Chuck D’s digital doctrine: Inviting fans to participate from minute one

We're chuffed this week to have had Public Enemy's Chuck D writing the comment piece for the Music Ally Report. We enjoyed his piece so much, in fact, that we wanted to publish it here for a wider audience. So without further ado, read on!“While this year marks the 20th anniversary of Fight The Power, I’d like to point to a lesser known commemoration from ten years back, when Public Enemy left Def Jam and entered the world of digital distribution.About a year before, in 1998, smack dab in the middle of Public Enemy headlining the Smokin’ Grooves tour, we created www.publicenemy.com and it became one of the very first artist sites in rap and hip hop. The Terrordome became what netizens would later call a ‘blog’. My points were heard and read beyond any interview I could do, direct from the source.For the previous years leading up to it, I wondered when there could be TV on the web, if people could eventually email songs, and how about folks becoming one with the artistry. A seamless artist-audience relationship. All I could do back then is dream, wish, write, and wait. So I waited. And wrote.A year later, it was [...]