Consumer Guide Album

Public Enemy: Black Sky Over the Projects: Apartment 2025 [Enemy, 2025]
At least one online source I consulted had the label (insofar as that term retains meaningful materiality in a digital world) for the first PE album in five years listed as "Flavor Flav," and I wish it were, not because it would signal that after 35 years the most loudly political hip-hop group has been if not taken over by then somehow passed on to its resident clown but because it implicitly acknowledges they've evolved into old companeros proud to clock dollars as a legendary politically conscious collectivity. "I let 'em talk, I let 'em gossip," renowned and proud of it O.G. Flav scoffs dismissively and while he leaves most of the big ideas to Chuck, it's clear that he enjoys his newfound respectability. Chuck, meanwhile gets a kick out of namechecking both Brian Eno and Kamala Harris in the course of opining that ageism, as he chooses to call it, is "worse then racism" and leaving little doubt that he and his sidekick turned partner are "black millionaires" with both their politics and their careers in the right place. As a proud "sexagenarian," a term Chuck leaves no doubt has zero to do with sex, he's proud to bring "O.G. hip hop to your town" and preach racial awareness as opposed to superiority in the bargain. A−