For their 15th album, Public Enemy are back on Def Jam, the powerhouse label they helped build with their golden-age hip-hop classics. It’s a well-timed return to the center of the industry. The rise of the Black Lives Matter movement has seen a reawakening of the protest radicalism that PE originally brought to rap, from Kendrick Lamar’s “Alright” to Lil Baby’s “The Bigger Picture” to DaBaby’s BLM remix of “Rockstar.” So when they ask, “Is rap still the black CNN?” — embodying the voice of the music’s traditionalist gatekeepers on What You Gonna Do When the Grid Goes Down? — the answer this time around is actually, “Yes, it sort of is.” The fact that Chuck D and Flavor Flav remain at once hopeful and skeptical, honoring their own past and the music’s while pushing it forward, is a huge part of this record’s passionate, agitating, cranky energy.
| A1 | When The Grid Go Down... |
| A2 | Grid |
| A3 | State Of The Union (STFU) |
| A4 | Interlude: Merica Mirror |
| A5 | Public Enemy Number Won |
| A6 | Toxic |
| A7 | Yesterday Man |
| A8 | Interlude: Crossroads Burning |
| B1 | Fight The Power Remix 2020 |
| B2 | Beat Them All |
| B3 | Smash The Crowd |
| B4 | If You Can’t Join Em Beat Em |
| B5 | Go At It |
| B6 | Interlude: Don’t Look At The Sky |
| B7 | Rest In Beats |
| B8 | R.I.P. Blackat |
| B9 | Closing: I Am Black |
