Public Enemy — Fight The Power

JUL 01 1989 · 12:00

Public Enemy — Fight The Power (1989) Director: Spike Lee Era: Golden Age Hip-Hop (1989) - Peak of politically conscious rap; video released concurrent with Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing, at the apex of hip-hop's crossover into mainstream American cultural discourse. Among the highest-value artifacts in any hip-hop or American music video archive. The video is a primary source document of Black political culture in 1989 New York, a canonical example of the music video as activist cinema, and a rare case of a major director (Spike Lee) bringing feature-film craft and intentionality to the music video format. Its historical, aesthetic, and sociological density make it essential for curricula in film studies, African American studies, media studies, and political history. Context: Released in the summer of 1989 amid escalating racial tensions in New York City and across America — including the aftermath of the 1986 Howard Beach attack and the 1989 Central Park Five case — 'Fight the Power' and its video arrived as a genuine political intervention. The song was conceived at Spike Lee's request as the musical spine of Do the Right Thing, a film about systemic racism and police violence in Brooklyn. The video extended the film's politics into the music channel space, deploying the machinery of the pop music video to broadcast Black nationalist iconography — Marcus Garvus, Angela Davis, Paul Robeson, Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali — to MTV's predominantly white suburban audience. The staging of a mass Brooklyn rally as the video's central conceit blurred the line between cultural product and political event, making it one of the most explicitly activist music videos ever to receive mainstream airplay. Director notes: Lee both directed and produced the music video, which he created as a form of reciprocal compensation after Public Enemy wrote the song for his 1989 film Do the Right Thing without being paid for its use throughout the film. The video was filmed on April 22, 1989, in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn — the same block where Do the Right Thing was shot. Lee conceived the production not as a conventional music promo but as a staged political rally dubbed the 'Young People's March to End Racial Violence.' He opened the video with archival footage from the 1963 March on Washington before transitioning to the Brooklyn rally. Hundreds of extras appeared carrying signs bearing the likenesses of prominent Black historical figures. The Fruit of Islam provided security on set. Lee himself appears in the video among the crowd.