Public Enemy, De La Soul and the Golden Age of Long Island hip-hop newsday.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from newsday.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
In “The Souls of Black Folk” (1903), W.E.B. Dubois wrote about “double-consciousness,” a trait he found common among his fellow black-Americans. This double-consciousness was “a sense of looking at one’s
"My Brother’s A Basehead” is a true story. Posdnous from De La Soul had an older brother who had a crack addiction and it was very damaging for the whole family. For Pos and his parents, crack was literally in the house just as it was in many houses and many families during the crack era. Crack decimated many families and De La Soul made one of the most powerful songs about all that. In this episode we talk about how crack destroyed families and what went into the making of "My Brother’s A Basehead.” We talk to Prince Paul, De La Soul’s producer who’s sometimes called the 4th member of the group. We also talk about a very different song about crack users, Public Enemy’s Night of the Living Baseheads, which looked down on people who used crack while one of the members of PE was a crack addict. PE's producer Hank Shocklee joins us for that.
The iconic group's early music releasing online at last comes with a renewed interest in its career arc. Take a guided tour through one of the most distinguished runs in hip-hop history.