>If Public Enemy were keeping it real is that
>really a bad thing?


The underlying theme of this post is sort of "what had (has?) the power to 'change the game'?"


Obviously (no matter how street hip-hop was when it started) hip-hop was big on the partying thing for a while then even when Run DMC and then Rakim and Public Enemy were kind of "hard", a Native Tongues creative thing sort of got big for a while.


but....


since the dust has cleared, it seems the "hard" and "negative" stuff was able to last and dominate more than the partying and creative stuff.

If they all could have had a moderate amount of pull, then there would be no problem, but now, it seems people were too "inclined" to go the "negative" and "hard" route over the partying and creative route, so some of us wish the negative stuff never got there in the first place.

As far as Public Enemy is concerned, their political thing seemingly didn't last as an influence in the face of the negative stuff either.