Legendary hip-hop artist and social activist Chuck D
has used every opportunity in his groundbreaking career to stand up for
civil rights. His rap group Public Enemy is widely regarded as a
revolutionary act both in terms of its impact on hip-hop and its use of
music to impart a message of race and class equality. The band emerged
from the late 1970s/early ‘80s coalescence of rap, punk, and street art
into hip-hop music culture on the East Coast. At the time, Chuck D had
completed his BFA in graphic design, and while his music career
exploded, his passion for visual art never left his heart.In February 2020, he turned his gaze once again to the
page, and began to fill three 5 x 8 journals with his written and drawn
reflections of a world beginning to unravel. STEWdio: The Naphic Grovel ARTrilogy of Chuck D
recreates format of his original art, combining three full-color
paperback bound books into a beautiful box set. The box set is the
inaugural offering from Enemy Books, the new Akashic Books imprinted
curated by Chuck D.Spanning the onset of COVID-19 through the first year of
the Joe “Bye-Don” administration, Chuck D lends his powerful artistic
voice to one of the most tumultuous periods in American history, and
puts it in a capsule. Like the neo-expressionist graffiti art of
Jean-Michel Basquiat, Chuck D’s energetic “Naphic Grovels” marry text
with drawings, commenting on contemporary events with the same activist
instinct that propelled Public Enemy’s “music-with-a-message”
reputation. His inventive, Amiri Baraka–esque language and accompanying
art is also occasionally used as a tool for introspection, providing
unparalleled insight into one of the most important cultural figures of
our time.Each journal follows a distinct period in Chuck D’s (and America’s) life; There’s a Poison Goin On chronicles the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, from February–April 2020; 45 Daze of REaD Octobot follow the days leading up to and the aftermath of the historic 2020 election; and Datamber Mindpaper, which focuses on the early days of the Biden administration.No song may be more reflective of 1980s America than
Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power;” no document may come to capture our
COVID era like Chuck D’s STEWdio.