Taking sides: NWA's "Express Yourself" vs Public Enemy's "Fight The Power"

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Because they were consecutive videos on MTV Base last night, and because they dovetail into the "secret roots of undie" thread: two ideas of black power and solidarity departing from each other, the violent / individualist / apolitical and the verbal / communal / political cutting their ties, and I suddenly felt that THIS is when gangsta and conscious as totally separate strands of hip-hop began (almost the opening shot to the "Express Yourself" video more or less says "fuck Martin Luther King").

A subthread: what would be the British equivalent of this dichotomy? I'm saying Oxide & Neutrino's "Rap Dis (U Can't Stop This Shit)" vs ADF's "Free Satpal Ram", because the former is distilled vengefulness and ASSUMPTION THAT EVERYONE ELSE IS OUT TO GET YOU, while the latter is utter commitment to the cause. And yes, I know I compared "Rap Dis" to "Welcome To The Terrordome" in the Englishness thread but I actually think O&N are way closer to NWA generally, ie apolitical and self-centred ("most kids don't give a fuck who the mayor or the President is and they're not interested in voting" - Ice Cube, 1989, I can just imagine O&N saying the same thing with "MP" and "government"). Also "Terrordome" is actually closer to the NWA ethos than anything else PE ever did, ie it's saying THEY'RE TRYING TO DESTROY US, FUCK THEM ALL rather than "we should get together and make things better", and it actively questions the concept of black solidarity overruling everything else with that "every brother ain't a brother" line. Unlike everything on PE's first two albums, and equally unlike much of what came after, "Terrordome" is not remotely communal - it's grim survivalism, not outward-looking insurrection.

― robin carmody (robin carmody), Thursday, 19 September 2002 04:15 (twenty-three years ago)

that Dead Prez line "halfway between NWA and PE" suddenly comes to mind ...

― robin carmody (robin carmody), Thursday, 19 September 2002 04:20 (twenty-three years ago)

express yourself is kinda dumb.

i paid to see do the right thing seven times in a theater, all within the span of a couple of weeks. that song was sounding so very very good all loud and such up in the theater.

― ron (ron), Thursday, 19 September 2002 04:23 (twenty-three years ago)

Robin, you do know that both Chuck D. and Flava Flav made cameos on Ice Cube's AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted, yes?

Not that that totally undercuts yer argument, but there might not be as much distance between NWA/Ice Cube/gangsta and Public Enemy/conscious rap as you may think. At least not at the outset.

― Tad (llamasfur), Thursday, 19 September 2002 04:30 (twenty-three years ago)

also, ice cube cameoed on public enemy's "burn hollywood burn", off the same lp as "fight the power". anyway, wasn't the political statement made by straight out of compton just as important as that made by public enemy, if not more provocative, urgent, and powerful. public enemy made incredible music that i truly love, but in no way do they show the immediate horror and nihilism of urban life.

― christopher, Thursday, 19 September 2002 08:35 (twenty-three years ago)

― christopher, Thursday, 19 September 2002 08:37 (twenty-three years ago)

Fight The Power rules all...thats how i learned that Elvis was a racist sucker simple and plain, like John Wayne

― blueski, Thursday, 19 September 2002 10:23 (twenty-three years ago)

Public Enemy are a critique of America's race and class relations; N.W.A., to some extent, are the consequences of those relations. So sure they're gonna get along, but they're still fundamentally diferent.

"Express Yourself" is a bad example of this tho, because it's the closest NWA ever came to a song about how things *should* be, as opposed to how they are (they do diss artists who "forget about the ghetto/and rhyme for the Pop charts!"), after all.

― Daniel_Rf, Thursday, 19 September 2002 10:27 (twenty-three years ago)

Surely a better comparison point would be "Fight The Power" vs. "Fuck Tha Police." Acronymic consistency notwithstanding (FTP). Musically, for me PE have it, if only because of Branford Marsalis' duophonic harmolodics at the track's end (that's the version on the Do The Right Thing OST, NOT the inferior version on Black Planet) and its role in perhaps the GREATEST opening film title sequence in history (i.e. Do The Right Thing).

― Marcello Carlin, Thursday, 19 September 2002 10:46 (twenty-three years ago)

You must "Fight the Power" before you CAN "Express Yourself"

― Lord Custos Alpha (Lord Custos Alpha), Thursday, 19 September 2002 11:55 (twenty-three years ago)

no you should express yourself to fight the power!

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Thursday, 19 September 2002 12:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Don't go for second-best, baby; put your love to the test.

― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Thursday, 19 September 2002 12:24 (twenty-three years ago)

Of these two, it's "Fight the Power," whose canonical position is so secure that it feels weird to even think about comparing it to anything. But as great as FtP is, in a TS between "Fight the Power" vs. "Gangsta Gangsta" the latter wins by 6.5 furlongs.

― J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), Thursday, 19 September 2002 12:24 (twenty-three years ago)

no you should express yourself to fight the power!
Good Ford, No; Big Brother would not approve a mere Epsilon Minus 'Expressing Himself' without the consent! He must be silent, take his Soma, and not disrupt the orderly flow of society. 'Triangular' thoughts must be purged... :)

― Lord Custos Alpha (Lord Custos Alpha), Thursday, 19 September 2002 12:29 (twenty-three years ago)

perhaps the GREATEST opening film title sequence in history (i.e. Do The Right Thing).

