With a lyric by Flavor Flav and beats by Public Enemy "Bomb Squad" members Keith Shocklee and Eric Sadler, this song bashes the 911 emergency response system in urban areas, where according to Flav, you're better off calling the morgue truck, because you'll be dead by the time they get there. The song is comical in tone (this is Flavor Flav, after all), but the concern is real: 911 services can be quite lacking in poor neighborhoods where they are underfunded.
Unlike most Public Enemy songs where Chuck D. handles most of the vocals, Flav takes the lead here, paving the way for his subsequent reality show notoriety.
We'd like to point out that Flavor Flav (born William Drayton) does have some musical talent, he just chooses not to use it most of the time. In our chat with Harold Brown of the group War, we learned that Flavor came from a musical family and can play piano, drums and guitar. With Public Enemy, he served as comic relief, and Chuck D. always made it clear that he was a character designed to take the edge off their socially and politically charged songs. Unlike character singers like Alice Cooper, however, Flav stays in character and even amplifies it at opportune times, which leads to more reality TV gigs.
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