The Bernie Sanders campaign is supposed to be about bringing people together in order to tear down the oppressive structures of our capitalist hell, but it’s having the opposite effect on the members of Public Enemy. Over the weekend, we reported that Chuck D performed at a Sanders rally under the name Public Enemy Radio, which drove iconic Public Enemy hypeman Flavor Flav to send the campaign a cease-and-desist letter because, as Flavor Flav explained it, you can’t call something Public Enemy without having him involved (and he had no interest in being involved, regardless of who Chuck D was endorsing). Chuck D responded by saying that he controls the Public Enemy name and can do whatever he wants with it, and he claimed that Flavor Flav was only mad about the gig because nobody was being paid for it. He also threatened that Flav had a year to “get his act together” or he’d be kicked out of the group permanently.
Since then, the feud has continued with Chuck D/Public Enemy saying it would be “moving forward” without Flavor Flav, which prompted him to ask Chuck D on Twitter why he was willing to “destroy something we’ve built over 35 years” just for Bernie Sanders. He also explained that his issue with the Sanders campaign was that it was being misleading about just who was performing at the rally, adding, “I’m not your employee, I’m your partner, you can’t fire me, there is no Public Enemy without Flavor Flav.” (Chuck D’s argument yesterday was, essentially, “yes there is.”)
This comes from Rolling Stone, which says Flav also objected to Chuck D implying that he was abusing drugs and alcohol, saying he’s “been clean for 10 years” and “battled addiction before like millions of other Americans” so Chuck D should “know better than to lie about shit like that.”