rap." And Samuels argues that rap is just catering to white

stereotypes. I don't agree with that, but I hear that argument again

and again in the press these days.
 

C: Yeah, well the press, they have their little slice of information,

and not all their facts are correct. You could have just as big a black

audience for the music than you have for whites; the difference is maybe

the blacks wouldn't purchase it, they don't have the purchasing power,

but they're still an audience of it, they still support it some sort

of way, where the white audience will support it monetarily by going

to the mall, and finding out that that tape is at Trax or Sam Goody's

or Record World or Strawberries, or wherever, and purchase that tape,

whereas the black kid, pretty much, is surrounded by it, you know what

I'm sayin'? Every day, homeboy drives up in a car, he got a tape or

something, you know, it's like the black kids is in an environment

where he can go anywhere and hear it, or really experience it in a lot

of cases, where the white kid has to purchase it. So the audiences

might be just as big, compared to each other, but as far as the

statistics read, you know, it might lean to the white side. These

guys, these journalists crack me up, because, you know, you can only

do so much sittin' in a chair at a desk with your computer or word-

processor, and you know, it takes a little bit more than that. On

your way to work, you'll ask a couple of people and then come up with

your own evaluation, and go right to your story, I mean, maybe it

takes some years at a time, and it takes experiencing it in a lot of

places. One thing I've been fortunate about Public Enemy is that I've

been around the world four times, I been to more countries than any

other rapper, thirty-six of 'em, and I've been to every continent, all

in the name of rap.
 

R: Damn.
 

C: I've seen kids in Brazil who are now forcing themselves to learn

English because of rap. Where, you know, if you talk about

Portuguese, and what they speak down there, and English, you know,

it's like night and day, it seems to be such a difficult hurdle that

kids wouldn't even bother goin' for it. But with rap music, I mean

goin' down there, I remember them playing Too $hort and Biz Markie and

PE; they're rap fanatics, and actually, you know, tryin' to learn the

black lingo.
 

R: That's wild. Well, on the other side, you know, there's the

influence of dancehall in the United States. I mean, I know a lot of

kids that are just tryin' to get that ragamuffin style, and pick up on

that lingo.
 

C: That lingo, you know, is definitely a different type of thing, it's

similar to rap, hip-hop, you know, it's hip-hop.
 

R: So I'm curious now, what's the future look like now?
 

C: Oh, I don't make any predictions about the future, I only make

predictions of the future of, like I mean, life, you know, like how

things be leadin' to, I think black America is in a panic-button, a

crisis. If we don't have certain controls over certain aspects of our

situation, it's gonna be mayhem. I mean, it's gonna just be worse

than it is now.
 

R: What about right on the level of communities? There are the overall

economic question, I know youve talked about this a lot, where does the

profit from the music go? And now a lot of people are going

independent, you have Paris with Scarface records, Ice-T with Rhyme

Syndicate, you've got Flavor Unit Records now . . . do you think we

need more of that?
 

C: I think you need more of that , because rappers have to set their own

standards. I mean, the business, I'm caught up in a situation now, I

had a project with a major, and I was told, you know, that if it doesn't

do 470,000 units, I don't stand a chance to gain anything -- 470,000

units! But I've been in another situations where, you know, I have a

situation with another distributor down south where all I have to do

is get up to 75,000 units on a project, even get a little bit of input

into the project, and I actually gain a profit, you know, because I

have full control of the whole thing.
 

R: So you don't have all these middlemen, and warehousers . . .
 

C: All that crap. So the industry is trying to set a standard for

rap, and you see somebody like, a major artist come along, and they

do, like for example Kool G. Rap and Polo or Brand Nubian, and they

clock about 300,000, 250,000, and the record company says they're a

failure, you know, it raises attention to how lopsided the business is

and how much is being taken as the business stands. I always say it's

all dollars and cents, point blank, you have to count how many people

are in the middle. Because you know, like CD's wholesale, go for 9,

for an estimate, wholesale cassettes, most of the retail outlets are 5

dollars, so I take a common figure of 7 dollars, and I multiply it by

200,000, let's say an album does 200,000, right there's 1.4 million

dollars, now even if the record label gave them a 250,000 advance,

they still recoup. Even though, if you add 250,000 -- which are high

figures, they're not giving up those figures -- 250,000 promotion and

video, whatnot, that's 500,000 dollars, you know 1.4 million, you

know, and you can say this and that, this and that. And you know the

argument is made that 200,000 copies in rap actually makes money for

the major, it's just that the artist doesn't get it, not till 450,000.

And that's where the independent situation comes through, you know

Paris sells 250,000, and he's actually in the money, or Ice-T sells

500,000.
 

R: You ever think of going independent? Or are you gonna stick with

Columbia?
 

C: I got partners, I don't think they would want me to go independent.

And then again you got to understand, Columbia's not my label, Sony's

my label. So with the agreements I made with Sony, I got cassettes,

Walkmen, earphones, stuff like that, I try to do my best to stick 'em.

I say, well, they're the ones to stick up more than anybody. Sony?

So I consider myself in a fortunate sitauation. I mean, Sony/Columbia

is a different situation from a lot of artists, 'cause they've kept

their artists for a long time, there's some artists that've been there.

I mean let's look at the case of Fishbone. Fishbone has been a group

that haven't been commercially successful, but they've been there

since '85, '84, you know what I'm sayin', and in any other situation

that's not dealing in music so strongly, or point of view in music,

they'd have been let go a long time ago. They've had artists that

have done 6 or 7 albums. So Columbia has been more of a music label.

