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Public Enemy Look Back At 20 Years Of "By The Time I Get To Arizona"

5:57 p.m. · November 10, 2011 · by David Padula

Chuck D sat down with Spin's Evan Serpick to discuss the message, motive and impact of Public Enemy's "By the Time I Get to Arizona." Featured on the group's fourth album, Apocalypse '91: The Enemy Strikes Black, the song protested not only the 1988 cancellation of Martin Luther King Day by then-Governor Evan Mecham, but also a 1990 vote that shot down a proposal to make MLK Day a state holiday in Arizona. Upon cancellation of the day, Mecham said, "I guess King did a lot for the colored people, but I don't think he deserves a national holiday."

The interview with Chuck is very in-depth, and you'll get a lot of information regarding this one PE track. The video for "Arizona" was directed by Eric Meza, who had previously done work for N.W.A. You might be surprised to learn, also, that the group didn't put out the song to "be popular," as Chuck says. Questioned about the clash between King's pacifism and the video's violent content, the rapper answers:

Dr. King didn't make the video. Dr. King died a violent death and I was answering that. As a child, I was pissed off that they killed Dr. King and I was answering that. Regardless of what Dr. King believed, the act of his life being taken was not a passive thing. So I don't feel any contradiction to this moment. Look, I'm for peace, but I can make a visual statement about how I feel about what happened. The actuality is that I shot a video in rebuttal to something that happened in real life.

"By the Time I Get to Arizona" aired only once on MTV in 1990. Since then, Chuck Dremixed the track in 2010 with DJ Spooky--in response to SB 1070, Arizona's racist anti-immigration bill, which is now law. Similarly, Toki Wright released a cover of the PE cut that addressed the southwestern state's stance on the matter as well. You can read the whole interview over at Spin.