Rating:
  Review Date: August 19, 2007
  Website: Public Enemy Website
  Label: Slam Jamz

Public Enemy “How You Sell Soul … ???” Album Review
Very few hip-hop publications reviewed this one. Even though we all know they got early copies. And that upsets me a little homie. I feel like we owe Public Enemy more than that. Shit, without them there wouldn’t be us – at least us as we know it now. We owe it to hip-hop to keep track of what PE is doing.  

One of the few reviews I did come across was in AllHipHop.com, who kept it real by giving an in depth review of the direction and lyrical content of the new album, “How You Sell Soul to A Soulless People Who Sold Their Soul?” This review jumped out at me when the author confessed, “It’s difficult to write about Public Enemy in the present tense” [1]. While I wished I didn’t have to, I couldn’t help but agree with that statement.

After all, at the Randall’s Island Rock the Bells Festival, the crowd was all about PE, but everybody seemed to get quiet and stop singing along when they played pretty much anything they’ve released in the last ten years. In addition, they haven’t received major mainstream recognition since around ’96. Despite dropping consistently hot shit, hip-hop seems to have written Public Enemy into the past tense.

PE in the Present Tense
However, there are a couple things that have happened recently that make me think PE will remain current. First, just getting a top billing alongside the plethora of respectable acts involved in RTB shows that PE is still respected among their peers. Second, the group’s act of deciding to tour with a live band shows their willingness to go different directions with their music and tap into different fanbases.

And third, the album is off the hook! Chuck’s flow is as standout-ish and in-your-face as ever, and the circa 50-year-old appeared to be in great performing shape on the RTB stage. G-Wiz does an amazing job modernizing the Bomb Squad technique to create hard banging beats that I couldn’t imagine anyone other than Chuck D rapping over (although KRS-One definitely lays it down in Sex, Drugs & Violence). And G-Wiz’ beats all appear to be live-band ready, with an abundance of guitar- and horn-based tracks, meaning that PE could definitely continue to tour and appeal to a younger concert-going facet of the hip-hop generation. With the summer touring and the new album, Public Enemy appears to be readjusting itself for renewed mainstream acceptance.

How You Sell Soul?
In Can You Hear Me Now? Chuck takes advantage of a radio and club-friendly Redman beat to dedicate a verse directly to this younger generation of hip-hoppers:

At the age I am now and if I can’t teach
I shouldn’t even open my mouth and begin to speak
I need some radio to help me reach
But I heard they get their money on by making you weak
Drowning in the sea of some big dose of now
No past, no future – let the young grow wild
Ain’t got ‘em nothing and done robbed the child
For if substance don’t occur, fill ‘em up with style
Like hip-hop started on TRL
Like ‘wow just a game’ – they made it a damn shame
Hell with history, you don’t even know my name
And I ain’t the same damn thing that y’all used to playin’
I’m that nonstop rock heading into your brain
Now that’s what I’m sayin’

In the title track, Chuck knocks the materialism prevalent in the mainstream these days, and encourages younger listeners to stay real:

I’ll spit in the wind til it knocks down a tree in the woods
Allahu Akbar! God is good
He who doesn’t stand for something will fall for anything
You could get all the money, cars and things
And still have nothing
Looking for love in all the wrong places
Between getting high on the price tags and smiling faces
Thinking you need rings and things and Tims and rims
That old rap – that’s being slaves again
Hip-Hop says you can be what you wanna be
As long as you ain’t F-A-K-E

Yet Chuck D continues to appease the group’s loyal fanbase with his vintage baritone vocals and positive revolutionary topics. In Harder Than You Think, which you can peep the video for here, Chuck takes a moment to thank his fans for 20 years in hip-hop:

So it’s time to leave you a preview
So you too can review what we do
Twenty years in this business
How you sell soul? G-Wiz, people bear witness
Thank you for letting us be ourselves
So don’t mind me if I repeat myself
These simple rhymes be good for your health
To keep them crime rhymes on the shelf
Live love life like you just don’t care
Five thousand leaders never scared
‘Bring the noise’ is the moment they feared
‘Get up’ is still a beautiful idea
Get up throw your hands in the air
Get up and show no fear
Get up if y’all really care
PE twenty years

Public Enemy’s “How You Sell Soul to A Soulless People Who Sold Their Soul?” is another in a long line of spectacular PE releases. Whether it marks their return to pop culture superstardom remains to be seen. Nonetheless, 20 years is something of which Public Enemy should be proud, as well as something for which hip-hop should be grateful. Pick up a copy of the album and show your appreciation. Peace.

Related:
Public Enemy “New Whirl Odor” also bumped. And if you’re like me, and have a soft spot in your heart for the old school, you should check out some of the cats that have managed to make dope hip-hop for decades. Recent examples of this include KRS-One and Marley Marl “Hip Hop Lives”, and KRS-One “Life”.

Album Track Listing:

1. How You Sell Soul to a Souless People Who Sold Their Soul?
2. Black Is Back
3. Harder Than You Think
4. Between Hard and a Rock Place
5. Sex, Drugs & Violence
6. Amerikan Gangster
7. Can You Here Me Now
8. Head Wide Shut
9. Flavor Man
10. Enemy Battle Hymn of the Public
11. Escapism
12. Frankenstar
13. Col-Leepin
14. Radiation of a Radiotvmovie Nation
15. See Something, Say Something
16. Long and Whining Road
17. Bridge of Pain
18. Eve of Destruction
19. How You Sell Soul (Time Is God Refrain)