Chuck D joined social commentator Jalen Rose for the screening of his documentary Fight The Power: How Hip Hop Changed the World at the 21st annual Martha’s Vineyard African American Film Festival in Massachusetts on August 6. The leader and frontman of Public Enemy executive produced the four-part series that chronicles the birth and rise of the genre, highlighting the music, dance and artistry that has become an outlet for Black and brown communities to express triumphs, griefs and our resilience over the past 50 years.
“Hip hop is the creativity and activity that comes out of the neighborhood when everything has been stripped away,” Chuck D shares in the opening of the series, adding in a subsequent interview that “Hip hop and rap music entering its 50th year has a lot of things to say and a lot of stories to tell.” In addition to the screening, PBS is rebroadcasting the series through August 11.
Chuck D will continue to expand our hip hop knowledge with Can You Dig It, an Audible Original premiering August 10. Executive produced and narrated by the advocate and activist, it’s a deep dive into how the Bronx-based Ghetto Brothers, a local gang/music group, rejected calls for war in the aftermath of the murder of Black Benjie, a member who was trying to find common ground and how gang leaders Yellow Benjy and Karate Charlie worked to broker peace with their rivals. Their efforts and positive community influences helped inspire troubled youth in the late 1960s and early 1970s to end a cycle of gang violence, leading to a space where urban artistry could flourish into a global culture fifty years strong.
Returning to where it all began, Chuck D is on the lineup for The Universal Hip Hop Museum Presents: Hip Hop 50th Birthday Jam Rapamania Showcase in Bronx, New York, on August 11. It’s the date DJ Kool Herc invented the bass sound of rap music back in 1973.
