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Chuck it on the Net

Public Enemy are taking on the record companies and releasing their new album on the web. Randeep Ramesh meets Chuck D, the force behind the revolution.

Chuck D has spent most of his artistic life proclaiming revolutions - now hip-hop's most articulate voice is leading one. The front man of Public Enemy believes the release o the band's latest record, There's A Poison Going On, will irrevocably change the face of the music industry. For Public Enemy have become the first mainstream group to release an album online. Although the latest stab of the group's rhetoric will hit these shores in shrink-wrapped plastic later this month, There's A Poison going On can already be downloaded from a website (www.atomicpop.com) for just £6.

"We are going to drag the major labels into the 21st century kicking and screaming," intones the rapper. Chuck D's public spat with his label DefJam, ended their 12-year association - a shock for anyone who has heard the rapper repeatedly praise the company in verse. Instead, the hip-hop collective have opted for the virtual world. Earlier this year, Public Enemy launched a digital radio station on the internet (www.bringthenoise.com) and now offer free video clips from their latest tour on their 'home' site.

The internet, with its chaotic, ever-changing order has always worried the music giants keen to retain their control over the pop industry. When Chuck posted a remix of Public Enemy's classic tune Bring The Noise on the band's website last year, lawyers from DefJam swooped, reminding him that the company, not the artist, owned the rights to the record - and forced Public Enemy to remove the song.

"We had just headlined the Smokin' Grooves rap tour - which was the biggest hip-hop tour of the year ad we wanted a new audience to be aware of what we were about. So Bring The Noise 2000 was put on the site. But DefJam said it would interfere with the marketing of He Got Game, which was last year's record. So Bring The Noise got taken off. Rather than roll over, Public Enemy simply rolled out their latest track on the internet. In January, Swindler's Lust" was free to anybody who visited Public Enemy's site - a move which left DefJam fuming. Worse still, the lyrics swiped at the music industry's exploitation of artists: "Vultures of culture, dollar a rhyme/But we barely get a dime . . . Rap and R&B paving the streets of Bel Air from the sales of singers no longer here" rapped Chuck. The single was removed from the net two weeks later. It now graces There's A Poison Going On.

"People in the industry would rather be selling hub caps. Conversations were not about how good your record was but how many units you shifted. That is not music, that is about being part of a profit and loss account." By the end of February, DefJam and Public Enemy had parted company. "When we first started out, an album could be done or $25,000 and turned around in 30 days. And we would sell a million records. Now, you see bands needing $3m before they get close to recording. They need the money for marketing and the promotion. Why would you need all that with your own website?"

It was no surprise when, a few weeks after the spat, Public Enemy signed up with an internet record company, Atomic Pop. "The economics of the pendulum between industry and artist has swung the artist's way," says Al Teller, Atomic Pop's founder who used to run Sony and MCA. "Artists want to own material. We don't have a huge budget to recoup so that's why we can give them this freedom."

Public Enemy view the move as inevitable. "Technology and hip-hop have always run parallel," says Chuck. "For me, seeing a crowd moving to the sounds of a microphone and turntables got me into the business at first. So the net was a natural move."

Chuck's thesis is that rap's audience - which grew up with samplers, sequencers and mixing decks - will have no difficulty digesting the net. The burgeoning online hip-hop community now supports several digital radio stations and a host of artists are making the move online. Ice T s to release the first single off his upcoming album on MP3.com - widely accepted by websurfers as the industry standard for electronic music; the smut-rap of Kool Keith will make its internet debut later this year and the Beastie Boys have put out singles on the net. "There are now more computers sold every year in the US than televisions. And the fastest growing market is in the African American community."

Chuck is a web evangelist - determined to convert the masses who are being force-fed a diet of whitewashed hip-hop and R&B by the music industry. "What happens now is that record companies take money out of the old rock and roll, like say Whitesnake, and put it behind rap music because white kids spend their money on it. So yes we have our Will Smiths, our Puff Daddys, our Lauryn Hills but that is only 15% of the hip-hop iceberg of talent. What you don't hear is the 85% that is out of sight."

Not only does the internet offer limitless platforms for wannabe hip-hop talent, according to Chuck, it sounds the death knell for the music giants. When the band Hieroglyphics were dropped by their label they resorted to the web, putting previously unreleased records on their site. In less than a year the band had made enough money from their net foray to record and put out a new album - which was eagerly snapped up online. "It is about cutting out the middleman. Public Enemy now have five studios between New York and Atlanta on the east coast. I can cut a record today and put it on the web the next night, play it on digital radio a few days later. Before, your record company would have to beg to get it played."

www.bringthenoise.com/ - Public Enemy's radio site
www.atomicpop.com/ - Public Enemy's web label
www.public-enemy.com/ Public Enemy's home site
www.mp3.com/ - site to download music files