It’s 2025—and Public Enemy is still bringing the noise!
Public Enemy, led by the duo of Chuck D and Flavor Flav, broke down both musical and societal barriers when they dominated the world in the late ’80s and early ’90s. Their aggressive musical style bridged a gap between rap and rock, using loud, guitar-and-drum-heavy samples as sonic backgrounds for captivating and powerful vocal performances. Lyrically, Public Enemy put politics and calls to action within their poetry to make music with a message, calling attention to police brutality, systemic racism and more.
After 40 years of performances, Chuck D and Flavor Fav are still crafting important, musically diverse jams. Public Enemy is set to perform at Fantasy Springs on Friday, Nov. 14.
During a recent phone interview, Carlton Douglas Ridenhour, aka Chuck D, talked about bringing the Public Enemy energy to a casino stage.
“I think the casino performances are amazing to me, just because of the setup,” he said. “It’s all really conducive to entertainment. Starting from Las Vegas and what they did with the casinos in the ’50s and ’60s, it’s sort of like the same thing, but now they’re abundant across the United States, and it has Indigenous participation in a lot of these facilities. The facilities are set up for performances and keeping the crowd coming to a place as a magnet, and keeping them entertained. I really like it. I like it because I also get a chance to see vintage acts at this place.”
Since Public Enemy has been on the casino circuit, Ridenhour has been able to see a lot of tribute bands to iconic rock acts … but he wonders where the tributes to hip-hop stars are.
“I’m going to get into the business of trying to construct and create tribute bands,” he said. “Tribute bands, I think, are the next realm for hip-hop and rap acts, and I’d like to form a couple of them myself, as well as going out there and performing as Public Enemy. I like how tribute bands in rock really go through the full act. I like how they give 1,000 percent to try to nail what a band has in their attributes.”
The first tribute act on Chuck D’s mind: an all-women group paying tribute to women in hip-hop.
“That would make a lot of sense, because women in hip-hop always get a not-so-accurate depiction of their artistic merit,” Ridenhour said. “(The musicians should) be able to do anybody from Latifah to Salt-N-Pepa to MC Lyte to Cardi B, because people want to hear the songs. … I think what Public Enemy does as a group; we’re sort of like our own tribute band, but I could see tribute bands around PE in different ways around the world. I think that’s a next good phase.”
Public Enemy’s Indio performance will be part of the group’s new musical era that, in part, trades a rock show for a DJ frenzy.
“For years, we had the band unit behind DJ Lord and Khari Wynn, our guitarist, and T-Bone Motta, the drummer, but we’ve de-emphasized the band for what we call a ‘DJ Kings’ unit,” Ridenhour said. “That’s two set-up DJs orchestrated by the alpha DJ, DJ Johnny “Juice” Rosado, who is the DJ under our very first records. Bassist Brian Hardgroove is now a drummer who stays in lock and key with the rhythm of the turntable orchestrated by Juice.”
Ridenhour said the DJ Kings unit can be just as improvisational as a live band.
“It’s been a lot of fun seeing the DJ Kings unit come to fruition … and being able to do great, quick audibles,” he said. “If I want to do ‘Bring the Noise’ on ‘We Will Rock You,’ Juice is a musicologist enough to make adjustments on the fly, which makes us different than we’ve ever been before. With DJ Lord and the rhythm unit, the band was more aggressive and wild with their abilities. With Juice, it’s a precision of musicology—spontaneous yet calculated.”
Thanks to the skills of the new DJ lineup, Public Emeny shows are off-the-cuff celebrations of music from all eras, with remixes and song experiments almost guaranteed.
“They’ve got certain apparatus with the turntables where you could erase the vocals,” Ridenhour said. “If I’m getting down to a classic rock record—say, “Stairway to Heaven”—there’s an ability to remove Robert Plant, and you’ve got a whole new thing that you could rock over on the fly. You don’t have to look and get the instrumental version, because there never was one. Then you’ve got a DJ who’s operating as a band leader with the original orchestration of whatever that classic act was, and manipulating the rhythm and time, almost like you’ve got a band.”
Chuck D and Public Enemy have always been supporters of new technology, and this is just the latest example.
“Music is meant to hold on to your mistakes, like a scar and a signature. AI is meant to perfect things.”
Chuck D
“There’s always a new chapter, and it always seems that technology introduces the chapter—whether you like it or not,” Ridenhour said. “Especially in the time when there’s a lot of fear of AI and what it’s perceived to do or eradicate in its path … AI could be steered.”
Of course, Ridenhour and company pour a LOT of human emotion and experience into Public Enemy shows. While technology is utilized, it doesn’t dominate the performance.
“Music is meant to hold on to your mistakes, like a scar and a signature,” he said. “AI is meant to perfect things. If you have a bucket of white paint, it doesn’t mean that you poured a bucket of white paint over everything. You’ve got to figure out how to manage that bucket of white paint. You’ve got to do it in strokes.
“The thing with Public Enemy is we try to always show a way, and show young artists that there’s a way that they can find their signature, their scars, and their style—and still be creative. That’s the thing that’s always driven us.”
Public Enemy are set to perform at 8 p.m., Friday, Nov. 14, at Fantasy Springs Resort Casino, at 84245 Indio Springs Parkway, in Indio. Tickets start at $62.50. For tickets or more information, visit www.fantasyspringsresort.com.
