Grandmaster Melle Mel and Scorpio of The Furious Five perform onstage during the Hip Hop 50th Birthday Jam By Universal Hip Hop Museum at Mill Pond Park on August 11, 2023 in New York City. (Credit: Richard Bord/Getty Images)
Chuck D famously rapped “our freedom of speech is freedom or death” on Public Enemy’s 1989 single “Fight the Power,” one of hip-hop’s most powerful anthems. Thirty-five years later, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee is still using his voice to mobilize people into enacting change—and this time, he has some assistance from three of his fellow hip-hop legends.
On “Project 2025,” KRS-One and Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five’s Melle Mel and Scorpio join Chuck D for a politically motivated call-to-action. The song poses arguably the most important question of the year: “Hip-hop, where is your voice?”
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With the exception of Lil Baby’s “The Bigger Picture,” written in the wake of the 2020 police killing of George Floyd, YG’s rallying cry “FDT (Fuck Donald Trump),” and Macklemore’s more recent “Hinds Hall” and its sequel, rap’s younger generation seems to have been arguably more silent about important issues impacting the United States. “Project 2025” challenges the status quo at a time when every vote is critical to the outcome of the upcoming presidential election.
“This is a pivotal year that holds the world in balance,” Chuck D tells SPIN. “This song is a plea for peace and for people to pay close active attention, because although voting is primarily a privilege of self-interests, this year marks a return of a corruption hinted by the unbalanced policies of ‘Project 2025.’”
KRS-One adds, “Not only does this song open up a platform for hip-hop to discuss one of the most salient topics in American politics today, but MCs have always been the voice of the streets and obviously the ‘streets’ ain’t with Project 2025. Let it be heard. Let it be known.”
Chuck D onstage during the 2024 MTV Video Music Awards, September 11, 2024 in Elmont, New York. (Credit: Noam Galai/Getty Images for MTV)
Project 2025 is a political initiative published by The Heritage Foundation in 2022. As explained in a 900-page manifesto, it aims to reshape the U.S. federal government by promoting conservative policies and consolidating executive power, including reducing the size of federal agencies, reclassifying many civil service positions to make them political appointees, and walking back various environmental and social policies. The plan also seeks to inject conservative Christian values into government policy, with specific goals to further limit abortion rights, ban pornography, and deploy the military at the U.S.-Mexico border. It details major overhauls to the FBI and DOJ, as well.
“Rights that have been worked for and fought for for years can be taken away with one swoop by just not being aware,” Chuck says. “That goes for women’s rights and their bodies, things with the environment, things with health care, the climate, all that. If I had to put it into a single sentence soundbite, the details are what civilians need to pay attention to. And that means reading the fine print. People sign up for phones without reading, just to press ‘I accept’ to get ready to play with it. You can’t do that same thing in society, but people do it all the time. As adults, it doesn’t behoove us well.”
Melle Mel, whose group Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five is credited with releasing hip-hop’s first politically conscious song “The Message” in 1982, provides a scathing verse that pleads to “a nation in crisis.”
“No matter who you vote for, the fact that you’re politically motivated and having a say on which direction the country is going is the most important thing that you can do, especially right now,” Melle Mel says. “Three legendary rappers—me, KRS, and Chuck D—on a record together has never been done. Maybe it was something that should have been done a long time ago. The fact that we can use hip-hop for one of its original purposes and present it from an OG perspective means everything to hip-hop and music in general.”
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Publish date : 2024-10-15 08:00:00
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