But, despite the raw power of this spectacle, the media response to the Long Beach concert may have been even more crucial. Where Run DMC’s show at the Garden had been an unqualified success, the show at the Long Beach Arena was nothing short of disastrous. Not only did the Crips and Bloods fight each other with scant regard for the concert that was supposed to be taking place, they also decided to rob and assault some concert-goers. Forty people were badly injured. The predictably hysterical media response which sought to blame Run DMC, and hip-hop by association, greatly vexed Chuck (as it did all hip-hop fans).
Away from all things Run DMC, the cold hard realities regarding the lack of opportunities open to young black men at the time also reared their ugly head. The people who would form PE had to reluctantly admit to themselves that the job in syndicated radio they hoped to win was just not realistic. Chuck realised their choices were severely limited. ‘It was sorta like the only direction that was left because they wasn’t gonna give us any shot on the radio, on professional radio in New York City. It just wasn’t that time. Regardless of our skills in that field.’ That’s when Bill Stephney, Chuck and Hank all sat down and decided that instead of just doing another single they should try to come up with a concept. ‘One of the concepts that I had obsessed about personally,’ says Bill, ‘was that we didn’t have any political rap groups at that time.’ Bill was a big fan of ‘Sandinista’ by The Clash. He wondered, ‘Can we do something like that with a rap group?’
The mid-eighties was a volatile time to be a young black man in New York. Black America as a whole was feeling the effects of the Reagan administration’s ‘trickle down’ theory. It was a good lie. They promoted the always false idea that if the rich got richer, the wealth would eventually trickle down to the masses. The citizens of New York were hit harder than most. The fast-developing crack trade that would be dissected in ‘Night of the Living Baseheads’ wasn’t helping anyone.
Caught up in the middle of all the madness, and directly affected by it, the crew would spend hours discussing these issues. ‘Other young men of our time were hanging out smoking and drinking or doing drugs, or dealing drugs,’ Bill reflects. ‘All we did was talk about music and politics till 4 or 5 o’clock in the morning.’ The idea was to direct that energy into their musical output. In this respect, they would have more in common with the punk rock movement than they would with the majority of mid-eighties rappers. This notion was irresistible to the people who would soon become PE and was the reason they eventually signed on the dotted line with Def Jam. The prospect of being able to put their politics into practice proved to be too enticing. Not even their deep-seated suspicion of the music business could deter them.
It was around this time that the graphic designer in Chuck surfaced to design the infamous PE logo. The image of a black man in the middle of a target is perhaps the most iconic logo in hip-hop history. It is certainly one of the most enduring and easily recognisable. Bill Adler, who, like everyone else, hadn’t witnessed anything like it before at Def Jam was totally nonplussed. ‘It was completely astonishing,’ the former press officer recalls. ‘Here was a group that said, “We’re going to change the consciousness of an entire culture.” Which is titanically ambitious to begin with. And they succeeded.’
PE stepped on to the scene at a time when the whole idea of black leadership was a thing of the past for America’s black youth. J Edgar Hoover’s tactics had worked: in the late sixties, soon after declaring the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense ‘Public Enemy Number One’ he famously proclaimed, ‘There will be no more black leaders, unless we create one.’ ‘Chuck’s voice sort of became that black leadership that everyone was looking for,’ claims Bill Stephney. ‘It’s almost like when you heard Chuck’s voice on record, you heard our version of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, even though he’s a rapper and it’s a rap group.’
However, once Chuck was on board, he then had to convince Def Jam that signing Flavor Flav, who had no clear role within the group, was an equally good move. Eventually, Flav recorded enough vocals on the Strong Island crew’s first album to be signed to a contract as a vocalist. But there was uncertainty about Flav at Def Jam. While some members of PE have spoken about how Russell and Rick in particular were unsure about what it was that Flavor actually did, Bill Stephney admits that he also objected. ‘I’m the one who actually thought Flavor didn’t make any sense,’ he says laughing. ‘I don’t know if Chuck or Hank speak to this, but I don’t recall Rick or Russell ever making any declaration that they didn’t want Flavor to be part of the group. I know I did. I remember having a meeting, and I’m thinking, well, “We want to do some serious political rap group, we wanna be like The Clash you know, we can’t have Flavor in the group! Are you out of your mind?”’ This point of view would dog Flav at various points of his career.
Bill Adler confirms there was considerable disquiet over Flavor’s membership in some quarters. ‘You kinda had to scratch your head even at that time and wonder, “What is he doing in this group? What does he have to do with this kind of righteous solidarity?” Political solidarity. He was a brother on the corner, you know?’ Hindsight, naturally, allows everyone to easily see how vital Flav was to proceedings. ‘And yet he was a key element in the group,’ Bill continues. ‘He was brought in by Chuck as a comic relief to Chuck himself. It was really brilliant and rather self-effacing of Chuck to do that. It demonstrated a lot of knowledge on his part. Chuck D had the sense to build a counterpart to himself and build some comic relief in the form of Flavor.’
Thankfully, it didn’t take long for the combined force of Chuck and Hank to bring Bill round. ‘Chuck explains to me, “You gotta have Flavor,” and then Hank explains it too: “You gotta have Flavor,’ cos Chuck might be too serious, so you need a balance there.” At a certain point I said, “Okay, why not, it makes sense to me, let’s just go with it.”’ Flav himself never suffered from these misgivings and was rightly confident from the jump. ‘They were getting ready to make a big mistake,’ he states on the subject. ‘But I did end up getting signed, and I became one of their biggest voices, their biggest entities. I became their most sampled voice.’
Simultaneously, with the birth of PE, Unity Force became the S1Ws. The S1s incorporated the discipline of the Nation of Islam with some of the influences of the Panther party, and sought to rid the world of the pejorative phrase ‘Third World’.
‘How can someone else define us, and call us third class?’ asks James Bomb. ‘We are the original people of this planet, so if we don’t see ourselves as First World people, then someone else is going to define us and we can’t let anyone else define who we are and what we mean to the planet earth. It’s our resources that’s fuelling the planet earth right now. You go to Africa, you’ll find the most gold, silver and diamonds. All the precious metals that make society work as it works.’
The last piece of the puzzle to slot into place was Norman Rogers, aka DJ Mellow D. Mellow D used to fill in for Spectrum gigs as and when he was needed. Keith was the original and seemingly natural choice for the group’s DJ, but quiet, dependable Norman was chosen by Chuck and Hank, probably because of those qualities.
Chuck and Hank were also responsible for creating Mellow D’s Terminator X persona. Eric Sadler describes Norman as ‘a big teddy bear, he’s really like Yogi Bear, the most lovable, naive, goofy kid that you could ever have.’ Such a personality would never fit in with PE. ‘They decided, “You know what?”’ Eric continues. ‘“Don’t speak. You’ll speak with