Public Enemy – State Of The Union (STFU)

24th September 2020 · Music
Public Enemy add their voice to the US election campaign with a powerful anti-Trump anthem from their new album What You Gonna Do When The Grid Goes Down?

I can still remember the first time I heard Public Enemy’s Rebel Without A Pause, rapping over that “whistling-kettle” sax sample from The JBs, in NYC in the late 1980s.
 
I thought it was the most shocking, exciting, antisocial thing since I first heard The Sex Pistols 12 years earlier. The fact that nearly everyone else hated it merely made me sure that I was on to something. So were they.
 
I get the same sense of excitement at their ability to maintain that passion and anger more than 30 years later. And their willingness to say what needs to be said.