When it comes to hip-hop, you can't get much bigger than Chuck D. So it's a wonder why the Public Enemy MC spoke to a modest crowd at Harvard last evening. Perhaps marketing was a key part of the massive hit the university's endowment has endured, as word of this week's Hiphop Worldwide Conference at Harvard was almost absent outside of the Hiphop Archive website. So when Bostonist found out that Chuck D was doing something in Cambridge half an hour before said event occurred, Bostonist hopped the next bus towards the Ivy Gates of yore.
Bostonist arrived at the Barker Center a bit late, but hungry for some heavy hip-hop wisdom. Structured as a Q+A, the majority of questions dispensed by Harvard Professor Marcyliena Morgan and Chuck D furiously answering all queries concerning the nature of hip-hop.
Professor Morgan's questions were merely punctuation marks, separating the intelligent concepts Chuck D spat out nonstop throughout the evening. D lamented the grip that New York radio station Hot 97 FM and its unfortunate impact on how hip-hop is perceived by young people in America. D spoke out against the music industry, claiming its false sense of ownership over hip-hop has created a false history of the culture. D defended fellow Public Enemy Flava Flav ("Every black family has a Flava Flav") while discussing the unfortunate impact of celebrity on our culture. Speaking of celebrity, D commented on the impact of celebrity from MCs to the presidency. Chuck openly discussed the negative impact of celebrity on Barack Obama, while praising his skill as an intelligent orator on par with the greatest MCs. And MCs today? Well, they've fallen to the false prophecy of celebrity, leaving the prosperous creativity of the hip-hop group for singular fame and mediocre performance. "Hip-hop is performance art" said D, noting that when the MC became the focus of the genre, the basic elements and very concepts that made hip-hop so compelling began to fade.
The talk continued onward in a cacophonous, intellectually sprawling fashion until the very end. And Chuck D proved to be as entertaining a speaker as he was intelligent. He cracked jokes, borrowed a camcorder from noted hip-hop journalist Davey D, and was as vibrant and engaging when sitting in an oversized, Ivy League chair as he is on an arena-sized stage. Although D had a lot of criticisms of society, he did have a positive message to spin. Chuck extolled the virtues of thinking for oneself in all aspects of life. It's too bad that in the halls of the finest academic institution in the land, few were there to heed the call.
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