When Chuck D speaks, people listen. As one of hip-hop's most revolutionary voices, the Public Enemy frontman fields seemingly endless requests to speak on various social and political issues. As he picked up the phone, the 62-year-old firebrand was driving from his home in New York to Coney Island to perform the 1991 single "Bring Tha Noize" with Anthrax and then turning right back around to go to bed. After all, fighting the power is a tireless job. But, he took a few minutes for HITS to discuss California's rap lyrics bill (Bill 2799) as it awaits Gov. Gavin Newsom's signature.

What are your thoughts on the California rap lyrics bill? It will limit the use of rap lyrics as evidence in criminal proceedings.
This goes way, way back. You're an owner to what you think and a slave to what you say, even if it's in a lyric or whatever. It's just such a thin line between the reality of the streets and somebody's mind, and that can be used against you.

I have to bring up "By the Time I Get to Arizona." It was very controversial at the time, especially the video.
I made sure I didn't leave no fucking crumbs. Hey, look, I've been around the world so many times, I know that you can say things, but you've got to really walk a tight line. Anybody can pin anything on you too, which is a danger. But, once you are a voice in the public, you are walking a thin line that anything can be incriminated against. You learned that from the Black Panthers. You learned that from a bunch of Black movements in the United States of America. That's why these organizations try to be clean and stay away from crime and criminal shit as much as possible, because they knew they were still going to be accused of criminal activity just by being in a gang, just by being revolutionaries against so-and-so.

So would you say Bill 2799 is a good thing?
I think this is good, but at the same time, you've got to treat it like it's good. You just can't just barrel into using it as an excuse to get away with some things. I don't think anybody intentionally goes in and wants to just do dirt and then rhyme about dirt to show they real with it. That's an asshole.

I don't know if I can give the politically correct answer. All I know is that it's good. Now, we've got to treat it like it's good, because that's one less thing to put a Black man in prison for— some bullshit.

California's the first state to ever pass a bill like this. New York tried but couldn't get it done. Why do you think that is?
They've been dealing with the music longer, and the adversaries are in places that haven't been uprooted. It's all politicians. You've got people that think they understand and over-stand what rap is and ain't, and rap music has been in New York 50 years. So, you've got older people in administration that clearly think they already know and got rap figured out, they know what it is, so you can't bullshit them, even though they could be wrong, too.

The CEO of the RIAA, Mitch Glazier, wrote a letter in support of the bill. He cited The Beatles' "Happiness Is A Warm Gun" and Johnny Cash's "Folsom Prison Blues."
But that was 1960s, and The Beatles, Johnny Cash and their peers didn't have gun incidence as much as rap. We have a lot of shootings in our communities. There's a lot of gun shit. A lot of our top people, from Jam Master Jay to Big L, were murdered because of guns. You've got to be sensitive and you've got to be clever. Cats who are clever in bars and lyrics, they're very deft and intricate with the words.