Before Public Enemy took the stage in front of tens of thousands of fans at the Evolution Festival on Saturday, its co-founder Chuck D spoke to a group of about 50 people crowded into Legends’ Gallery.
The hip-hop innovator’s mixed-media show, “Roll Call: Most of My Heroes Don’t Appear on No Stamps,” is on view at the Grand Center gallery through Nov. 12. The show collects portraits of musicians the artist admires, including Harry Belafonte, Nina Simone and Woody Guthrie.
“Words can start wars and stop them, and images can do the same thing,” Chuck D said in an interview before entering the gallery for a Q&A session with attendees. “What’s actually becoming a lost skill and attribute is listening. People are listening less,” he added, “but their eyes are open and they’re looking at images. Art stands a chance when people are looking at it.”
Chuck D studied graphic design at Adelphi University before he and Flavor Flav founded Public Enemy, the hip-hop group that foregrounded politics in its lyrics, helping move the genre into a new era. The emcee began making drawings and paintings in his hotel rooms while on tour and has collected 250 paintings, drawings and sketches into his book “Livin’ Loud.”
Lorrie Boula and Adrian Miller curated “Roll Call: Most of My Heroes Don’t Appear on No Stamps.” The show will move on to other cities, Miller said.
“I want St. Louis to embrace what we've already known and love, and get different sectors of it,” Miller said of Chuck D’s artistic output. “That's the hope and dream, that the hip-hop music we've grown through and had a chance to hear on the radio, and that's brought us all together as a collective – I want to see that it continues on. This is another tentacle in it.”
The term hip-hop can refer to music, art, dance, fashion or more. When working as a visual artist, Chuck D said, he’s just expressing another form of hip-hop.
“It’s never just been an aural presentation, like, ‘Yeah, you got music poppin’, that’s hip-hop.’ No. Hip-hop has been an embodiment, a surrounding, and that’s been its strong point. You want people to have a full, detailed understanding of its power,” he said.
Chuck D said he hopes his show will impact St. Louis viewers by letting them know that they have a place in the fine art world.
“The impact you want people to have is that they could do it, too. You could take an artist and put them in a blank corner, and they're going to come out of that corner with something. You don't want them to think that they're crazy different and at a disadvantage. You want them to think that you’ve got your art. Your art will take care of you. It'll give you an ultimate answer,” Chuck D said.
