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In Brian Coleman's book Check the Technique, there's a chapter on It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back that makes reference to an older version of Public Enemy's first big single, Public Enemy #1, that I had never heard. The original version began as a radio promo that Chuck D ("Chucky D" at the time, with the "D" serving as an abbreviation of "Dangerous") and Hank Schocklee, who Chuck had been performing with in the group Spectrum City, put together for their radio show on Adelphi University's WBAU (90.3). The two called in Flavor Flav to do his hypeman routine on the track, marking the beginning of what would become one of the greatest groups of all time. Rick Rubin eventually received a copy of the promo from Doctor Dr� (Doctor Dr� of Yo! Mtv Raps and Original Concept, not former NWA member Dr. Dre) and signed the group to Def Jam, after which they decided to use the title of the promo as the name for their group. As for Long Island's WBAU, though the radio station shut down almost twenty years ago, it's still legendary for being the first to break records from groups like Run DMC, De La Soul and Leaders of the New School.

About a year ago, I wrote a post for Scholar over at Souled on Music about songs put out by artists before they were signed by major record labels. I mentioned my ongoing search for the original version of the PE track, hoping that someone out there had a copy of it. It took a while, but this morning someone finally responded with a link to a recording of Doctor Dr�'s old radio show, "The Operating Room," on WBAU that included the promo. Though the album version features a much improved delivery from Chuck D, who by that point had benefited from two more years of experience on the mic, it's not all that different from the original. A few of the lyrics have been brought up to date by 1987's standards - for example, a reference to Sugar Ray was replaced with Mike Tyson, who by then was arguably the most recognizable face in sports - and the song has a much rawer sound to it overall, but it should be easily identifiable to anyone who's listened to Yo! Bum Rush the Show (Diddy fans may also recognize the track).

As you'll hear in the recording of the show, Doctor Dr� includes an audio snippet of Mr. Magic, the former host of WBLS' Rap Attack, reacting to the promo, saying to his cohost Marley Marl that, "The beat is dope but the rapping is kinda weak." This of course was not the only time that Magic dismissed a future Hall of Famer, having called out KRS-1 as a wack emcee after hearing Success is the Word, a diss that sparked the infamous Bridge Wars.

Here's the promo:

Public Enemy - Public Enemy Number One (WBAU promo)

Shout out to Ghost and SLAMJamz for hooking up the promo. Along with a higher bitrate version of the WBAU promo, SLAMJamz also has some other rare PE tracks up on their site. You have to register (for free) to download the songs, but I highly recommend checking out what they have to offer.

While I was searching for details on Public Enemy's days at WBAU, I came across this interview with Chuck D from the now-defunct Soul Underground Magazine in 1987. There's a lot of great bits in the interview, but here are a couple of the highlights:

"Run DMC will tell you today that a lot of ideas and inflections that were used by us in 1985 were the kind of things that were used in their Raising Hell stuff. Like the idea of My Adidas with the beat catching in was from Public Enemy #1: �All You ... BOOM!"

"On the pop side, people like Prince and Michael Jackson are presenting a poor image for the black male. Michael Jackson is saying 'I�m bad,' now come on Michael, be serious! You�ve got a pet llama and a room full of stuffed animals and you want to say you're bad?"

"The next phase of rap will be territories - �What territory can you claim?�. Competition breeds champions and a bigger audience at the same time, and that�s what�s happening now, rap is expanding."

Although Chuck D was way off on his pick for the next region to dominate hip hop ("London is becoming the new capital of hip hop; the UK rap groups are basically ready to take over."), it's interesting to see him predict the East Coast/West Coast drama seven years before it occurred. As for the influence on Run DMC, as mentioned above Doctor Dr� gave Public Enemy's demo tape to Rick Rubin and Jam Master Jay back in 1985. The demo not only influenced the way that Run DMC rapped on Raising Hell, it was also the direct inspiration for Hell's Proud to be Black, a song that laid the groundwork for the wave of Afro-centric rap that took over in the late 80's.

Public Enemy - Public Enemy #1

Now that I finally have a copy of the PE promo, and with Robbie recently posting another item on my wishlist, the lost remix of Scenario, my next quest is to find copies of the old Kid Hood mixtape and Bizarre's pre-D12 demo tape. Anyone have either of those?

Update:
Wax raised a good question in the comments section, asking whether the Bomb Squad produced the debut promo. I had just assumed that they did produce the debut, since all of the Bomb Squad members were a part of the original Spectrum City crew. But in Check the Technique, Chuck D says that:

"[I] put that song together on two tape decks and a Roland 8000 drum machine. . . I pause-buttoned it together, did a vocal, and overdubbed it on another tape deck. . . Blow Your Head was a favorite of mine, but you could never find anyone who could DJ it and put it together quick enough, so that's why I had to use the tape decks."

The discogs entry doesn't list producer credits for individual tracks, but Carl Ryder (a.k.a. Chuck D) is listed as a co-producer for Yo! Bum Rush the Show.

Here's the JBs track that was sampled for the song:

Fred Wesley & The JB's - Blow Your Head

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