Darius Rucker of Hootie & the Blowfish has mostly kept a low public profile in terms of his politics. He has spoken out against racism, and that makes sense. Racism shouldn't exist.
But anyone who expected a collaboration of Rucker's band and hip-hop icons Public Enemy might have previously been asked to check their mental health. The two groups appeared to have nothing much in common.
And yet, there they were, together on stage at the Stagecoach Festival on April 26, doing a rendition of PE's "Fight the Power." Maybe there is more to come from the story, or at least, more to come from the backstory of how the collaboration even happened, but just know that the song was nothing to snicker at.
Public Enemy and Hootie & the Blowfish team up for something great (as well as unexpected)
It was good. In fact, the performance was very good. The band laid a fantastic rhythm as the backdrop for Chuck D and Flavor Flav to bring the powerful lyrics that have remained that way for decades and will continue to do so. Words matter, and that is what Public Enemy existed in the first place.
Of note, Hootie & the Blowfish's debut record, Cracked Rear View, and Public Enemy's fifth studio album, Muse Sick-n-Our Mess Age, dropped within a month of each other in 1994. Anyone listening to one was likely not listening to the other.
Moreover, one listening to one of the albums was probably not thinking, "I can see these two musical artists agreeing to play a festival together in California 32 years from now."
The weird part, and one of the reasons that makes music so amazingly great, is that the two groups doing a song together completely works. Is it a political statement made? Possibly, though the song was initially released in 1989, because one of the group's (Public Enemy) is from New York City and the other is from the American South (Hootie & the Blowfish).
That the two teamed up for whatever reason they teamed up is what is important. Collaborations are best when they aren't solely about selling records, and that wasn't the point of the "Fight the Power" performance. It was to spread a message, and the two groups pulled it off magically.
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