What You Gonna Do When the Grid Goes Down?

It's not the sound of a group resting on their laurels, it's the sound of a band summoning their strengths with a hint of sentiment to figure out how to deal with a world gone mad.

What You Gonna Do When The Grid Goes Down? is mostly Public Enemy doing what they’ve always done—offering insight about what’s happening in the world around us and prodding folks to wake up and do the right thing. It’s a space they’ve held for over three decades, and one where they’re always welcome.

A meaty, starry affair.

‘What You Gonna Do When The Grid Goes Down?’ is Public Enemy’s best effort since 1998’s ‘He Got Game’.

Some will inevitably hold every Public Enemy album up against their ironclad classics like Fear Of A Black Planet and It Takes A Nation Of Millions, but to compare What You Gonna Do… to these untoppable milestones is to miss the point. What matters is that PE are not only still going after all this time, but still making music that matters.

Chuck D’s hard-hitting lyrics and the album’s dynamic production can serve as a soundtrack for the American Dream (or nightmare, depending on your perspective) for the foreseeable future. Public Enemy seem here to stay, but the truth is — they have never really left.

With What You Gonna Do When the Grid Goes Down?, the band have concocted a balm for so much of what that ails us. There's certainly something to be said for that.

The most heartening thing about this record isn’t the critical takes, it’s the guys bringing the noise.

‘What You Gonna Do When The Grid Goes Down?’ isn’t without its flaws. Sitting very much in their own lane, the group prefer to finesse – rather than overhaul – their sound, and as a result it can sometimes veer into the predictable. That said, Public Enemy never once let the energy drop, their raw sense of purpose intact.

Lyrically strong, thought provoking and groovy as hell, What You Gonna Do When the Grid Goes Down? shows to the world that Public Enemy still has plenty of gas left in the tank.

Posse-laden re-workings of deathless anthems Public Enemy Number Won and Fight The Power are suitably superfly; rehashing four tracks from 2017's Nothing IS Quick In The Desert less so. A welcome blast if righteous funky wisdom nonetheless. [Dec 2020, p.83]