A visionary possesses the ability to harness one’s infinite imagination to manifest the potential, power, and promise of a new reality. Music icon, author, internet entrepreneur, and Public Enemy co-founder, Chuck D, is the quintessential visionary of the digital music revolution.

In 1996, he created an online artist distribution channel through the establishment of his record label, SLAMjamz.  A few years later he launched a radio station on the internet that has grown into a one-stop source for the online hip-hop community, RapStation.com.

Eventually, Public Enemy would make history as the first multi-platinum-selling act to release their album online before it was available in retail stores.  Lastly, not one to remain silent, Chuck D, has even taken his views all the way to congress where he testified in support of peer-to-peer MP3 sharing. 

Now after the release of the latest Public Enemy album, How You Sell Soul to a Soulless People Who Sold Their Soul, Chuck D is ready to take his vision one step further by joining the advisory board of Music Intelligence Solutions.  The company aims to offer consumers, social networks, mobile subscribers, artists and leading media companies a powerful new way to create, experience, share, and discover music and visual media.  One of its selling points includes the goal of increasing availability and visibility of digital music for artists and consumers. 

Chuck D spoke with Sixshot about why he chose to take on this new position, why record labels will need to operate on digital terms to survive, whether or not his innovative approach to releasing the last Public Enemy album was a financial success, why we’ll soon need to control our own source of electricity to fight the powers that be, and of course it wouldn’t be a proper Chuck D interview if we didn’t at least get a little political.

Why did you decide to accept the position on the advisory board of Music Intelligence Solutions?

In the state of a crumbling record business I feel that we need as many relevant portals as possible to get artists, music, and culture out to the masses on their own artistry terms.  I thought that the situation was tailor made to be a great added assistant to it.

What would you say differentiates Music Intelligence Solutions from the rest of the competition?

Just us being able to identify artist’s sensitivity, and being able to identify similarities and parallels in art and musical attempts.

With the digital revolution there’s a lot of music available online.  Do you feel like it needs to be filtered in order to have a greater impact on the market?

Oh, of course it has to be.  I think everything has to find room for itself to breathe.  I don’t know if filtered is the right word, but I would say that it needs to have an easier navigation.

One of the criticisms of the digital music revolution is that while giving artists easy access to exposure it also over saturates the market.  As a result, music becomes quickly disposable and has a faster expiration date since the online world so fast.  What are your thoughts on this criticism?

I don’t know why people give credence to a company for always making the best selections—they don’t.  I kind of look at it the same way people look at athletics.  We have a lot of people playing sports and they don’t play in the professional ranks.  More people are amateurs, but I don’t think it affects the overall aspects of the sport, the industry, and integrity of the game.  We have high school basketball teams but they don’t affect the pros, do they?

In your opinion is the old traditional model of major record labels going to be obsolete or do you see the two co-existing and dependent upon each other in the future?

I see it co-existing and needing each other, but really on the digital terms.  The digital area doesn’t need the things that usually end up being high physical costs.  I think the costs of distribution and manufacturing shifts things that impedes on the profit situation; when it comes down to artists making a living off of it and companies being able to distribute goods. 

Last year you sold the latest Public Enemy album via Musicane’s storefront model which allowed fans to sell the product on their site and receive a percentage of the profit.  How profitable was that?

We try a whole bunch of different things.  Right now I’m involved with Beyond.fm and not only is it a storefront, but it’s a great way for distributing ideas and music.

Has it been a financial success?

I don’t know.  All I know is my involvement with Beyond.fm so that’s where my attention has been.  My thing is you never lose out in the digital world because the cost is really nothing to get involved.

SLAMjamz Records defines itself as the 21st century record label.  How are you moving with the times digitally?

Beyond.fm is our online store.  It distributes the music and artwork.  It’s something that we can call close to us.  Tune Core aggregates the albums and the music we have and is able to distribute to the Rhapsodies and iTunes of the world.  We feel that the mp3 distribution to all the DJ's has made distribution a lot easier without vinyl or black wax being the only thing that you got to get pressed up for play.   Digital has made that obsolete.  So I think there are a lot of different ways we could look at it.  I mean we make our own videos, and not for the MTV’s or BET’s.  We made them for the Youtube’s and MySpace’s.  Every single artist has a MySpace page and every single artist is on YouTube.  
 
There’s a lot of freedom now with the digital online scene.  Do you think it’s inevitable that corporations will eventually put their hands into the digital realm and crack down on it?  We’ve seen that begin to happen with videos being banned on YouTube.

I don’t think it’s inevitable.  They can’t stop everything.  They will just try and continue to talk about keeping things in control, but the beautiful thing about this is that it’s all over the place.  The downside about digital is that if you don’t have electricity or power you’re limited on digital. [Laughs]  You need power.

I guess the next step is to start owning our own electricity and everything.

Well, or find out ways to—I’m involved with One Laptop Per Child, and they found ways to use solar power to get online.  So alternative energy sources also could be key.

Earlier this decade you correctly predicted the timing of one million artists going online and today that number is over ten million worldwide.  Do you have any other predictions for media, music, and the internet?

I don’t think it’s fair for me to say that I made the prediction.  It’s just that I’m able to see where the tree is falling.  I already saw everything leaning at a forty-five degree angle.  It was inevitable that these things would happen.  I encourage artists when they make their songs that they try to make a video per song and that they learn how to make visuals.  We’re truly in an audio visual age. 

I see many more videos coming from independent grassroots artists than what’s taking place now.  I think people need to get out of their system that in order to create a video that you have to think about MTV, or something that looks like it’s worth a hundred thousand dollars.  You got to think small-screen now instead of big-screen.  Not the small screen as far as YouTube, but small screen as far as iPods and other technology.

You bring a unique global perspective to Music Intelligence Solutions.  Often when people talk about the state of music they speak of the U.S. but globally what are your thoughts?

Well globally it’s where culture has the ability to unite the one race—the human race through our similarities.  That’s the beautiful thing about culture.  It’s really a shining example in this day as government tries to keep people apart; cultures are tying people around the world together be it in the music or the arts.  So the music is a great vehicle to have people who speak different languages kind of like speak each other’s language in both sight and sound.  We are definitely in a time where government tries to move quick to pass laws so people won’t develop their own agendas as opposed to that particular government in charge.

Speaking of government, you’re quoted in an interview with Le Monde Magazine as saying that since the debut of Public Enemy nothing has changed for African-Americans.  They also quote you as saying that you don’t think an Obama-Clinton alliance will really accomplish anything of substance—

No, I thought that an Obama-Clinton alliance would at first but where it’s leaning to right now is definitely confrontational.  I would think they would get their acts together and work together.  The way that that this political election is going I don’t think it’s gonna be possible for them to work together

If the solution isn’t government what is the solution for change?

I think it has to come from curriculum.  One thing I noticed is that inside the music there’s a lot of history to be learned and there’s a lot of things that people want to know about.  If I go on how history is looking right now it’s almost like this vague unreachable plateau that people have to climb to instead of getting to it automatically.  So I think that music has a lot to offer when it actually is taught from a total standpoint instead of just as a popular trend.

What more are you hoping to accomplish in the digital world and musically?

Oh there’s so much more to accomplish.  We want to see some structure and organization to it.  I’d like it to be as big as the NBA.  I’d like to see more women groups in hip-hop.  I’d like to see more women producers and engineers.  Eventually we need to balance it out—we need more stories.  Music is a great thing.

For more information on Music Intelligence Solutions please visit:
www.uplaya.com 

For more information on Chuck D and Public Enemy please visit:
www.myspace.com/chuckdpublicenemy
www.publicenemy.com
www.rapstation.com