Fight the Power (1989)

"Fight the Power" is a song by American hip hop group Public Enemy, released as a single in the summer of 1989 on Motown Records. It was conceived at the request of film director Spike Lee, who sought a musical theme for his 1989 film Do the Right Thing. First issued on the film's 1989 soundtrack, the extended version was featured on Public Enemy's third studio album Fear of a Black Planet (1990).

"Fight the Power" incorporates various samples and allusions to African-American culture, including civil rights exhortations, black church services, and the music of James Brown. Spike Lee also directed a music video in Brooklyn featuring a political rally of "a thousand" black youth, with appearances by Lee and the Public Enemy members (Chuck D, Flavor Flav, Terminator X), uniformed Fruit of Islam men, and signs of historic black figures such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X.

As a single, "Fight the Power" reached number one on Hot Rap Singles and number 20 on the Hot R&B Singles. It was named the best single of 1989 by The Village Voice in their Pazz & Jop critics' poll. It has become Public Enemy's best-known song and has received accolades as one of the greatest songs of all time by critics and publications. In 2001, the song was ranked number 288 on the "Songs of the Century" list compiled by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2021, the song was ranked number two on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, and in 2025, it was ranked number two on its list of "The 100 Best Protest Songs of All Time."

Background

In 1988, shortly after the release of their second album It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, Public Enemy were preparing for the European leg of the Run's House tour with Run–D.M.C. Before embarking on the tour, film director Spike Lee approached Public Enemy with the proposition of making a song for one of his movies. Lee, who was directing Do the Right Thing, sought to use the song as a leitmotif in the film about racial tension in a Brooklyn, New York neighborhood. He said of his decision in a subsequent interview for Time, "I wanted it to be defiant, I wanted it to be angry, I wanted it to be very rhythmic. I thought right away of Public Enemy". At a meeting in Lower Manhattan, Lee told lead MC Chuck D, producer Hank Shocklee of the Bomb Squad, and executive producer Bill Stephney that he needed an anthemic song for the film.

While flying over Italy on the tour, Chuck D was inspired to write most of the song. He recalled his idea, "I wanted to have sorta like the same theme as the original 'Fight the Power' by the Isley Brothers and fill it in with some kind of modernist views of what our surroundings were at that particular time." The group's bass player Brian Hardgroove has said of the song's message, "Law enforcement is necessary. As a species we haven't evolved past needing that. Fight the Power is not about fighting authority—it's not that at all. It's about fighting abuse of power."

Recording and production

The Bomb Squad, Public Enemy's production team, constructed the music for "Fight the Power", through the looping, layering, and transfiguring of numerous samples. The track features only two live instrumentalists: saxophone, played by Branford Marsalis, and scratches provided by Terminator X, the group's DJ and turntabilist—Marsalis also played a saxophone solo for the extended soundtrack version of the song.

In contrast to Marsalis' school of thought, Bomb Squad members such as Hank Shocklee wanted to eschew melodic clarity and harmonic coherence in favor of a specific mood in the composition. Shocklee explained that their musicianship was dependent on different tools, exercised in a different medium, and was inspired by different cultural priorities, different from the "virtuosity" valued in jazz and classical music. Marsalis later remarked on the group's unconventional musicality:

They're not musicians, and don't claim to be—which makes it easier to be around them. Like, the song's in A minor or something, then it goes to D7, and I think, if I remember, they put some of the A minor solo on the D7, or some of the D7 stuff on the A minor chord at the end. So it sounds really different. And the more unconventional it sounds, the more they like it.