Public Enemy Committed A Really Long-Form April Fools Prank

Just one measly month ago, it came out in the news that Chuck D had fired Flavor Flav from Public Enemy. We wrote about it, people speculated on the duo's history and which straw broke the camel's back. It was like the hands on the clocks on the big chains on Flav's neck made time standstill. A 30-year partnership gone in an instant. But so many other things have happened in the month of March that it's felt like 30 years crammed into one month, and April was already looking like it was going to be the same way.

Now, let's check back in on Chuck D and ...

He's in that video talking about how some of the best press and publicity in hip hop goes to bad news -- a promising rapper dying too young, or some type of public beef. He explains that he's spent most of his career trying to work up "good looks," but none of it gets elevated in the press the way that bad news does. So one day he's going down a YouTube hole, as one does, and somehow he's watching a video about Orson Welles'

War of the Worlds. Your guess is as good as ours as to how he got there, but it's like a light bulb went off in Chuck D's brain.

When he and Flav got to talking about Public Enemy doing a Bernie Sanders rally, Flav didn't seem super into it. Chuck looked at it as an opportunity for the type of fake beef that makes scientists at Impossible Foods rock hard. He and Flav were going to War of the Worlds up a feud, Chuck would "fire" Flav, and on April Fools', they'd tell everyone that it was all a big joke and use it to promote their new music

Cut to today, and there's Chuck D, in the video above, agreeing with Flav, that you can't actually fire someone from a partnership. April Fools' Day is more or less canceled this year because, well ... duh -- so Public Enemy wants to call it "April Flav Chuck Day." Perfect. They'd been in production on a new album since February and it's coming out in April, with the first song released called "Food as a Machine Gun." Check it out.

We don't know if this inspires hope for fractured friendships in this time where we're all isolated alone, but if their goal was to get us to pay attention -- It worked.

Top Image: kowarski/Wiki Commons

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