‘Bring the Noise’: Why Public Enemy’s collab with Anthrax was every bit as important as Run DMC’s with Aerosmith
If the 1990s were the decade when rap and metal fell in love, we might as well say that their first date came on July 9th, 1991, when Anthrax released their version of Public Enemy’s 1988 single ‘Bring the Noise’.
Rising all the way to number 14 on the UK singles chart that summer, Anthrax’s take on the song was arguably more of a remix than a cover. The band got approval from PE to incorporate Chuck D and Flavor Flav’s original vocals into an amped up, guitar-centric, full-on thrash interpretation of the hip hop classic, and it instantly blew minds.
It’s easy to forget that, despite the occasional heavy riffage on early Run-DMC and Beastie Boys records, there was a bit of an unspoken gulf between metalheads and hip hoppers in the 1980s, without much in the way of olive branches between the two communities. Logically, there was always fertile ground there, as rap and metal were the least favourite genres of every strict, conservative parent, making them the inevitable preferred sounds of millions of young, rebellious Gen X-ers.
However, it took a while for the two camps to size one another up, with heavy metal listeners particularly pushing back against rap’s use of electronics and sampling rather than ‘real’ instruments. Public Enemy’s Chuck D was all too aware of this tired criticism, and he dedicated a lot of the lyrics of ‘Bring the Noise’ to that very point, defending rap’s place as a legitimate musical art form that is every bit as relevant as rock and, in fact, quite foundational to it.
“Soul control, beat is the father of your rock n’ roll,” Chuck proclaims in one verse, before dropping a few key reference points: “Run-DMC first said a DJ could be a band / Stand on its own feet, get you out your seat / Beat is for Eric B and LL as well, hell / Wax is for Anthrax, still it can rock bells”.
Using Run-DMC, Eric B and LL Cool J as examples of rap’s own line-up of modern rock stars was no surprise, especially considering the important step Run-DMC had taken just a few years earlier, agreeing to an unlikely MTV-approved collab with Aerosmith. Name-dropping the New York thrash metal band Anthrax was a more surprising choice, though, and certainly one that caught the attention of the band’s guitarist Scott Ian, who was already a big PE fan when the original ‘Bring the Noise’ came out.
Ian instantly recognised the parallels between his music and PE’s, including the way both groups were dismissed by many mainstream rock critics as being nothing more than noise makers, so Anthrax began performing ‘Bring the Noise’ as early as 1989, and finally released their version, complete with a groundbreaking video featuring Chuck and Flav, in ‘91.
“I just figured that if we came up with our own music, Anthrax music, and used Chuck’s rhyme, it’d be the best of both worlds,” Ian said at the time.
Both groups benefited from the collaboration in a big way, as the floodgates suddenly opened up to a whole new audience of ‘noise’ appreciators who’d previously been stuck in their own pens. The notion that racism had been the true dividing line between the two supposed factions began to wear away, as well, especially as Anthrax’s joint tour with PE was met with huge audiences and overwhelmingly positive responses.
“I think there are a lot of fake walls,” Anthrax bassist Frank Bello told The Morning Call during that ‘91 tour, “People have to define things. We found that rap and metal—our kind of music—is very similar. There’s a street vibe to it. If there’s a thing you could call it, it’s just heavy.”
Chuck D would later say that touring with Anthrax brought the best out of PE. “Those were some of my best teachers,” he told the Independent earlier this year, “They taught me how to perform stronger, harder, faster”.
In tandem, PE and Anthrax also taught a whole generation that there need not be any further barricades in the world of loud, heavy music, setting the stage for the rap-metal explosion of the ‘90s: a musical romance that managed to go fully mainstream while still pissing off everyone’s parents.
