All the while, the youngsters in the crew were learning from the older members. Eric Sadler was teaching Juice and Keith how to programme drum machines and samplers. ‘Eventually, Keith and I would just sit in that little room and just work on shit,’ says Juice. ‘We’d come up with records based on a little vibe that was happening. He’d come up with a little beat, I’d grab some records and start scratching them in. That was my introduction to Public Enemy.’
The demo version of ‘Public Enemy Number One’ was recorded in December 1984, a full two years before it became their debut twelve-inch release for Def Jam. Chuck took it up to WBAU and gave it to Dr Dre who played it on his show The Operating Room. Jam Master Jay was also in the studio, and he liked what he heard. ‘It became a mainstay on WBAU, and it shut those guys up,’ Chuck says of the Play Hard Crew who inspired the record when they challenged Chuck. ‘Jay was like, “Yo, that shit is hot.”’ What happened next is subject to debate.
According to some, Jam Master Jay was the first person to play the demo of ‘Public Enemy Number One’ to Rick Rubin, who co-founded Def Jam with Russell Simmons. But other insiders insist Dr Dre did the deed. It could quite easily have been either. They were both present when the song was brought to the studio after all. Jay, a big fan of their radio show, had such enthusiasm for hip-hop that he was constantly playing the newest joints to any and everyone he came across. Naturally, Chuck still has mad love for Jam Master Jay after all these years. ‘Jay would tape every show and then take it back on tour and all that so of course it got around and “Public Enemy Number One” would be the hot song.’ It’s also entirely possible that Dre – who would himself enjoy a hit with ‘Can You Feel It’ as part of Original Concept– played it for Rick when trying to hustle his way through the door. Original Concept would go on to release their debut album Straight from the Basement of Cooley High on Def Jam.
According to Dre, he played it for Run DMC and The Beastie Boys on a tour bus while he was DJing for The Beasties. ‘I was playing them a bunch of stuff that we had from the station and this one tape stuck out. They were going, ‘This “Public Enemy Number One” record is crazy Dre, you gotta take it to Rick, you gotta take it to Rick.’ At the time I was doing the Original Concept stuff so I said, “Let me take it up there.”’
He duly passed it on to both Def Jam head honchos, but didn’t receive the response he’d hoped for. ‘I gave it to Rick Rubin and Russell Simmons. Russell threw it out the window. I put it in the deck, played it, and Russell got it and just threw it out the window. I said, “Yo man, why you throw my tape out the window?”’ While Russell obviously didn’t like it, Rick called Dre back in two days. ‘He was like, “We’re gonna sign ’em, we’re gonna sign ’em!”’ Bill Stephney, who by this time had graduated from working in promotions to become vice-president at Def Jam, insists that this is how it went down. But regardless of who played it for him first, Rubin was determined that he would sign whoever was responsible for such a groundbreaking song. Bill Stephney was in no doubt of Rick’s seriousness.
‘Rick said, “We gotta sign Chuckie D. If you don’t sign Chuckie D you’re fired!” In a typical Rick Rubin sort of way. So I’m like, “Is he gonna fire me with all this success that’s happening?” They only have like one employee: me. What kind of sense does that make?’ Despite his tactics and personal quirks, Rubin proved how ahead of his time he was. He caught on to how special ‘Public Enemy Number One’ was despite its sonic strangeness. In fact, he probably liked it more because of this quality. After all, as Chuck says, ‘You gotta understand, that shit was noise in 1987. So you can imagine like 1984–85. It was like, “What the fuck?”’ he says before recreating the sample from the JBs’ ‘Blow Your Head’ with his mouth to emphasise the point.
If you’ve heard it, it’s easy to imagine. If not, the noise is not completely dissimilar to the prolonged wail of a crying baby, albeit one with an unnaturally deep voice. But this baby has decided to hold his crying note like Bill Withers at the end of ‘Lovely Day’. Chuck had been a fan of ‘Blow Your Head’ for a long time. He originally heard the song when he attended Roosevelt Roller Rink as a teenager. ‘Let me tell you I was a rollerskating motherfucker,’ he confirms with a laugh.
The idea to loop the song came from DJs who couldn’t mix the record properly. Many DJs couldn’t extend the groove properly and weren’t mixing and blending (or back-to-backing if you prefer that term) the two copies of the same record in time anyway. There would always be the tiniest gap between the old ‘waaaaaaaaaaah’ and the new one. And as Rakim would insist in a year or two there ‘ain’t no mistakes allowed’.
At this time the term loop didn’t exist, there still weren’t any machines a producer could load a beat into. All Chuck knew was that it didn’t sound right. ‘I was like, “They need to hold that shit”.’ Determined to get it just right, the Public Enemy camp happily used the (now super old-school method) of twin cassette decks. Just as it had done with the turntable, hip-hop revolutionised the way cassette decks were used. ‘When cassette decks first came out black people took them cassette decks and made pause tapes,’ Chuck says. ‘And pause tapes was the first remix tapes.’
Significantly, ‘Public Enemy Number One’, which went through many incarnations, was the first song to feature Flavor Flav and Chuck D on a song together. Flavor opens up the song by rehashing the real conversation he had with Chuck about the Play Hard Crew coming for his neck. Then, at the end of the song, Flav praises Chuck for a job well done on some ‘that’s right, you showed ’em’-type shit. It marked the beginning of a great musical partnership, one of the greatest in music history.
However, it didn’t really matter how anxious Rick Rubin was to sign Chuckie D (he still hadn’t shaved the ‘ie’ from his rap moniker) and Spectrum (despite recording ‘Public Enemy Number One’ they were also yet to change their name). They still didn’t want to sign to Def Jam, or any label for that matter. The Spectrum massive were still very interested in emulating the success of radio personality Frankie Crocker. But they were having a hard time. ‘This is before there was an Oprah, this is before Spike Lee’s big, before Denzel’s big, no one’s really big yet,’ observes Bill Stephney. ‘The big people in the community were the radio stars.’
Not even Jam Master Jay, who stayed on their case about releasing the song, could change Chuck’s mind. Flavor remembers picking up Jay and DMC to take them to the studio one day. ‘I remember Jay telling Chuck, “Yo come on, man, why don’t you put that record out, man”. They were telling Chuck that shit for some months. Chuck was like, “Man, fuck that”. It was really Jam Master Jay and DMC that talked Chuck into doing that Def Jam shit. So right now my hat goes off to Jam Master Jay ’cos he’s really part of the start of PE. Of us being a recording group.’
But while DMC, and Jay in particular, never stopped trying to persuade Chuck that a career as a professional rapper was a good idea, it was obviously going to take something uniquely powerful to change his mind when it came to taking that leap of faith. ‘I knew it would automatically just change my whole life,’ Chuck explains. Def Jam tried to diversify their offer, giving Chuck the opportunity to write for other