More than 30 years since it first dropped, Public Enemy’s hit song “Burn Hollywood Burn” is unexpectedly finding new life, and Chuck D has some thoughts about it. Featuring Ice Cube and Big Daddy Kane, the song deals with a range of societal issues of the time, like Black representation in the entertainment industry, racism, and exploitation.
The song even specifically calls out the film industry, calling for fellow Black people to, “make our own movies like Spike Lee / ‘Cause the roles being offered don’t strike me / As nothing that the black man could use to earn / Burn Hollywood, burn.”
The popular track from their third studio album “Fear of a Black Planet” is suddenly trending as Los Angeles experiences one of the worst wildfires in the city’s history. But as the song suddenly trends on sites like TikTok, Chuck D is keeping it real with his fans, asking them to refrain from using the track in this context as it does not align with its original intent.
“Burn Hollywood Burn’ is a protest song,” the statement reads, as D explains that the song was, “extracted from the Watts Rebellion monikered by the Magnificent Montague,” when in 1965 the DJ said “burn, baby, burn” on air in a cry against inequality.
“We made mind revolution songs aimed at a one-sided exploitation by [an] industry,” D added, providing the song’s original context, which in no way referred to natural disasters when it was written, despite the title.
He added that the song, “has nothing to do with families losing everything they have in a natural disaster.” The statement concludes with him writing, “Learn the history. Godspeed to those in loss.”
The comment section of the post is filled with responses, with one user writing, “I don’t know how anyone that listens to your music could have misconstrued that.”
Another user shared similar sentiments, writing, “As an L.A. native we know that song wasn’t a literal desire to burn Hollywood down. You were expressing disdain for Hollywood elites. We gotcha back.”
D made one more plea in the comments as well, specifically writing, “Please don’t use our song on your reels and pictures of this horrifying natural disaster.”
As we have reported, the heartbreaking and unprecedented fires in Los Angeles have made national news for days. Thousands of people have lost their homes as fires have run wild in Pacific Palisades, Altadena, Malibu, Hollywood Hills, Woodland Hills, and more. Many of these victims, as many creators have pointed out online, are not just celebrities and rich folks, but working-class people of color, specifically in neighborhoods like Altadena and elsewhere.