“Fight the Power” is among Public Enemy‘s DOPEst Bboy joints, and it remains a track of great significance and symbolism around the world today:
A powerful track not just for its message but also for its place at No. 1 spot on the Hip-Hop charts.
The (@publicenemyftp) track was also featured on the soundtrack to the film “Do the Right Thing” by Spike Lee (@spikelee), who also directed the video featured here.
On the track’s significance, dig these remarks from writer Jeff Chang:
I think hip hop’s breakthrough during the late ’80s and early ’90s coincided with the rise of a new generation and what we have called the war on youth, which is the increasing use of the state to establish punitive measures to contain and incarcerate large numbers of young people of color. As a result you have songs like NWA’s “F— tha Police,” you have songs like Boogie Down Productions, “Who Protects Us From You?,” you have songs like Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power,” that come out and galvanize people into protest, and express this new rage at these new conditions that were generational as well as racial. And I think that was something new.
Dig the Funky Disco jam by the same name, “Fight the Power”, from the Isley Brothers, which partly gave Public Enemy’s Chuck D inspiration for the track to begin with:
