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Public Enemy frontman Chuck D is used to the triennial grumbling from KISS bassist/singer Gene Simmons about how hip-hop does not belong in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. But after the 2014 Rock Hall inductee once again took aim at rap being included in the HOF earlier this week, the Hard Rhymer provided the God of Thunder with a little history lesson on what rocks, and what rolls.
“Gene Simmons seems to say this every three years,” said D, whose group was inducted into the Rock Hall in 2013 — one year earlier than KISS — in a video posted by TMZ on Thursday (Feb. 12). “I guess when the latest group of hip-hop artists and rap music artists come in he’s gonna issue his point. He’s the rock god, you know? But what he fails to realize is that it’s the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. And everything else, other than rock, when rock n’ roll splintered in the ’60s, is the roll.”
Last year’s inductees included Outkast and Salt N Pepa, with A Tribe Called Quest getting the call in 2024.
Ticking off soul music, reggae and rap, D said the vocal on top of the music is what he deemed “the roll, that’s the flow, that’s the soul in it. Yeah, KISS are rock gods, but they don’t have a lot of roll to them.” Born in 1960 and raised as a child in the peak of the civil rights movement, D, 65, said he’s not even phased by being told he doesn’t belong somewhere. “I really relish the opportunity that I’m able to even be in the music business at all,” said D. “Thank God for hip-hop and rap music making it possible.”
Well aware that Simmons, 76, “is never gonna get off of that point,” D expects the greasepaint rocker to keep banging on about rap’s place in the RRHOF, casually plugging his new book, In the House of Chaos: Art & Activism With Public Enemy’s Chuck D, as well as the fact that he taught a UCLA class on hip-hop culture and its deep historical roots.
D’s response came after Simmons opined on the place of rap in the Rock Hall on the LegendsNLeaders podcast, lamenting that Iron Maiden is not in the Hall, but that hip-hop pioneer Grandmaster Flash [class of 2007] is. “Ice Cube and I had a back and forth — he’s a bright guy, and I respect what he’s done,” Simmons continued. “It’s not my music. I don’t come from the ghetto. It doesn’t speak my language. I said in print many times: Hip-hop does not belong in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, nor does opera, symphony orchestras … it’s called the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.”
In his retort, D also noted that he’s not trying to change Simmons’ seemingly sclerotic beliefs, but rather keep the dialogue open. “Ghetto don’t mean Black… ghettos came out of [a] European term, a cluster of people who were kind of like the same tribe in the same area,” he said. “You just gotta have education so you won’t be rattled by things that just come out of left field.”
Speaking of an open dialogue, back in 2014, D was magnanimous when KISS finally got their turn after 15 years of Rock Hall eligibility. “I always felt KISS deserved to be inducted,” Chuck said at the time. Simmons, naturally, did not reciprocate, saying in an interview around the time that hip-hop acts such as PE don’t belong in the Hall. Back then, though, D stuck a similar note, saying he thought the rock elder statesman was taking an, “old-fashioned, limited position that rock ’n’ roll is for guitars and some other primitive s–t like that. I guess his point was that he wants to be judged against the artists he thinks are his peers, like maybe Aerosmith.”
Simmons defended his comments from earlier this week in an interview with People, in which he doubled-down on his “ghetto” rhetoric, while paying homage to rock’s Black roots. “Let’s cut to the chase. The word ‘ghetto,’ it originated with Jews. It was borrowed by African Americans in particular and respectfully, not in a bad way,” said Simmons, who insisted that he was not using the word in a racist or bigoted way to refer to rappers.
“Ghetto is a Jewish term … How could you be, when rock is Black music? It’s just a different Black music than hip-hop, which is also Black music,” Simmons said. “Rock ‘n’ roll owes everything to Black music, statement of fact, period. All the major forms of American music owe their roots to Black music.”
