Public Enemy is back in full force this year with plans to drop not one but two albums. Most of My Heroes Don’t Appear on No Stamp drops in June and the follow-up album, The Evil Empire of Everything, drops in September. Chuck D recently spoke with Billboard and described the albums as “two concise statements that are connected in the same breath.”

However, the free charity concerts seem the most intriguing with plans to play on the eve of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and the Operation: Skid Row Festival that benefits the Los Angeles Community Action Network.

The Operation: Skid Row Festival will benefit low-income families is east L.A. by providing them with stable housing. This excerpt from Billboard best sums up what Chuck D’s intentions are:

Chuck D says that this weekend’s festival should help align rap music with public service, as well as leave behind American hip-hop’s reputation as a vehicle for brands and blatant greed.

“[Outsiders] look at rap music and artists in hip-hop as being as elitist as the power structures that keep them down,” he says. “You’ve got organizations in your city that are trying to say and do the right thing–who are practically invisible–fighting for some media time.

“What other place do I have? My place in hip-hop is not to be a tycoon, making trillions with a yacht. That’s not my place. My place is maybe bringing people together and me being able to identify and illuminate a cause, and we’ll make it comfortable for them to be themselves but say what they’ve really been wanting to say all along, you know, with my protection.”

via [Billboard]

Sean