YES! it is utterly fantastic isn't it?

sadly, not everyone agrees....

(from a customer review on the IMDB site)

Of course I had a bad feeling about this movie as it started off with 4 1/2 minutes of a slutty looking woman having a seizure accompanied by bad music.

...takes all sorts, i suppose.

― adam b (adam b), Thursday, 19 September 2002 13:29 (twenty-three years ago)

perhaps the GREATEST opening film title sequence in history

Do the Right Thing is a great movie, but the opening sequence is by no means deserving of such hyperbole. I suggest you see more movies (preferably old ones).

BTW, Radio Raheem's speech about Love n' Hate is taken almost verbatim from Night of the Hunter starring Robert Mitchum.

― hstencil, Thursday, 19 September 2002 15:25 (twenty-three years ago)

Well if you're talking great opening sequences, there's Helpmates (1931), Detour (1947), Touch of Evil (1957), Magnificent Ambersons (1942), Powell and Pressburger passim, but esp. I Know Where I'm Going and A Canterbury Tale, Mad Love (1935) and the first 60 seconds of The Manchurian Candidate (1962).

I suppose they're all up there, if you want to be a condescending, patronising smartarse about it.

Don't think you can talk down to me, boy, I'll wrongfoot your assumptions every time.

― Marcello Carlin, Thursday, 19 September 2002 16:20 (twenty-three years ago)

I was gonna mention Touch of Evil's opening sequence. Kinda surprised that someone who knows the stuff you mention would think that Do the Right Thing's opening sequence is even in the same realm, much less deserving "greatest of all time." It's good, sure, but that's a bit hamfisted to claim that, don't you think? And hey, I like Rosie Perez. To each his/her own, I s'pose.

Either way, Do the Right Thing got shafted on Oscar night, although that's not surprising given what a huge wankfest that is.

― hstencil, Thursday, 19 September 2002 16:30 (twenty-three years ago)

I guess it also might have something to do with the context in which you see it. Laura and I went to see it at the Ritzy Cinema in Brixton when it opened, and we were almost knocked out of our seats by the impact of the opening sequence, with "Fight The Power" being mixed bass-heavy. almost coming out of the speakers in 3D, and the audience around us going crazy; some started dancing on their seats, and then cheering and heckling the whole film as it went along. It was quite an experience - I suppose the nearest we were ever likely to get to understanding the sort of impact that something like "Blackboard Jungle" would have had back in the day.

― Marcello Carlin, Thursday, 19 September 2002 16:36 (twenty-three years ago)

Hey, what's the opening sequence of MAD LOVE? I saw it a few years ago and don't remember anything about the beginning. Great flick, though.

Handsome Dan

― Handsome Dan, Thursday, 19 September 2002 16:46 (twenty-three years ago)

I suggest you see more movies (preferably old ones).

I don't think the person who said "greatest of all time" is reading your response. Adam said he was quoting from an IMDB customer review. Adam's own take on the sequence was:

4 1/2 minutes of a slutty looking woman having a seizure accompanied by bad music.

... so there's also a voice of dissent re "FtP"'s greatness.

Unless I read his post wrong, which is not unpossible.

― wl (wl), Thursday, 19 September 2002 16:51 (twenty-three years ago)

Marcello made the claim (which makes more sense in the context in which he saw it), adam agrees and then it seems to me takes the "woman having a seizure" quote from IMDB, I think (he shows his disagreement by writing "...takes all sorts, i suppose." after what I assume is the IMDB quote).

Anyway, I recently saw Do the Right Thing on television again for the first time in years (right after Matewan on IFC!), and the opening sequence, while vivid, wasn't nearly as important to me as the other parts in the film. But I do see, given the context, where Marcello's coming from.

― hstencil, Thursday, 19 September 2002 16:56 (twenty-three years ago)

The opening of Mad Love is when we go into the Grand Guignol theatre. The ticket collector has Satanic horns, the cloakroom girl is headless, skulls for doorknobs...deep-focus, Expressionist photography by Gregg Toland, who went on to do pretty much the same job for Citizen Kane at Welles' request, after seeing the film.

― Marcello Carlin, Thursday, 19 September 2002 17:01 (twenty-three years ago)

Marcello made the claim, adam agrees

OK. Got it all backward. It's because the man's keeping me down.

― wl (wl), Thursday, 19 September 2002 19:10 (twenty-three years ago)

yes, that's right. sorry for the lack of clarity - i don't know how to do italics, which doesn't help.

i suppose i'll concede it's not actually the very greatest ever, (marcello might well be right about the manchurian candidate), but it is grand.

another candidate might be the opening of D.O.A. (NOT the Dennis Quaid one!) featuring various crazed texan characters outside the sex pistol's show in austin intercut with iggy's 'nightclubbing'.

AND the opening of 'trainspotting', come to think of it.

and i don't even really like iggy that much normally.

― adam b (adam b), Friday, 20 September 2002 08:35 (twenty-three years ago)

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