{"id":6529,"date":"2025-11-07T15:01:35","date_gmt":"2025-11-07T15:01:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/deep-cut-friday-b-side-wins-again-by-public-enemy\/"},"modified":"2025-11-07T15:01:35","modified_gmt":"2025-11-07T15:01:35","slug":"deep-cut-friday-b-side-wins-again-by-public-enemy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/deep-cut-friday-b-side-wins-again-by-public-enemy\/","title":{"rendered":"Deep Cut Friday: \u2018B Side Wins Again\u2019 by Public Enemy"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<figure><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/11\/GettyImages-540748791-2.jpg\" width=\"1200\" height=\"964\" alt=\"Chuck D, Flavor Flav, and Terminator X of Public Enemy in 1987. (Credit: Jack Mitchell\/Getty Images)\"><figcaption>Chuck D, Flavor Flav, and Terminator X of Public Enemy in 1987. (Credit: Jack Mitchell\/Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><em>Each week, SPIN digs into the catalogs of great artists and highlights songs you might not know for our Deep Cut Friday series.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Vinyl singles have historically featured the most accessible and radio-friendly song on the A side, but every now and again, DJs and music fans have flipped the record over and decided they preferred the B side, elevating classics like the Smiths\u2019 \u201cHow Soon Is Now?\u201d and Gloria Gaynor\u2019s \u201cI Will Survive.\u201d Chuck D, who played records for groundbreaking hip-hop shows on the Adelphi University radio station WBAU and on WLIR, made that dynamic the basis of the Public Enemy track \u201cB Side Wins Again.\u201d In the song\u2019s central metaphor, Black America is the overlooked flipside of the country\u2019s white mainstream culture.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<lite-youtube videoid=\"8CIvIEgD5uQ\" style=\"bottom: 0; height: 100%; left: 0; position: absolute; right: 0; top: 0; width: 100%; max-width:100%;\"><\/lite-youtube>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p>Appropriately, \u201cB Side Wins Again\u201d made its debut on the B side of Public Enemy\u2019s 1989 single \u201cBlack Steel in the Hour of Chaos.\u201d As with many of Public Enemy\u2019s songs of the era, \u201cB Side Wins Again\u201d is a dense collage of samples, with the Bomb Squad assembling shards of songs by the Commodores, Kool &amp; the Gang, and the Jazz Crusaders. A year later, a slightly remixed version of \u201cB Side Wins Again\u201d gained greater renown on Public Enemy\u2019s third album <em>Fear of a Black Planet<\/em>, where it appropriately follows an instrumental titled \u201cLeave This Off Your Fuckin\u2019 Charts.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>More from Spin:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.spin.com\/2025\/11\/2026-grammy-nominees\/\">Kendrick, Lady Gaga Top Grammy Nominee Field<\/a>\n\t\t<\/li>\n<li>\n\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.spin.com\/2025\/11\/5-albums-i-cant-live-without-steven-kilbey-of-the-church\/\">5 Albums I Can\u2019t Live Without:\u00a0Steven Kilbey of The Church<\/a>\n\t\t<\/li>\n<li>\n\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.spin.com\/2025\/11\/atlanta-influences-everything\/\">Atlanta Influences Everything<\/a>\n\t\t<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<lite-youtube videoid=\"MkgjK1gOBj8\" style=\"bottom: 0; height: 100%; left: 0; position: absolute; right: 0; top: 0; width: 100%; max-width:100%;\"><\/lite-youtube>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p>Public Enemy revisited the song with \u201cB Side Wins Again (Scattershot Remix)\u201d on the 2002 album <em>Revolverlution<\/em>. Three years later, Chuck D guested on DJ Spooky and Slayer drummer Dave Lombardo\u2019s version of \u201cB Side Wins Again\u201d for their album <em>Drums of Death<\/em>. In June 2025, Public Enemy began working the song into their concert setlists for the first time in over a decade, with Chuck D rapping just the fourth verse of \u201cB Side Wins Again\u201d during a show in Florence, Italy.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-three-more-essential-public-enemy-deep-cuts\"><strong>Three more essential Public Enemy deep cuts:<\/strong><\/h2>\n<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-timebomb\"><strong>\u201cTimebomb\u201d<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>By the time Public Enemy\u2019s debut album <em>Yo! Bum Rush the Show<\/em> was released in 1987, most hip-hop songs had adopted a structure of 16-bar verses in between choruses. \u201cTimebomb,\u201d however, was Chuck D\u2019s old school tour de force, with 66 consecutive bars and no hook.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-security-of-the-first-world\"><strong>\u201cSecurity of the First World\u201d<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Public Enemy never scored a Top Ten single, but they influenced a lot of popular music. \u201cSecurity of the First World,\u201d a brief instrumental from 1988\u2019s <em>It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back<\/em>, became the basis of a No. 1 pop hit when Lenny Kravitz sampled it for Madonna\u2019s 1990 single \u201cJustify My Love.\u201d<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-move\"><strong>\u201cMove!\u201d<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Bronx rapper Sister Souljah replaced Professor Griff as Public Enemy\u2019s \u2018Minister of Information\u2019 and made her on-record debut on \u201cMove!\u201d from <em>Apocalypse 91\u2026 The Enemy Strikes Black<\/em>. A year later, Sister Souljah released a solo album, and her comments to the <em>Washington Post<\/em> about the L.A. riots became a flashpoint of controversy during Bill Clinton\u2019s presidential campaign.<\/p>\n<p>To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.spin.com\/2021\/07\/the-greatest-rock-stars-of-all-time\/?utm_source=yahoo&amp;utm_medium=bottomlink&amp;utm_campaign=yahoolink\">click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\" class=\"sharethis-inline-share-buttons\" ><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Chuck D, Flavor Flav, and Terminator X of Public Enemy in 1987. (Credit: Jack Mitchell\/Getty Images) Each week, SPIN digs into the catalogs of great artists and highlights songs you&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2152,1792,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-deep-cut-friday","category-public-enemy","category-pushly"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6529"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6529\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}