On the 28th anniversary of Public Enemy's seminal 1990 album Fear of a Black Planet, the Austin-based band Brownout (best known for their popular Black Sabbath tribute albums) has decided to pay homage to the rap classic by announcing their own project, Fear of a Brown Planet. The record, which will be out May 25 on Fat Beats, will consist of "heavy psych-funk covers of Public Enemy classics in instrumental form," according to the group.
To celebrate the project's impending release, Brownout has teamed with DJ Eclipse for the Fear of a Brown Planet Mixtape, which mixes PE a cappellas over Brownout instrumentals. It's premiering here on Complex, and you can check it out below.
"I wanted to do more than just throw some vocals on top of what Brownout had played," DJ Eclipse told Complex. "I took the few acapellas from Public Enemy that existed and then took little pieces of speeches and phrases from various places to tell a story. I wanted you to hear how dope Brownout was playing the music and how good PE would sound over them. Simultaneously being respectful to what PE means to Hip Hop culture and their message to the world."
Brownout's Adrian Quesada was thrilled with the results.
"What an incredible honor it was to have a mix from underground hip hop legend DJ Eclipse in our hands," he said. "His deep knowledge of the PE catalog as well as the sample source material was evident from the first drop, he even threw in some live Brownout deep cuts! We couldn't have asked for a better mix to give people their first glimpse at our 'Fear of a Brown Planet' album, the blends and remixes/mashups are amazing, the cuts are next level and the references are truly 'meta' and even better, just plain dope. This mix goes hard!"
Fat Beats owner Joseph Abajian explained how the Fear of a Brown Planet album came to be.
"We did a Wu-Tang cover record years back that picked up and became one of our best sellers," he explained. "I was always a Public Enemy fan and always dreamed about doing a project with them. I tired to do some covers in the late 90’s but it didn’t come to fruition. After learning about Brownout and later going to their Brown Sabbath shows, I thought their sound would work covering Public Enemy songs. It was good to know Adrian was a PE fan and liked the proposal I offered. We came up with a track listing and they went to work. The music came out great and now were ready to launch the project."
To check out Brownout's upcoming tour dates, click here.
