DJ Spooky sez, “I just finished a studio session with Chuck D from Public
Enemy. In the wake of Republican Governor Jan Brewer’s appalling
anti-immigrant law, me and Chuck D were rappin’ and we decided to put
together an update of his classic track ‘By The Time I get To Arizona.’
” Anyone who knows about hip hop from the early 90’s remembers John
McCain’s unwillingness to endorse creating a local version of Martin
Luther King’s birthday. The update here is a 21st century look in the
rear view mirror. The cliché that ‘those who don’t learn from the past
are doomed to repeat it’ still holds sway in our hyper amnesiac culture.
I remixed D.W. Griffith’s infamous film Birth of a Nation with a bit of
Public Enemy in mind, and later on, they named an e.p. with the same
name as my project.”
(Thanks, Spooky!)
(Image: TIFF Wrap Party #35, a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (2.0) image from tsarkasim’s photostream)