Public Enemy: Night of the Living Baseheads

Remarks:

My favourite Public Enemy song. It only went to #62 on the black music charts in 1988. It came out back in the bad old days of the crack epidemic – “While some shrivel to bone/Like comatose walking around”. The title plays on the name of a film about zombies.

The video: Public Enemy made a video, which is worth watching, but I did not post that since it screws up the song itself. The video shows the Audubon Ballroom where Malcolm X was killed. MC Lyte appears on Wall Street as a news reporter.

Samples: The song samples, among others: James Brown, Aretha Franklin, David Bowie, Kool & the Gang, the Temptations, the Bar-Kays, the Average White Band, Sly & the Family Stone, Run-DMC, the Boogie Boys and, yes, a Christmas song by Kurtis Blow.

Also by Public Enemy on this blog: Burn, Hollywood, Burn

Lyrics:

[Prologue - Khalid Muhammad]

Have you forgotten that once we were brought here, we were robbed of our name, robbed of our language. We lost our religion, our culture, our god…and many of us, by the way we act, we even lost our minds.

[Verse 1 - Chuck D]

Here it is
BAMMM
And you say Goddamn
This is the dope jam
But let’s define the term called dope
And you think it mean funky now, no
Here is a true tale
Of the ones that deal
Are the ones that fail
Yeah
You can move if you wanna move
What it prove
It’s here like the groove
The problem is this — we gotta’ fix it
Check out the justice — and how they run it
Selling, smelling
Sniffing, riffing
And brothers try to get swift and
Sell to their own, rob a home
While some shrivel to bone
Like comatose walking around
Please don’t confuse this with the sound
I’m talking about…BASS

[Verse 2]
I put this together to
Rock the bells of those that boost the dose
Of lack a lack
And those that sell to Black
Shame on a brother when he dealing
The same block where my 98 be wheeling
And everybody know
Another kilo
From a corner from a brother to keep another -
Below
Stop illing and killing
Stop grilling
Yo, black, yo (we are willing)
4, 5 o’clock in the morning
Wait a minute y’all
The fiends are fiending
Day to day they say no other way
This stuff…
Is really bad
I’m talking ’bout…BASS

[Verse 3]
Yo, listen
I see it on their faces
(First come, first serve basis)
Standing in line
Checking the time
Homeboys playing the curb
The same ones that used to do herb
Now they’re gone
Passing it on
Poison attack – the Black word bond
My man Daddy-O once said to me
He knew a brother who stayed all day in his jeep
And at night he went to sleep
And in the morning all he had was
The sneakers on his feet
The culprit used to jam and rock the mike, yo
He stripped the Jeep to fill his pipe
And wander around to find a place
Where they rocked to a different kind of…BASS

[Professor Griff]
Succotash is a means for kids to make cash
Selling drugs to the brother man instead of the other man

[Chuck D]
I’m talking ’bout…BASS