7 Michael Jackson 7

The singer was preparing a comeback tour in 2009

when he died suddenly of cardiac arrest. A widespread out-

pouring of grief culminated in a memorial celebration of his

life on July 7, 2009 at the Staples Center in Los Angeles.

Public Enemy

The original members were Chuck D (original name Carlton Ridenhour;

b. Aug. 1, 1960, New York, N.Y., U.S.), Flavor Flav (original name William

Drayton; b. March 16, 1959, New York, N.Y., U.S.), Terminator X

(original name Norman Lee Rogers; b. Aug. 25, 1966, New York, N.Y.,

U.S.), and Professor Griff (original name Richard Griffin).

P

ublic Enemy was an American rap group whose dense,

layered sound and radical political message made them

among the most popular, controversial, and influential

hip-hop artists of the late 1980s and early ’90s.

Public Enemy was formed in 1982 at Adelphi University

on Long Island, New York, by a group of African Americans

who came primarily from the suburbs. Chuck D, Hank

Shocklee, Bill Stephney, and Flavor Flav collaborated on a

program on college radio. Reputedly, Def Jam producer

Rick Rubin was so taken with Chuck D’s booming voice

that he begged him to record. Public Enemy resulted and

brought radical black political ideology to pop music in an

unprecedented fashion on albums with titles that read like

party invitations for leftists and warning stickers for the

right wing: Yo! Bum Rush the Show (1987), It Takes a Nation of

Millions to Hold Us Back (1988), Fear of a Black Planet (1990),

and Apocalypse 91: The Enemy Strikes Black (1991).

Acclaimed as Public Enemy’s masterpiece, Nation of

Millions revived the messages of the Black Panther Party

and Malcolm X. On tracks such as “Night of the Living

Baseheads,” “Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos,” and “Don’t

Believe the Hype,” the strident, eloquent lyrics of Chuck