Chuck D

Leader and co-founder of legendary group Public Enemy, social activist, author and digital music pioneer, Chuck D rose to acclaim in the 1980’s with a string of critically acclaimed and commercially successful albums that addressed weighty issues about race, rage and inequality with a jolting combination of intelligence and eloquence never seen before.

The New York Times has named Public Enemy’s music to their list of the “25 Most Significant Albums of the Last Century” and in 2005 The Library of Congress included Fear of a Black Planet in a list of 50 recordings worthy of preserving that year in their National Recording Registry. In 2013, Public Enemy was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 2015, Public Enemy’s “Say It Like It Really Is” provided the powerful backbeat to the trailer for the critically-acclaimed film, Selma, and “Harder Than You Think” was selected for NBC’s official Super Bowl XLIX commercial after being the cornerstone of the 2012 Paralympics campaign (which drove the song into the UK Top 5). This year, the group was asked to donate iconic items from their history to the new National Museum of African American History and Culture, opening on the National Mall in Washington, DC in September.

Chuck D is also a best-selling author, a highly-sought after speaker on the college lecture circuit, has been a prominent member of music industry non-profit organizations MusicCares and Rock The Vote (which honored him with the Patrick Lippert Award in 1996 for his contributions to community service) and started the record label SlamJamz, the digital distribution company SPITDigital, and launched the websites Rapstation.com, HipHopGods.com, and SheMovement.com. He served as national spokesperson for Rock The Vote, the National Urban League and the National Alliance of African American Athletes and is a member of the board of the TransAfrica Forum, an organization focused on African, Caribbean and Latin American rights and issues.

Chuck has co-hosted an episode of the lauded PBS series on the Blues, created by Martin Scorsese, and the critically-acclaimed Watts-Stax documentary. He also wrote the theme to ESPN’s Monday Night Baseball show, as well as the 2003 ESPY Awards and hosted the network’s documentary Ali Rap in 2006, which was nominated for several Sports Emmys including one for his theme song composition. Public Enemy’s song, “Harder Than You Think,” was used as the theme song to the MLB Network’s 2013 baseball season coverage. He was the host of a 2006 Sundance television special, Chuck D’s Musicians Studio, where he interviewed Quincy Jones at length, returned to the network for an episode of Iconoclasts with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and is an executive producer of their lauded Dream School series (2014). He provides the voice over to Full Court: The Spencer Haywood Story, this year’s documentary on the NBA great.

In June 2016, Chuck debuted Prophets of Rage, a new “supergroup” with former Rage Against the Machine members Tom Morello, Tim Commerford and Brad Wilk, Cypress Hill’s B-Real and DJ Lord of Public Enemy. Noisey hailed the group’s debut concert as “how powerful angst-ridden social commentary sounds when done correctly,” and Entertainment Weekly declared that “Chuck D takes the stage amid the sound of sirens signaling a state of emergency…The 2016 Presidential Race has been their Bat Signal.” The Prophets of Rage make their first national tour in the summer of 2016, with over 30 concerts planned, while recording their debut album.

Chuck D uses:

RP-8000 Straight

Concorde Black