*editor's note: This story was originally published 2/25/21
"By The Time I Get To Arizona" appeared on Public Enemy's 4th studio album, Apocalypse 91... The Enemy Strikes Black, which celebrates its 30th anniversary in October. The song continued Public Enemy's tradition of using music — specifically Hip-Hop — to educate listeners on social justice issues and call out inequities, hypocrisies, and straight up bullshit. As Chuck D has reminded us several times, the man just, "Don’t rhyme for the sake of riddlin’."
Public Enemy’s raps are like direct punches - straight jabs that come quickly, from all angles, and rarely off-target. It’s easy to close your eyes and see Chuck D boxing with the beat. His phrasing, his flow, and his delivery combine to float like a butterfly and sting like a bee.
“I think before I even get to the point where I'm able to cut the vocal in the studio, I envision where it should go, how it should sound, how it should feel, or going along when it goes on paper,” Chuck D says about his writing and recording process.
"By The Time I Get To Arizona" is a great example of that style, as Chuck weaves through bars that directly and indirectly address then-Arizona Governor Evan Mecham's decision to remove Martin Luther King Day as a paid holiday for the state’s workers. Chuck employs a variety of poetic techniques to link that decision to political representation, voter suppression, and the prison industrial complex. Words are meticulously chosen and delivered.
“I always knew how to carefully write the language, have double-entendres, add some slang, a little patois, spit it out on top of beats,” Chuck says. “And when they sat it down, spread it out and they read it and examined it, it was kind of ambiguous at the same time.”
If Chuck D’s bars are coded and a bit ambiguous, the song’s intro by Sistah Soulja is the exact opposite. She begins the record as cutting and as clear as could be, and exactly outlines its purpose: “Public Enemy believes that the powers that be in the states of New Hampshire and Arizona have found psychological discomfort in paying tribute to a black man who tried to teach white people the meaning of civilization.”
Bingo. A clear thesis and a large reason that song holds relevance today. As much as things have changed in America (and specifically Arizona), much remains the same. At the top of that list is a general refusal to accept the truth, and instead to stick to a “Make America Great Again” narrative that fails to acknowledge America’s failed ability to ever achieve greatness.