@sellaband #PublicEnemy #flavorflav #ChuckD
I’ve always loved Public Enemy.  Growing up the son of a Black Panther I can remember of militancy in my household and for me Public Enemy was my release as I first fell in love with Hip Hop.  In fact, PE’s “Fear of a Black Planet” was the very first album I purchased with my own money.  I can still remember walking into Sam Goody looking at the cassette cover in awe hopping in my mom’s car popping it in the deck and promptly having it CONFISCATED forever due to foul language.  Oh well.

Now almost 20 years later, PE is trying to give fans that experience yet again.  You might remember some time ago I was telling you about the group’s desire to have fans basically invest in the project by contributing or donating money via SellaBand.com to fund the recording and distribution of a new project.  Well its been almost a year to the day and PE has announced that they’ve raised $75,000 from private donations as capital for a new release.

“We just received word that our fund raising campaign has completed,” Public Enemy said on sellaband.com. “This is truly a great moment for us and we owe it all to our fans on SellaBand — our true ‘Believers’.”

While PE had to cut back its original goal of $250,000 they say the funds raised will be plenty to help them record and market/promote their new album.  When released, the upcoming project will make history as the first album by a major Hip Hop act to be completely funded via fan donation.

“We’re over here in Europe killing shows. Moscow and Sofia are in our rear view mirrors and we’ve got a lot more on tap,” P.E. said in their statement. “We’re going to be celebrating this with our fans, so we hope to see you on our winding road. Thank You.”

The announcement comes as a surprise to me I can’t lie.  I was skeptical that there was even a market for Public Enemy in this Hip Hop 2.0 climate but they’ve proven the earth is large and die hard fans are loyal.  What remains to be seen is if this model of alternative funding will stand the test of time and if other undoubtedly coming copycats will be able to achieve the same success.  Lets keep in mind, I first talked about this in October of 2009 and now a year later we’re getting word the group has finances to BEGIN recording the project so who knows when it will drop.  Leaving a year or two between projects is not a recipe for success in this new On-Demand world.  However, given the fact all funding is already in place we should expect swift movements with the common Record Label bureaucracy not playing a factor.