Public Enemy shared a new live action video for “GRID” along with features Cypress Hill and George Clinton. It’s the second video for the track after the animated video debuted in October.
“GRID” was originally released on Public Enemy’s latest album, What You Gonna Do When the Grid Goes Down? on September 25. There was also live performance of it on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert a few days afterwards.
In the new video, Public Enemy and collaborators set up camp out in the desert under some power lines and construct a wooden platform and tent full of old TVs and boom boxes. Then they set up some turntables and rap about what the world would be like when the internet stopped working. Cypress Hill’s B-Real couldn’t make it out to the desert, so he shoots his verse in front of a brick wall and some barbed wire instead.
It’s a danceable song with Public Enemy’s familiar old school East Coast hip hop style. Since the verses are all about going “back to basics,” it’s fitting that the band kept their classic turntablism setup and released the album via Def Jam, the label they had released their classic albums like It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back and Fear of a Black Planet on.
Public Enemy’s Chuck D & DJ Lord and Cypress Hill’s B-Real also collaborated recently as Prophets of Rage along with Rage Against the Machine’s instrumentalists. Earlier this year, B-Real also released full-length collaboration called Los Meros with west coast rapper Berner.
Parliament/Funkadelic frontman George Clinton mostly just appears on features like this nowadays, and last released Parliament’s first album in 38 years, Medicaid Fraud Dogg, in 2018. One of the latest features was on Flying Lotus’ Flamagra.
Photo credit: April Siese
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