Starring Public Enemy, LL Cool J, British people
Written By:
Directed By:
Studio: Music Video Distributors
Buy on Amazon.com link

Before Flavor Flav was some whacked out reality TV star on the Surreal Life, he was a whacked out rapper from Public Enemy. This is a Public Enemy DVD from their 1987 London Invasion tour. The first time they were ever over in the UK and this was also for the Def Jam concert series. PE opened up for LL Cool J and Eric B and Rakim. Which I find hard to believe but whatever. The DVD includes the concert, behind the scenes footage and some other stuff.

Public Enemy is probably my favorite rap group and the one I keep going back to listen to every once and awhile. Out of all the rap groups that have come and gone, PE is the one I think made the most positive impact on people, and had some great lyrics. Probably the one rap group that got white people into rap the most. No, Vanilla Ice doesn’t count. Public Enemy was very political and had a lot to say about what was going on with the world back then. Some of the stuff still pertains today. I consider them the punk rock of rap music. Plus their music was catchy as hell and fun to listen to. At one point, I used to be able to sing all the words to most of the songs. I can still sing most of “Can’t Trust This” believe it or not. I think without Chuck D, PE wouldn’t be the powerful group it was. He was the one that was the most vocal and probably the smartest one out of the group. He just seemed very intelligent. Plus I think he’s awesome because he stood up to that douchebag Lars Ulrich from Metallica with the whole Napster fiasco.

As I’m watching this concert footage, you can clearly see them lip syncing and I didn’t know they did that crap. It looks like they did it for some of the songs and later on, you see Flavor Flav arguing with Terminator X on whether or not he should lip sync. Even though they might have lip sync, I still would have liked to see them live. I was too little when they toured near my town. More stuff I gathered from watching the concert footage and the behind the scenes stuff; Flavor Flav is fucking nuts and seemed like he was drunk, stoned or high on drugs the whole time. I’m surprised the band was together that long because it looked like Chuck D was sick of Flav by the end of the movie.

The footage quality isn’t the greatest since it’s from the 80’s, and the version I got sent to me, has an annoying “promotional use only” text on it the whole time. It’s hard to make out what songs they are singing when the bottom text scrolls by. The extras are cool because there’s an Australia show (looks like from recent years) and the quality is a lot better. They sing “Can’t Trust This,” which is probably my favorite song from them. Also included on the disc is audio commentary with Chuck D and he talks a lot about the first being over in the UK with Public Enemy. We also find out how the whole big clock thing got started. If you interested in learning a lot about the group, definitely listen to the commentary. Overall, a good DVD from Public Enemy and I’m looking forward to getting further DVDs from them.

Features:
Classic Photos
Play by play commentary with Chuck D
Live Australia 2003 clip
Bonus CD

Audio:

Video:

Subtitles:

Favorite Scenes: Bring The Noise, Timebomb, Can’t Trust This
Rating: NR
Running Time: 60 minutes
Extras Rating:
Overall Rating: