Co-host of The Hot 97 Morning ShowPeter Rosenberg apologized on-air to Public Enemy member Chuck D earlier today (July 7). The apology followed a public back-and-forth between the station and Chuck D that began in early June with comments from the rapper on Twitter.
Responding to Chuck D’s complaints that the station had made “a sloppy fiasco…of HipHop,” Peter Rosenberg said “no one elected you president of Hip Hop” and asked the emcee “what are you doing to support this culture?” in a segment of The Realness the same month.
Speaking on the same platform this morning, Rosenberg recalled his early memories of listening to Public Enemy’s “Fight The Power” before segueing into a short apology for his previous comments.
“It’s very real today,” he said at the beginning of the segment. “My mom took me to see Do The Right Thing 25 years ago this summer. I love that movie. Now, as a ten-year old kid, I’m sure I understood a lot of it but I didn’t understand everything. The one thing that I know I understood even back then was the feeling of the song that was pumping through Radio Raheem’s boombox.
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“Now, that wasn’t the first time that I heard Public Enemy, but it was the first time that Chuck D’s voice truly affected me,” he went on. “So to think that 25 years later I would have a voice in this culture that some people would actually listen to a little bit is truly a blessing and something I’m very thankful for. To have used that voice in any way to show what was perceived as public disrespect to the great Chuck D is something that I am truly regretful for. Chuck D is one of the main reasons that I’m so passionate about Hip Hop in the first place. He’s one of the main reasons that I seek out revolutionary music like Dead Prez or Immortal Technique or Homeboy Sandman. It is with that same passion that I felt the need—as I have many times before—to defend Hot 97 and Hot 97’s Summer Jam. That part was okay. Saying anything disparaging publicly towards Chuck D, that was not okay. For that Chuck, I am truly sorry.”
The statement came just days after rapper Jay Electronicacalled for a public apology from Peter Rosenberg on Twitter. “Oh yeah, @Rosenbergradio you owe Mr. Chuck D and apology and we are gonna see to it that he gets it. Publicly,” he wrote in a since-deleted Tweet last week. “[And] for the record, i have no beef w @Rosenbergradio,” he added. “He’s been my guy for a long time. We just can’t stand by and tolerate some things.”
Responding to the apology in a series of Tweets earlier this afternoon, Chuck D said Rosenberg “was never the issue or point here.” The rapper included a rotation tracking report that lists the “10 Most Played Songs Overall” by the station for a two-week period in June and commented that “reports like [that] are a twisted fact to defend.”
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