Popular Culture Review Vol. 5, No. 1, February 1994 | Page 63

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authority to the lyrics. More importantly, the song continually
appropriates words and phrases to subversive ends, overturning the
traditional associations these terms have. This happens both with
terms within the black community when Chuck raps, "Every brother
ain't a brother/ Cause a black hand/ Squeezed on Malcolm X the
man," and with terms which are part of American society as a whole,
as in the first line, "I got so much trouble on my mind/ 1 refuse to lose,"
where the cliche of having trouble on one's mind is associated with a
battle and rather than expressing the personal troubles which one
normally expects to hear after this cliche. Chuck D personalizes the
troubles of the world as his own. P.E.'s problems are made to
exemplify something endemic to society. For example, the song
condemns the media; both for its specific attack on Public Enemy"Apology made to who ever pleases/ Still they got me like Jesus"'—
and for its general racism—"Places with the racist faces/ Just an
example of one of many cases/ The Greek weekend speech."® Public
Enemy attempts to appropriate the lines of this song into their
political struggle, by replacing traditional meanings and associations
with those of their politics.
Public Enemy's politics are complex, and 1 have only sketched the
surface of the intricate meanings woven into this song. The lyrics of
this song like the lyrics of most songs by Public Enemy are probably
more difficult to jsenetrate than those of any other rap group. This is
significant because while only partial messages of one song may be
decipherable, the partial messages understood from other songs give
a song meaning beyond what is deciphered from it: the meaning of a
particular Public Enemy song is associated with the meanings of all
their songs. So, for example, the lines in their song "Don't Believe
the Hype": "The follower of Farrakhan/ Don't tell me that you
understand/ Until you hear the man," associate Public Enemy with
Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam, an organization which
emphasizes both the overcoming of racism and economic self
sufficiency within the African-American conununity,® and these are
the two themes I wish to argue dominate rap music.
Opposition to racism and promotion of economic self-sufficiency
are both part of a traditional African-American discourse. This
discourse can usefully be understood in terms of what Houston A.
Baker Jr. calls "negotiating the economics of slavery" (Baker 23-31).
Baker sees the conrunon historical experience of African-Americans