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By Teresa Wiltz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 13, 2000; Page C01

If you saw "The Matrix," you know what the deal is. If you didn't, here's the Cliffs Notes: Basically, we're all just a bunch of zombie pods, enslaved by computers that suck our lifeblood. To break free of the Matrix, you must free your mind, and then your bod will follow. Of course, to do this, you gotta have a guru, in this case an enigmatic philosopher type named Morpheus, played by Laurence Fishburne wearing shades and hipper-than-thou black leather.

But what does a sci-fi flick have to do with the congressional testimony of Chuck D, legendary rapper, author, Internet entrepreneur? Everything, he says. Chuck D, the Morpheus of the free-music movement, has come to this bland little hearing room, sporting a backward baseball cap and a Rapstation sweat shirt, because to him, "The Matrix" isn't just a great movie--he's seen it four times--it's a metaphor.

But dig it: In real life, he says, it's the music establishment--not the machines--that has enslaved us. The computers will actually bring about salvation. Sort of.

"Break Free From the Matrix," Chuck D, the 39-year-old leader of the '80s rap group Public Enemy, pronounces on his Web site, www.rapstation.com. "The New Music Industry Is Here!" Taking Gil Scott-Heron one step further, Chuck says: "The Revolution will not be Televised, it will be Digitized."

Indeed, the revolution has come in the form of guerrilla software with geeky names like MP3 and Napster and Gnutella, software that allows computer users to swap and hoard clean digital copies of their favorite songs. Gratis. Not surprisingly, this has become the darling of the college set and the nightmare of the music industry. Copyright suits and injunctions are flying, musicians are shaking their fists at fellow musicians over the wisdom of giving away music, and even fans are being hauled into court.

And in the midst of all this, some observers say the musical powers-that-be are starting to look like the powers-that-were.

"Them days are over," Chuck D told the House Committee on Small Business recently. "Digital distribution and file sharing is like those asteroids that wiped out all the dinosaurs. And in this case, the dinosaurs are the Big Four: Sony, BMG, Time Warner and Universal. . . .

"Napster and downloadable distribution is the biggest excitement since disco, rap and the Beatles. It is like new radio. . . . The chickens have finally come home to roost."

If you're hearing an echo of Malcolm X, that's not completely unintentional.

Got to give us what we want
Gotta give us what we need
Our freedom of speech is freedom or death
We got to fight the powers that be

-- "Fight the Power," Public Enemy

There are those who want to take this newfangled technology, chain it down, contain it, maybe make it go away. But that would be like trying to handcuff ether.

In the midst of all this is Chuck D, a k a Carlton Ridenhour--a husband and father of three, a man coming straight outta Long Island, armed with droll witticisms and a flair for the dramatic. He's an Adelphi University grad whose rap group once sold millions of records, but whose latest CD, Public Enemy's "There's a Poison Going On," has tallied only 35,000 units, according to Soundscan. A man who swears that this technology will save the music industry from itself.

It's a big message. But he's a man who understands the value of hyperbole and performance. A man who knows that testifying before Congress is, at heart, well, testifying. In the old-fashioned sense of the word. So he lays it on thick.

Because it's all about a new paradigm, baby.

Other musicians--Filter, Madonna, Eminem--call the Napsterites nothing but thieves, but as Chuck D sees it, in this new world order it's all about a communal approach to commerce--commerce without the middleman. The entire planet is one big family, a wired world of music contained only by the boundaries of bandwidth and bravado.

This is the deal, according to the Chuckster:

If you're a musician, you give a little to get a lot. You get to control the content of your product--and the money coming to you. If you're a consumer, you get to customize your CDs. Everyone gets to partake of the musical pie. Musicians will get to keep more of the money from their sales. Every artist gets heard.

That makes sense to some artists, like Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit, who this summer will embark on a tour sponsored by Napster, the California software company that has helped turn downloading into a youth craze. But it doesn't cut it with rapper Dr. Dre or drummer Lars Ulrich from Metallica, both of whom are suing fans who've downloaded their tunes free of charge.

