June 2009 Archives

ATG sizes it all up.

Few artists in any genre have the good fortune or fortitude to keep the embers of their cultural relevance aglow two decades into their career. Fewer still, can claim to have fundamentally changed an art form, and then survived to see their innovations imitated, warped, forgotten, and payed homage to all while continuing to create, raise a family and lead a relatively normal life. With It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, one of the most celebrated hip-hop albums of all time, Chuck D and his inimitable side-kick, Flava Flav, crystallized for the masses the acute aggression and political unrest that had stirred below the surface of hip-hop since its inception, and became synonymous with a black power movement still very much alive today.

We caught up with the surprisingly congenial icon at the 2009 Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival as he was preparing to perform It Takes a Nation in its entirety, and talked with him about longevity in hip-hop, the meaning of Barack Obama, and why Jay-Z's crusade against autotune is so misguided.