He's Down With The Digital Revolution p.3

Chuck D: It affected people who paid attention to that political circle of things and people that felt they had something to lose in the fabric of America. Once again, it probably went over a lot of peoples' heads. People felt: 'Yeah, yeah, Bush Killa, true.' It came in the middle of a lot of heat. Ice-T did "Cop Killer" as a Body Count song [from his hard rock off-shoot band], but the point of view related to so many people. They said: 'We gotta come out and say something about this 'cause this opinion is just too strong.'

ATN: How has the Internet changed how you view the music business and your place in it? It seemed to create a problem with Def Jam when you put some songs from Bring the Noise 2000 online.

Chuck D: First of all, people put too much emphasis on Def Jam. My adversaries were above Def Jam's heads — it was [parent company] Polygram's legal and accountants' systems. They understood the total curve of the music industry shifting. It was way over Def Jam's heads. It's distribution balance from the traditional into the new realm. That's who my adversaries were. Let's understand, the music business is run by business people, lawyers and accountants. Whenever you can come in and change the whole complexion of that particular game, that could be viewed as a threat to their existence. They're the first ones that are going to lose their jobs. And I thought it was a hell of a lot of fun.

ATN: How has that changed how you're going to go forward?

Chuck D: The business relies on its strength by making the artist and public as naive as possible. Therefore, you have both sides of the spectrum naive. Then they start patting themselves on their chests proclaiming their importance: 'You need me. You need me to make your art, to get it to the public. You, the public, need us to get it to you. And we determine the price that we're gonna sell it to you for. And we determine the percentage that you artists are gonna make.' Being an intermediary like that, with no explanation to either side, allows them to be a business. On the Internet, the whole thing is not to eradicate the middleman, but being able to level out the playing field, to make a more educated artist and a more educated consumer. Super-corporations don't want to educate a consumer. If they can get you buying the same thing 50 times, they love it. They've gotten people that have vinyl collections to buy the same thing in CD. That was a fantastic coup for the big record companies. They've given artists 10 percent [royalty rates] and said: 'You know, we're really going to make you a better deal. We're gonna give you 14 percent.' Whenever you have a more educated consumer and an educated artist, the middle starts to get worried, 'cause they start wondering where they fit in. This is a sport. The music business is like baseball; the grand old American way. We're making football up. We play in the same field. We play on the same stand, same stadium, but the difference is we're playing at the same time, tackling the center fielder, if need be. This is where they start to worry. This is the American way. We say: 'Do you want to go our way?' This is the new thing and more people can play on the football field than on the baseball field.



(( Expanding the range of music available via the Web. ))

ATN: Do you buy the idea as MP3s being part of a cultural revolution?

Chuck D: MP3 is an example. There's quite a few forms of downloadable formats and more to come. But MP3 is the buzzword. If you had a tape recorder and wanted to tape FM radio, who you gonna tell? The FM radio station don't play my record. It sets you up for more exposure to the marketplace. So what if they got a copy! I think the whole future of how we look at albums is gonna be different. Who says an album has to be 12 cuts? Well, a legal team and a major corporation says it has to be 12 cuts. So why should a group deliver an album for 12 cuts thick? They usually say: 'Well, if it's gonna go on retail, it's gonna be a dollar a cut.' Can you make an album of four cuts and sell it for $5? The difference is that now we might have a situation where the artist determines how much they wanna sell their album for. I'm pretty sure the artist won't be upset if they can sell 10 million for a dollar.

ATN: David Bowie recently told me he was envisioning a situation where, let's say he has 20 tracks that he's finished. You could go to his site and create your own album, put together the 10 tracks that you want for $10 and then you've created a custom album. CONTINUE >>