Public Enemy Takes Aim With New Free Track

01/11/1999 4:00 AM, Yahoo! Music
Craig Rosen

(1/11/99, 1 a.m. PST) - Controversial rap act Public Enemy may have succumbed to PolyGram's request and removed MP3 files of tracks from its still-unreleased Bring The Noise 2000 megamix album from its website, but it hasn't given up on giving its fans downloadable free music.

Late last week, the group posted a new song on its website, www.public-enemy.com. The song, "Swindlers Lust," is available as a downloadable MP4 file, which is similar to the MP3 format. Interestingly enough, the track's lyrics deal with the group's struggle with the record industry, as Chuck D notes in a spoken-word intro, "A dollar a rhyme, but we barely get a dime."He goes on to rap repeatedly in the track, "If you don't own the master/ The master owns you."

As the track progresses, Chuck D takes multiple shots at the record industry, noting that unfair recording contracts mean "more dollars and cents for the Big Six [record companies]" and that profits from "rap and R&B be paving the streets of Bel Air."

The song's title appears to be a word play on Schindler's List, the title of Steven Spielberg's 1993 Academy Award-winning film epic about the Holocaust, as Public Enemy uses another play on words in a message posted on its site about the track. "Swindlers come in all shapes, sizes and colors, don't they? The majority of fans and artists are heaped upon each other, pile swept in a horrorcost...A lotta folk been had by the execs and legal lust of the industry...So this is anti-corporatism, and watch the reaction to this lyrical swirl..."