August 13, 2007

Public Enemy Want You to Sell Their New Album

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Seminal hip-hop group Public Enemy will make their new, unfortunately-titled album, How You Sell Soul To A Soulless People Who Have Sold Their Soul, available, um, for sale, on personal home pages and profiles, as well as independent online stores. No word on whether those sites will themselves be soulless. CMJ reports the band will utilize online “music broker” Musicane, which apparently lets fans participate in distributing digital material, receiving a commission for their trouble. A quick perusal of the Musicane website shows material by Jason Mraz and Henry Rollins; the latter, for instance, offers a six-part spoken word album, “Eric the Pilot,” for $4.99, and the opportunity to “resell this product and make 10%.”

Public Enemy’s new album has received mixed reviews at best; remember, all their ground-breaking work came between 1987 and 1991, a brief but overwhelmingly intense blast of brilliance and creativity that seemed both inextricably linked to its historical moment and too good to last. By their 1994 album, Muse Sick-n-Hour Mess Age, they’d already ceased to be relevant, musically or politically. But how hilarious was the Comedy Central roast of Flavor Flav this weekend? I love roasts.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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