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 \u201880s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Spanning the onset of COVID-19 through the first year of the Joe \u201cBye-Don\u201d 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\u2019s energetic \u201cNaphic Grovels\u201d marry text with drawings, commenting on contemporary events with the same activist instinct that propelled Public Enemy\u2019s \u201cmusic-with-a-message\u201d reputation. His inventive, Amiri Baraka\u2013esque 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Each journal follows a distinct period in Chuck D\u2019s (and America\u2019s) life; There\u2019s a Poison Goin On chronicles the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, from February\u2013April 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
No song may be more reflective of 1980s America than Public Enemy\u2019s \u201cFight the Power;\u201d no document may come to capture our COVID era like Chuck D\u2019s STEWdio.<\/p>","protected":false},"featured_media":10236,"template":"","format":[59],"meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"book-author":[195],"blockchain":[4,64],"book-genre":[],"narrator":[],"book-publisher":[196],"series":[154],"class_list":["post-10222","book-dea","type-book-dea","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","book-author-chuck-d","blockchain-cardano","blockchain-polygon","format-ebook","book-publisher-enemy-books","series-living-author-2-0"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n