All This Because I Talk So Well
In this issue, we asked musicians from all corners—as well as writers, painters, and actors—about the musical experiences that changed their lives. For violinist David Harrington, it was two notes of a relatively obscure 1917 recording. For composer Chen Yi, it was a mother’s lullaby for her child, sung on a Chinese farm.
In this article pianist Jason Moran writes about listening to Chuck D rap on an early hiphop hit in his family’s kitchen.
In the 80s, the number one radio station in Houston for Black music was Majic 102. Every night, they would play the “Top 8 at 8,” a mix featuring the top 8 requested songs of the day. These were the days when one had to call a radio station and request that the DJ play a song. I never did that, so I’d just wait by the radio for the ones I liked. In February 1987, my older brother Yuri told me about Public Enemy. He said there was a new song I had to hear, “Miuzi Weighs a Ton,” but he couldn’t describe it. Yuri was the older, wider ear in the house, who connected our love of new hip-hop with new punk music; he could draw a line from, say, Run-DMC to Bad Brains. One night it was Yuri’s turn to do the kitchen chores. He knew that “Miuzi” would be on the Top 8 at 8. He brought his radio to the kitchen and began doing the dishes while I sat at the dining table. At some point the song started, and Yuri ran to the radio to turn it up. The moment had arrived.
The song begins with the sound of an orchestra getting in tune. Huh? A hip-hop song starting out with an orchestra tuning? Then Flavor Flav says, “Yo Chuck, run a power move on ’em.” The beat drops. Public Enemy is now tuned up. Flavor begins yelling “Yeah,” and as his pitch raises, Chuck D enters, saying ”Yeah” back, and launching into his first verse. The song has a vibe that’s hard to describe. There’s this single piano octave sustaining, the hard-hitting beat, the looping simulated horn stabs, and then Chuck D’s magnetic voice. It seems that he is talking about competitive MCs on the scene, but in a wider way, he is talking about the watchful eye of the US government. The “Uzi” in this song is his mind, his intellect, his heritage. At the end of the first verse he says: “A fugitive missin’ all types of hell/ All this because I talk so well.” Chuck D speaking about his elocution says it all. His education will always be a threat to an enemy. Later, he explains how his voice works:
Understand my rhythm, my pattern of lecture/ And then you’ll know why I’m on the run/ This change of events results in a switch/ It’s the lateral movement of my vocal pitch/ It eliminates pressure on the haunted/ But the posse is around so I got to front it/ Plus employ tactics so coy/ And leave no choice but to destroy/ Soloists, groups and what they say/ And all that try to cross my way
He cuts through an incredibly dense beat that, all of a sudden, breaks down during the chorus. That chorus features a DJ named Terminator X, scratching on the words “Yeah” as Flavor says, “Get Down,” and another voice says, “My Uzi Weighs a Ton,” and then another says “Hold it.” It’s a collage, and it would go on to become a sonic emblem of the production team called The Bomb Squad. This tapestry of sounds would mark the period between the late ’80s and early ’90s, and launch acts like Public Enemy and Ice Cube.
Photo: Courtesy of Def Jam Records
After I heard “Miuzi” that first time, I sat at the table with my mouth open. Who was Chuck D? Why was he not rapping fast like LL Cool J, or Run-DMC, or Roxanne Shante? Chuck D was writing about something different. He was not a kid— he was 27 at the time of this song’s release, basically an elder in this newly born form of music. Chuck was planting political thought into the music, and into my mind. The cover of Public Enemy’s debut record, Yo! Bum Rush the Show, is a photograph of the group gathered around a turntable. The lighting is similar to an interrogation, where the record is the subject under scrutiny. The iconic logo Chuck D created for PE is a b-boy in the center of a gun scope. I was confused when I heard this song, and that confusion became its magnet. I grew so obsessed with PE that my mother, a baker, even made a birthday cake with this logo as the decoration. I would gather on subsequent nights to hear the song, and eventually tape the song off the radio so that I could have it on call when I wanted.
This sparked my passion for music that layered in political ideas. PE unleashed me into my parent’s political library of books from the ’60s. It was the perfect prep material for my love for jazz, which would begin a few years later. When
I finally heard Thelonious Monk’s evocative composition “Round Midnight,” I felt ready to search for meaning in Monk’s piano just as I did when deciphering Chuck D’s lyrics. They both expressed the chaos of the time through soul-stirring music. PE made music that was a place to both dance and think. This fierce song started it all.
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