Carlton Douglas Ridenhour, better know as Chuck D, member of the rap group Public Enemy, spoke to Tufts students last night about issues currently facing America.
D started out by saying that his presentation was not going to be a lecture, since he thinks college students get enough of them already. Rather, he said, it would be a "vibe session."
Over the course of this "vibe session," which lasted a little over two hours and was sponsored by Lecture Series, D discussed a wide variety of topics.
"You live in a country where older people don't want to share the limelight with young people ... that's why they call you kids," D said early on in the session. "Ya'll not kids, you're adults."
Although D became famous in the late 1980s fronting Public Enemy, in recent years he has greatly expanded his scope of influence.
He currently hosts a nationally syndicated radio show on Air America called "On The Real," and is one of the music industry's most outspoken advocates of Internet music file-sharing.
He testified at a Congressional Hearing in 2000 in support of the legalization of free music downloading programs such as Napster.
D's talk last night covered various themes, from the "dumbing down" of America to commercialization of the media, skewed perceptions of African Americans, the history of black music and the legacy of slavery.
Although advertisements for the lecture stated that D would be "speaking on his experiences and being an entrepreneur in the music industry," these topics were not the focus of his talk.
He mentioned his own experiences only once, and it was in regard to his recent arrest in New York for a suspended driver's license resulting from an unpaid 1994 parking ticket.
This anecdote led him to reflect on another topic, the changing nature of crime.
He said that as conventional crime is "drying up" and people are now stealing credit card numbers instead of car radios, police forces are stretching more and more to fulfill arrest quotas.
Part of the talk involved tracing the history of black music from its roots in slavery to its current manifestation in hip-hop music.
D spoke about "code music," a term he used for the music played by black slaves to express themselves while being repressed.
He said this was a music of love and compassion which later carried itself through blues and jazz.
"If you want to know about black history all you gotta do is follow the history of black recorded music," he said near the end of his talk.
He summarized the history of black music as it changed and gradually moved up the Mississippi River, developing in cities like Memphis, St. Louis, Chicago and eventually the world.
In his opinion, the message of love and solidarity at the core of "code music" has been distorted with rap music's rise to prominence.
D said popular rap has been hijacked by the massive recording companies that emerged in the late '70s, bringing with them an attitude in which "music isn't seen as music, it's seen as a product," he said.
His problems with the music industry aside, D was less reserved in his enthusiasm for the college experience.
"Wherever I go, I gotta give collegians some props," D said.
