31 plays
june 8
Public Enemy - Don’t Believe The Hype
Today’s track is curated by Faisal Sethi / @FaisalSethi
It was the summer of 1988 when my cousin brought home a cassette tape from a conference he attended in Indiana. It prominently featured two African American men behind bars on the cover. One of the men was wearing a Los Angeles Raiders baseball cap pulled down below his brow, the other an obscenely large clock around his neck. I later discovered his reasoning for such a bold aesthetic statement: “I wear a clock around my neck so I know what time it is.” It works on so many levels.
That summer on the prairies of Saskatchewan, Don’t Believe The Hype became the primary song of choice from Public Enemy’s Nation of Millions repertoire. It was played on high school playgrounds, in pseudo-tricked out Chevrolets, and in our modest homes while we were suppose to be cleaning our rooms. Chuck D’s rhyme and reason blazed through the walls of our ear canals like a lion released from the cages of the San Francisco Zoo, and for us, our musical landscape would never be the same again.
And neither would our summers.