"It's about controlling what you own," Ulrich said recently on "The Charlie Rose Show," where he debated Chuck D. "We clearly own songs, we own the master recording to those, and we want to be the ones to control the use of those on the Internet.

"It's not really about the money," Ulrich added. "Part of what we're trying to do here is make people understand what they are doing is illegal. I'm not even gonna get into the moral issue."

Then there's Madonna, the original multimillionaire Material Girl, who was furious after her yet-to-be-released single was leaked onto the Internet earlier this month.

"This music was stolen and was not intended for release for several months," Madonna's manager, Caresse Norman, said in a statement. "Those sites that offered a download of Madonna's music are violating her rights as an artist."

Right now, no one is clear about how artists can benefit financially from this, especially when anyone with a mouse and a ton of patience can download thousands of tunes free. Of course, the fat cats in the corner offices are scrambling to figure that out.

But for enterprising consumers--like the students at Springbrook High in Silver Spring who are doing a brisk business selling downloaded CDs to their classmates at five bucks a pop--the calculus is simple.

"You don't want to pay $16 when you can pay $5," says a Springbrook senior, who asked not to be identified for fear of ratting out his buddies. "It's everywhere. And the sound is the same as a regular CD."

Tommy Silverman, founder and president of the indie label Tommy Boy Records, faced off in Congress against Chuck D, talking about the terror he says is being wrought by Napster.

"It is bad enough you are losing the sales, but you are also losing the element of surprise," he said. "Routinely you can get records a month before they are even out."

Suddenly, Silverman says, his biggest artists--rap acts like De La Soul and Capone and Noreaga--are so paranoid about having their music leaked onto the Internet that they won't let him have copies of their works in progress. And then, on a recent visit home to see his mother, Silverman found his 11-year-old cousin listening to a CD. It was a disc of tunes that the kid had downloaded from the Internet and burned onto a CD. It just happened to contain one of the songs from Silverman's own label.

"It's about bootlegging," says deejay-mixmaster Ali Shaheed Muhammad, formerly of A Tribe Called Quest and now performing with the new R&B group Lucy Pearl. "It's the same old story."

For fans of Napster, particularly the 600,000 or so who have been banned as a result of the lawsuits filed by Dr. Dre and Metallica, them's fightin' words.

Do unto others as they have done unto you
But what in the hell is this world coming to?

-- Metallica, "Fight Fire With Fire"

Coleen Cude, 32, photographs rock bands for a living. Loves Metallica. Saw 'em three times in concert, bought about five of their CDs, even coughed up some cash for some Metallica T-shirts.

Make that loved Metallica. Because now that she's a named defendant in Metallica's copyright suit, she'll never buy another CD by the band again.

"No waaaay. No. They're filthy, filthy rich and this is ridiculous. I've put plenty of money in their pockets."

Cude, who lives in Smithville, Okla., says that once--and only once--she downloaded one of the group's songs. The band tracked her down using consultants who were able to sniff out the names of fans who, like Cude, used Napster.

Cude says she relied on Napster as a tool to sample songs before running out to buy the CD. But now, whenever she tries to sign on to Napster, a sign pops up: "Metallica has banned you from this site." She's tried changing her online name, her handle. Nothing works.

"I don't see how bands lose money off this," Cude says. "If you've never heard of a band, you go on Napster, you love the song and you buy their CD. If they're coming to town, that's one reason you're going to see them play."

Cude sees Metallica's lawsuit as little more than a "big scare tactic for Internet users."

"It's too late. Technology is way out there. Dr. Dre and Metallica can holler all they want, but it's beyond that now."

"Notice the only artists complaining seem to have the fattest pockets. . . . There's no boundaries with this. Damn right I'm a downloader!"

-- Pack FM and Tonedeff, finalists in Rapstation's "Power to the People and the Beats" pro-Napster rap contest

There's a reason why Chuck D calls himself the lyrical terrorist, the "messenger of prophecy" out to eradicate the "vultures of culture." This is what rap--the medium that brought him fame--is all about, bragging and anointing yourself as the Second Coming. Or Morpheus. But Mista Chuck also, to paraphrase one of his Public Enemy hits from back in the day, really believes his hype.