I'm not proppin' em, y'know, I'm not proppin' em, they made race

records back in the 20s, so...
 

R: Yeah, that's a long history there. But I guess with a label like

that, you're carrying. I mean if you sell X million, that goes to an

organization that in a sense is sticking with artists that don't sell

as much ... I've read statistics that say that the bulk of rap sales

are the top few acts, and that some in the industry see them as

carrying the rest of the acts, where in a lot of cases they say

they're taking a fall.
 

C: They haven't taken a fall, it's like I told you, they haven't taken

a fall. You're not takin' a fall with 150,000 units sold.
 

R: Not if you've got control . . . . that's not bad
 

C: Of course. You know, so somebody's gotta get into the nitty-gritty

of that information, and just be able to reveal it, and let it go at

that. Plus, these guys are also making a nice nickel off of singles

now. Singles were x-ed out of the market for about 2 or 3 years, once

they stopped makin' the 45 vinyl. I remember, when "Don't Believe the

Hype" came out, and it was actually my last 45, and my first cassette

single. So, that was the era right there, where, you know, people

weren't rushing to buy the cassette singles, and they'd stopped

pickin' up the 45's, so the reason that you seen a lot of rap albums

goin' gold and platinum in that 1988-89 period, is cause a young kid

would come up, an, let's say like "It Takes Two" by Rob Base would

come into the store, they'd look on the racks, and they'd want "It

Takes Two," but Profile did not supply the single, you know what I'm

sayin', and the kid had no other choice but to buy the album for

$9.99. And this happened to a lot of rap albums in that period. If

you look at the rate of rap gold and platinum in '88-'89, it's not

that the music peaked, it's just the business supplied the audience

with only one configuration, so you had to get the album.
 

R: That makes more sense to me now.
 

C: See these are the facts that I try to lay out there, people will

say, oh, I didn't know that. Whereas some journalist may say, well,

you know, rap peaked here, and now today ... the stats, you know, just

like in sports, the stats can give you a number, but it's not gonna

give you the actual play.
 

R: Well, what about when they switched to an automated system that

actually polled the registers.
 

C: Sound Scan?
 

R: Yeah, that was kind of an eye-opener, 'cause before then the industry

kept on pretending that the real movers and shakers were geriatric

rockers, like the Rolling Stones or Paul McCartney, or whoever, and

suddenly they were forced to deal with real sales figures.
 

C: Well, see, they dealt with real sales figures cause they felt that

it was about time to do so, once they figured that a lot of companies

had a lock on rap, I mean, why not, I mean, of course we can say that

Cypress Hill is number one, because we own it. Right now what's

goin' on through rap music, is, sign anybody you can find, and throw

it up on the wall, and what sticks sticks, and what doesn't will slide

off into obscurity.
 

R: Yeah. Some places now, like I watch out for Epic, they've got a

hyperactive A&R department, they'll put out anything.

C: Yeah, they're the worst, Epic is just horrible. One thing about,

maybe hopefully, with the Flavor Unit situation, maybe they'll be

something. But you gotta understand, with the major labels, all these

label deals inside the major, are designed to fail, eventually.

There's no upside on it. Maybe Russell Simmons will do it, RUSH

associated labels, he's trying to become that David Geffen -- do

volume, do incredible, and then get out in time and be self-

sustaining. But they're having a hard time, I'm telling you, they're

having a hard time even with Onyx, platinum album, and Boss, they're

having a hard time sustaining, so you can imagine anybody else that

does not have those figures.
 

R: So what is it that gets them? Is it overhead?
 

C: Overhead, and over-ambitious. And, like I say, the best

situations, are like, what you see with Paris or Ice-T. Not to say

that those are easy situations, but they're situations that they don't

try to get over-ambitious, they can keep it to one or two groups,

three groups, you know -- three groups at the most. That's something

that might last for twelve, fourteen, fifteen years. Def Jam has been

around, going into their tenth year, but now it's like, it's grown to

a size where they have to do it. Whereas somebody like Sony or

Columbia is backed by so much positioning and power, they're like,

well, maybe we'll get it or maybe not, you know, but Def Jam can't

afford to have a Fishbone.
 

R: That's wild. 'Cause I always think of DefJam as a big

organization, one of the first, on-the-spot labels, there from the

start.
 

C: It's like the brontosaurus in the last days, you know? I mean, big

motherfuckin' dinosaur, but there ain't too much to eat! It's a

quiet motherfucker. I mean, I'm tellin' you, I've been with the

organization for seven years, and you know the artist roster, the

amount of money -- you know it's a joint venture with Sony -- the

amount of money that has to go in it just to sustain, to staff it, as

well as the artists, and the promotion. If you don't downscale, if

you don't continue to make cuts, like drop this person, drop that, and

always add on somebody new, and always keep, like, a dream team

number, of like, you got ten artists, that's your dream team number.

That's what label deals should do, with majors. I love Latifah and

everybody, but I foresee that the Epic situation is just gonna run

them ragged. 'Cause you gotta understand, all the groups on the

compilation come out with an album, then they gotta do their second

album, and that's when it gets tough. They gotta do their second

album, you know, the deal's cross-collateralized, or whatever, so it

becomes a big mess when you deal with more than a one-two-three

situation.