Riot on the Set: How Public Enemy Crafted the Anthem 'Fight the Power' — rollingstone.com

"We needed an anthem," Spike Lee said. "When I wrote the script for Do the Right Thing, every time when the Radio Raheem character showed up, he had music blasting. I wanted Public Enemy." The director may have asked for an anthem for his 1989 chronicle of big-city racial tensions, but what he got was a salvo. A quarter of a century has passed since Radio Raheem's boom box served as a megaphone to a generation, spreading Public Enemy's rap reveille over and over again in the movie, but "Fight the Power" has not lost an ounce of its revolutionary power or poignancy. Chuck D's lyrics praising freedom of speech and people uniting while decrying racist icons still sound just as vital as anything Pete Seeger wrote, and production team the Bomb Squad's ultra-modern collage of funk and noise for the track has never been replicated. The fact that Public Enemy made multiple versions of the tune – including the Branford Marsalis–infused, free-jazz cut for the movie and the more straight-ahead approach on their 1990 album Fear of a Black Planet – only shows the versatility of the song's message.

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