Chuck D Explains How Sly Stone Influenced Public Enemy

Public Enemy‘s Chuck D grew up listening to the music of Sly Stone, who died Monday at age 82 — and that music became a major influence on his own work with Public Enemy and beyond. He reflected on that legacy in a new interview with Rolling Stone.

I’m a child of the Sixties, and the minute Sly came out, he was on the radio. Being in New York City in 1968, ’69, I was hearing him on WABC. “Dance to the Music,” all his most popular crossover hits, were booming through AM radio in the late Sixties. It was just like water.

In the first ten years of life, I went from being “Negro” on my birth certificate to “colored” when I’m six. And “Black is beautiful” and “I’m Black and I’m proud” by the time I’m eight and nine, which is 1969 — when a man lands on the moon. Supposedly. So Sly is pretty much mapping that. And the Black Panther party, but also the peace and love generation. I wanted to be a hippie when I was seven or eight years old.

Where James Brown was focused on one guy, the Sly Stone thing was full — it says in the title, Family. So you got a whole family coming at you with mad talents, and you started to pick those things apart as you got older. That’s not only Sly Stone, but it’s his sister Rose singing and Larry Graham’s bass. I turned 10 years old when “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)” came out. They always seemed to never repeat themselves. Whatever they came out with, it was totally different, and that had an influence on Public Enemy, too. The rock & roll credo — never repeat yourself, even if they dug it the last time around —  it seemed to be the same thing with Sly and the Family Stone.

Later on I get into the discography and crate-digging, and I come to find out that their first album, A Whole New Thing, happened to be my favorite one, the one I never heard or acknowledged. They had songs like “Underdog” and “Turn Me Loose” on it, and that album influenced me on Fear of a Black Planet with its daringness, its craziness. “Underdog” became my favorite song for almost about a year, because I always felt I was an underdog, anyway.

You’re gonna find those gems in Sly and the Family Stone’s catalog, definitely. “Sing a Simple Song” — that beat, the breakdown. And a white drummer! You learn that early, ’cause it’s “Damn, that dude’s a white drummer? And he’s one of the funkiest?” So Sly shattered barriers — played Woodstock, white drummer, woman trumpet player. He was not afraid to be called anything. You could throw whatever you wanted to throw at Sly and it just bounced off. It was definitely the epitome of rock & roll to me.

I thought the cover of There’s a Riot Goin’ On was just unbelievable. It was influential as a record that changed gears. Public Enemy’s changing-gear style is probably a little bit of influence from There’s a Riot Goin’ On.

I would hear from uncles that as the popularity grew, there was the stigma about, will Sly show up? As kids we didn’t know what that was about. But if somebody said drugs, we understood drugs. The surroundings were drug-infested —  it wasn’t unfamiliar to see a junkie when I went to visit relatives in the Bronx. That’s what told me to stay away from all drugs, ’cause I hated to see it when I was a kid. I don’t drink or smoke or do drugs to this day because I hated it so much.

And you think, “Damn, Sly is so brilliant, what stopped it is drugs.” As a kid you are mad at that. I used some of those same techniques when I made “Night of the Living Baseheads,” anti-drug records. Get a kid to be mad at something, then you probably won’t get ’em to touch it. As a kid, you’re not really sympathetic. I saw Elvis obviously bloated on drugs as a kid, and you’re not sympathetic to somebody’s problem. As an adult, you’re like, “Oh, I get it. I hope they get better,” but as a kid you’re like, “Yo, man, why is he on drugs?”

Later on as a DJ with Hank Shocklee, there was a moment that really galvanized me to write lyrics that stayed around. Hank told me an older gentleman came to him as he was grooving to Sly and the Family Stone. He pulled Hank to the side and said, “Listen, it’s not just this beat that’s moving you. Listen to them words.” That was like, wow. Write some words that stick. And put a group together, and try not be the focal point.  Put a whole bunch of different personalities into one big thing.

I like to call Questlove my parallel-universe  brother, and he left no stone unturned about the legacy of Sly in his movie — and in the performance in Summer of Soul, too. Black artists don’t get any of the canonization they should, period. There even seems to be some kind of glitch on the James Brown legacy right now. The numbers are upholding rock, and we don’t have the the cultural priority as a population to revere these greats [properly] at all times. 

Sly is the sun to our solar system. There are so many things that big-banged off of Sly that I think sometimes those things are overlooked. Sly was the Big Bang theory quasar of Black music being rock, too.  And same thing with George Clinton, who comes out of [Sly’s influence]. George probably is the best example of a guy that has Forrest Gumped everything together, and he knows exactly what Sly is.

George, to me, a person that’s still doing gigs at 85, is probably the most amazing specimen of all time. Reverence is given to the Rolling Stones, who I love very much. But Parliament-Funkadelic and the Rolling Stones are equal in my eye. He should be playing stadiums, even if the population doesn’t call for it. You can’t reduce the greatness to the numbers.