
For more than two decades, “Fight the Power” has been an all-purpose rallying cry for people frustrated with abusive authority. Public Enemy’s rappers Chuck D and Flavor Flav play the roles of preacher and clown, both of them burning with rage; nearly every line has become a catchphrase, from the song’s antiestablishment refrain to its scalding dismissal of Elvis Presley. The Bomb Squad’s instrumental track is the high point of hip-hop production: split-second shreds of more than a dozen songs, sampled, looped and layered into a dissonant, fractally precise mesh that sounds like a jukebox being firebombed. Named after a 1975 Isley Brothers funk record, “Fight the Power” first turned up in the unforgettable opening sequence of Spike Lee’s movie Do the Right Thing. The song is built out of nonstop references and allusions to the history of black American culture and its relationship to the broader cultural landscape. (That tiny “aaah” at the beginning of the chorus, for instance, is all it needs to evoke Bob Marley’s “I Shot the Sheriff.”)
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