The system, he says, has to be eradicated so that everyone can participate. And he means everyone. "A million artists with a million labels."

"The system has to change and adapt," Chuck said while in Washington to plug his cause. "The whole system actually took something that was free to begin with and made it a profitable thing. Yeah, that was a 20th-century luxury. Now that tree is dry. You can't be shaking the tree when it ain't got no fruit."

As he sees it, that tree--the music industry/Matrix--represents only a few artists. Those whose names are Britney or Christina or Mariah or Ricky are among the lucky few, names that get pummeled into our consciousness on a daily basis, thanks to the marketing muscle of the Big Four. Thousands of others never get heard. Others, like indie folkie Ani DiFranco and former Erykah Badu backup singer N'Dambi, eschew record contracts, preferring to build their audiences through grass-roots efforts.

For musicians who do get a record contract, signing on the dotted line can be the modern-day equivalent of sharecropping: You sign with the company and you owe your soul to the company. You get an advance of, say, $1 million. It's strictly a credit arrangement. Until the artist pays back the company for the costs of making a record, from studio time to video production, she doesn't see a cent. Even once the record label has recouped its advance, most artists make only a small fraction of the retail CD price.

Still, as long as the current paradigm is in place, and the Big Four control the distribution channels--getting music to the stores--it's hard not to play ball with them. If, that is, you want your music to get a wider audience. But there are those who are willing to take a risk.

Take, for example, Jahi, a Cleveland rapper who recently relocated to Laurel. Since the early '90s he's carved out a reputation for himself, either opening for acts like Public Enemy and KRS-One or touring the country on his own, performing at universities. He's been wooed by two major labels, and so far he's resisted, opting instead to market himself on the Net. He makes his own music, pays to manufacture the CDs and sells them himself. So far, he says, he's sold roughly 600 CDs on the Web, marketing his music through sites like rapstation.com. (His own site, www.jahi-online.com, will launch sometime this month.)

He charges $10 per CD and nets about $7.50 of that sum. If he were signed to a major label, he says he'd get about 56 cents per CD. So far, the math works for him, although he is talking to a major label about arranging distribution to major retail outlets.

"There are thousands of emcees who have been left out and who will never get a deal with a major label," Jahi says. "The Internet is allowing the everyday artist or the indie artist access to the world. I'm communicating with South Africa right from my den. I'll give a song away if I can see there's an angle to get more people to listen to my music. As an independent artist, I can gamble like that."

Another soldier for Morpheus. And no doubt about it, the record industry is starting to feel the assault. Recently, the Federal Trade Commission found that the major record labels had been artificially hiking up the prices of CDs. A group of Connecticut music fans promptly filed a $1.5 billion class action suit that accuses Capitol Records, Universal, Sony, Time Warner and BMG of conspiring to overcharge for CDs.

Change is inevitable. "It's wasted effort to fight this thing," says technology forecaster Paul Saffo. "You can't fight it with legislation. The response will be a yet-newer technology that is bureaucrat-proof and record-industry-executive proof. We're standing on the shore of a huge new ocean of opportunity. All the hand-wringers in the music business who are sitting here worried about their CD sales, quite frankly, they're standing on a whale fishing for minnow."

It's likely that industry bean counters will find new revenue models on the Net. One method might be to charge subscription fees--you can access all the MP3 files you want for a monthly bill. Another method would be a system of micro-payments--a few cents to listen to each song. The idea is to make it so cheap to listen to the music that it won't be as tempting to pirate tunes.

Or, coming soon to a cell phone near you will be wireless applications protocols. Let's say you're driving around, listening to a song on the radio. You like the song, so you grab your cellie and push a button. Within days, the CD will be delivered to your doorstep.

"Without a doubt, some people will lose their jobs," says Saffo, whose California-based Institute for the Future tracks trends in technology. "But I guarantee this in the new order: There will be opportunities for musicians to get seriously, seriously rich."

