Public Enemy’s Chuck D releases ‘In the Hour of Chaos: Art and Activism with Public Enemy’s Chuck D Volume 6’ on February 10 as part of the California Series in Hip Hop Studies. The book presents a razor-sharp investigation into hip hop and rap music from the searing lyricist and global music icon, engaging with some of the world’s leading thinkers on the genre. “Professor Chuck” sets out on a journey that celebrates fifty years of hip hop and charts paths forward for its future.
The book explores the intersections of hip hop with Black radicalism and feminism, media and technology, and globalization and politics. This curated collection shows the power of culture and the arts not only to bring people together but to bring about political change in this current hour of chaos. The work features conversations with leading thinkers including Robin D. G. Kelley, H. Samy Alim, Jeff Chang, Davey D, Scot Brown, Cheryl L. Keyes, Gaye Theresa Johnson, Bryonn Bain, Maya Jupiter, Adam Bradley and Joan Morgan.
‘In the Hour of Chaos’ is not an autobiography or a manifesto but a profound meditation on hip hop’s transformative power that takes readers deep into the mind of the genre’s most unabashed revolutionary. Chuck D delivers an essential examination of hip hop culture through conversations that reveal the genre’s political and cultural significance across five decades.