Public Enemy’s Professor Griff will release his fifth solo album, And the Word Becomes Flesh, Sept. 11 via The Right Stuff/EMI. The album, featuring a guest appearance by Public Enemy front man Chuck D, will be a more formal, spoken-word affair, according to a spokesperson for the rapper.
The release will feature three new songs, while the rest of the 24 tracks will be comprised of reworked and rerecorded takes on Griff’s solo and Public Enemy material. The album represents a compilation of Griff’s forthright words set to jazzy backdrops, which Griff refers to as “political soul.”
The only cut on the album with what his spokesperson calls an “old-school, P.E. feel” is “Hypocrites,” which features rhyming work by Chuck D. The tune, which attacks the record industry, is set to a loop sampled from the Al Green documentary The Gospel According to Al Green. Also appearing on the album is the Last Poets’ Umar Bin Hassan, who guests on “European in Me.”
Griff is hoping to stage a spoken-word tour this fall, to be dubbed Sounds of Truth, which is still in the early planning stages. The rapper is perhaps best known for what were deemed as anti-Semitic comments in a 1989 Washington Post interview. Soon after the piece ran, Griff was ousted from Public Enemy, but he has since rejoined the veteran East Coast hip-hop act as a full-time member.
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Meanwhile, Public Enemy will record a new album this fall for release on Chuck D’s SlamJamz.com record label. The group is currently accepting fan submissions of remixed versions of early Public Enemy tunes for inclusion on the set. Budding producers can win a production credit on the album, with royalties, and find the downloadable tracks on Public Enemy’s official Web site (www.publicenemy.com).