I can tell your future
Look what's in your hand
But I can't stop for nothing
I'm just playing in the band

-- "Playing in the Band," the Grateful Dead

Back before the Net became a neon commercial medium, before the advent of MP3 and Real Player and e-biz and IPOs, it was a community. A place where geeks were into sharing and karma and freedom and all sorts of touchy-feely hippie ideals. It was like a big parking lot after a Grateful Dead show--except in cyberspace.

The comparison is instructive. Take things back three decades or so, when the Dead toured the country, bopping from city to city as a corps of hardy fans followed them around, taping their music and swapping the cassettes among other die-hard fans.

At first, the band didn't like it. They cracked down on fans, admonishing them that anyone caught recording live shows would be booted out.

"We assumed they were stealing our intellectual property," says Dead lyricist and road manager John Perry Barlow. But then the musicians shrugged, figuring they weren't in it for the money, Barlow says. (Which was convenient, considering that they weren't making much cash.)

"We figured it's bad for your karma to be mean to a Deadhead," Barlow says.

And a funny thing happened: The tapes became valuable currency, with Deadheads swapping cassettes back and forth. Like a virus, the music spread. Concerts starting selling out; records went platinum.

For Barlow, who now spends his days at Harvard as a fellow in the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Napster and the other download technologies are spreading the karma. "This is the best thing that can happen to artists," he says.

"The record industry can give you a Britney Spears, an 'N Sync or the Monkees. The real thing markets itself. And news of quality spreads fastest by word of mouth."

A dollar a rhyme but we barely get a dime
If you don't own the Master
Then the Master own you

-- Public Enemy, "Swindler's Lust"

What Chuck D represents is the intersection of culture and technology. It's no coincidence that rap acts are the ones most frequently downloaded on MP3 sites. Rap music, which relies on sampling snippets of sound to create a cohesive whole, is technology's baby.

In its infancy, rap created a communal aesthetic; everyone's music was fair game to be sampled. All you needed to make music were two turntables and a microphone. And then, as they inevitably do, the lawsuits started raining down. Now, samplers pay royalties to the samplees.

So for Chuck D, the Net is the logical next step, a way for him to preserve his artistry. These days he's not signed to a major label. Instead, he's signed a short-term licensing contract with Atomic Pop Records, an Internet-based label. Short-term is the key word here. It's all about control. Which, coincidentally, is what Metallica's Ulrich says about his band's decision to sue Napster and their fans. Both want control. They just don't agree on how to get it.

To spread his message, Chuck D launched rapstation.com, serving up rap news, politics, radio, music videos, a rap contest where wannabes can compete with pro-Napster rhymes (naturally), free music downloads and a mini-movie of Dr. Dre playing a short-order cook at Ben's Chili Bowl. The "rapstation" moniker is deliberate, a nod to Chuck D's belief that the Internet is the radio of the 21st century, radio that embraces the global-village aesthetic.

It's a vision that's a little bit capitalist, a little bit socialist and a little bit anarchist. Chuck doesn't bother with labels. His manager, Walter Leaphart, is a capitalist. That's good enough for him. When you're sought after on the college lecture circuit, making a minimum of three appearances a month--charging anywhere from $5,000 to $10,000 for the privilege--then you can afford to be egalitarian.

You can also afford to be plugged in. For those who don't have access to high-speed modems, or even a computer--including some of the brothers who stop Chuck on the D.C. streets, smiling at the sight of him, pounding fists to chest in solidarity--being wired isn't such an easy thing.

And right now, the reality is, the revolution is leaving some folks behind. There's a digital divide.

Still, Chuck D is out there, spreading the word, the Morpheus of the modem.

"A lot of people are confused, stuck in old ways and the old traditional things and holding on to them. We call people like that caught up in the Matrix. They're just stuck."

Bottom line, as his manager, Leaphart, puts it:

"You got DSL at home? You won't pay for music again."

They laugh. Get quiet.

"What do they think is going to stop this?" asks Chuck. "Baby Jesus? Jesus is going to stop Napster."

They laugh. Like they've already got a new savior. They'll keep on fighting the power--and believing their own hype.

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