Imani Perry, in her book Prophets of the Hood, quotes Robin Kelley as saying “‘the most politically correct rappers will never get my hard-earned ducats if they ain’t kickin’ some boomin’ drum tracks, a fat bass line, a few well-placed JB-style guitar riffs, and some stupid, nasty turntable action'” (Perry 40). This quote underlines Perry’s larger argument that aesthetic elements cannot be disregarded when analyzing the quality of sociopolitical critique in hip hop music.
This duality in hip hop is evident in Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power.” The group’s frontman, Chuck D, raps such politically-charged lines as, “Our freedom of speech is freedom or death / We got to fight the power that be” and “Power to the people, no delay / To make everybody see / In order to fight the powers that be.” Yet, the song would not have been the hit that it was (it reached #1 on Billboard’s US Hot Rap Singles) if it did not contain such aesthetically enticing elements such as Kelly’s “‘boomin’ drum tracks.”
Drums are especially important in “Fight the Power.” The drum line used in the song is sampled from James Brown’s 1970 song “Funky Drummer.” James Brown was renowned as an innovative and hypnotic funk singer. His drums were essential to his delivery, and were instrumental to the structure of his songs. The use of a James Brown drum line imports the aesthetic success of James Brown’s funk and infuses it into Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power,” thus adding aesthetic elements to the political manifesto of the song. Without this magnetic drum line, “Fight the Power” would have most likely still been respected for its content, but it would not have made such a musical impact on the charts and on listeners as it did.
Hip Hop and the Oral Tradition 