Andrew Mueller sits down with the ground-breaking hip-hop pioneer and revolutionary activist to discuss his extraordinary career and his new illustrated memoir, ‘Livin’ Loud: ARTitation’. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
I'm never bored.
I'm never bored.
And I think I'm part of the minority of people on the planet that has art in them that, you know, I know how to get art out of myself.
And I think everybody has art in them, but they don't know how to get the art out of themselves.
That's why we need better educational systems and trainers and situation that even in the British Isles, they realized that what.
What to do with these, you know, these World War II kids who might have not had a father and a country that was trying to rebuild itself.
And they said, well, if we don't figure something out, you know, most of the nation's going to be coming from incorrigible kids.
And so they gave kids art programs and sports programs, and I think that, you know, held the fort for a while.
So I think art is a beautiful thing.
And I think that most of the people in the world are consumers of art, not producers, but you could be taught how to produce it and get back to the arts as being.
To me, it's a universal utopian religion.
This week's guest is, by any measure, one of the most influential figures of the last 40 years of American music, Chuck D, best known as the leader and lyricist of the Long island hip hop group Public Enemy.
Addressed with thunderous vocals and hyperliterate invectives the eternal American neuroses around race, politics, culture and media.
Chuck recently returned to his first love, the visual arts, with the illustrated memoir Liven Loud Art Itation, in which he accompanies reflections on an extraordinary career with portraits of the musicians, athletes, and places which inspired him.
I'm Andrew Muller and I spoke to Chuck D for the big interview.
I wanted to start by asking about the art in your book Live and Loud, and I wondered if for somebody who has become best known for working with words, you've had some kind of sense of frustration at the instant impact that the visual artist can have.
The image is just right there.
People don't need to sit with it before they necessarily grasp its meaning.
Yeah, I don't know if I don't know what you mean by frustrations.
I never looked at it that way.