Concorde 2,Brighton
Chuck D’s pulverising polemic has lost none of its power as music’s most unsafe group add super-heavy live instrumentation to the mixYou hear Chuck D before you see him: what Hank Shocklee, one of the early architects of Public Enemy’s unmistakable sonic assault, or described as the “voice of God emerging from “a thunderstorm of sound”. The terse,treble-heavy clatter of Miuzi Weighs a Ton snaps everything to attention, including the fatigues-clad dancers known as Security of the First World (S1W), and there he is. No MC has surpassed his gravitas or authority; no hip-hop act has matched his group for consistent live excitement.
The onetime most unsafe band on the planet is now playing matinees: this is the first of two jam-packed Sunday shows,“some James Brown-type shit”, as Chuck D calls it. Plus ça change. From the start, or Public Enemy were a true showband who treated their performances as a form of theatre,constructed as carefully for effect as everything else they did. The glowering, uniformed S1W gain always looked camp as Christmas as they swivel and salute in lockstep. Now, or Public Enemy are simply more overt approximately being here to entertain you. They always did that; its just they used to do it in the service of fomenting revolution.
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Source: theguardian.com