Chuck D says that Public Enemy’s new album, Man Plans, God Laughs, was inspired by Kendrick Lamar and Run the Jewels.
“I was inspired by Run the Jewels and Kendrick Lamar, but stayed far enough away from them to still be Public Enemy,” Chuck D revealed during an interview with Maxim. “We’re making a comment about the 21st century in this technological yet still political world. It will be able to tell its own story without me trying to talk to it. It’s out July 13.”
Chuck also passed comment on Jay Z’s music streaming service TIDAL, and whether or not the platform will see success.
“People shouldn’t think everything has to be as big as they think it should be,” he says. “How come it can’t be a small aggregator? Why does everything gotta be the big fucking church of whatever? The lawyers and the business people wanna get paid, so everything has gotta be over the top and big. And when you do that with something you don’t know about, it’s bound to collapse hard. When it does well, you don’t know how well it’s doing because you only counting the money, and when it does bad, you don’t know because you only counting the money that you lost.”
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Elsewhere, Chuck D spoke on the responsibilities of music’s highest earners.
“If you’re worth 300 million dollars, you should be putting a lot of people to work. We have rapstation.com. We distribute tens of labels. And then there’s Public Enemy. It’s about a 100 people that we employ. It’s all independent. My thing is that if you’re worth 300 million like a Diddy or a Jay Z, you should be hiring a 1,000 to 10,000 people. If you’re not hiring all those people than what the fuck are you doing? You’re just hoarding.”
To read the full interview, where Chuck D also reflects on Public Enemy’s Fear of a Black Planet as the album celebrates its 25th anniversary, please visit Maxim.
For additional Chuck D coverage, watch the following DX Daily:
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