WHAT attracted you to the Icons Festival in Belfast, Chuck?
We need international partners, with international partners that could come to the United States and create a new paradigm. Why not see everyone at Belfast?
What can you and Public Enemy bring to young artists of today?
We feel that we can bring the reality of what digital music is to every artist so they can still feel kind of cool about it, feel happy about it and can move forward.
We believe that art and commerce has a narrow bridge, but there is a bridge. It's not as wide as other areas of concern, but they could be getting wider, it depends on how you look at it.
With our three brands, RAPstation.com (streaming rap radio), SPITdigital.com (digital music distribution) and BTNEastlink.com (artist management, consulting and marketing), we feel like we got a cycle of belief that will make somebody feel confident and owning their art and governing their own art.
Your 1999 album, There's a Poison Goin' On, was the first ever album to be released digitally. What was the thinking behind this?
We wanted to get to our fanbase directly and we couldn't do that through the major corporations at that time.
The expense was larger and larger to promote what we created; we had to go not only in the major systems, but we also had to use their ways of promoting.
So the ends had justified means, especially when it dealt with being able to go to different continents and different countries. We found out that our connection with our worldwide audience was better than the corporations'.
How did that release go?
What MP3 and the rest of technology did for us was amazing. But I'll tell you the truth, we waited at least 13 to 15 years for everybody to catch up.
We jumped into the internet, we jumped into the MP3 pool, we were in the middle of all the court battles over whether music should be free, or downloaded or whatever.
Was there already an established Public Enemy fanbase online?
We reached into a world where the gadgets wasn't there and the audience wasn't there in full regalia. They were still subject to the traditional form of picking up a record and listening to it – but we knew this was coming.
It wasn't like we were geniuses, it was a tree that was already leafing.
What's next for yourself and business enterprises?
We're trying to develop new genres, and I'm actually trying to stake my claim into being an international believer worldwide of digital music with our company.
We feel that we were first out of the blocks and that we have something to offer the world. We have to think that the world's technology and companies have something to offer to us and the United States.
Jimmy Iovine and Dr Dre just hooked up with Apple. That would have been a great marriage for us but we couldn't actually accomplish what we wanted to do with that, which was to liberate and democratise urban and hip hop music.
We're looking to the world to recognise that we're five years in this field.
Where is the music industry at the minute?
See, 99 per cent of all the marketplace is independent situations and one per cent is corporate, but they control 99 per cent of the revenue. My battle is trying to see if the independents and artists can actually have more of a pool and revenue, and also just coverage and outlook.
Those are some of the things I've been about since day one.
What's important about being part of Icons Festival?
I think being part of the Icons conference in Northern Ireland is necessary for our companies and our artistry because we've built our situation on internationality.
We want to be able to plant around the world, instead of being subject to the business practice of the United States.
The US has had a turbulent year. What are your thoughts on its current societal issues and how does your music feed into/off that?
The United States has a lot of people, and a lot of old ways that are institutionalised. We want change to happen, but you gotta fight for change, you gotta make sure young people understand what it is you fought for.
History always kind of levels the playing field when everybody knows it. We make sure some of our music pays attention to history notes so we don't make the same bad mistakes that our predecessors made as human beings.
What about the future?
When we socially and psychologically get it together, we still got a way to go to repair the damage that was wrought over the last 100 years especially.
You hope for the better, but things don't happen automatically. We gotta push the issue and be concerned.
:: Chuck D and Public Enemy's DJ Lord are at Icons today. Tickets and full programme information available at Festivaloficons.com
