Of course, the answer to why few notice anymore is obvious: like Bob Dylan they keep making the records they want to make whether anybody gives a shit or not. If they’d quit before 1994’s Muse Sick-n-Hour Mess Age, the album that marked their precipitous drop in popularity and prestige after their world-changing first four, they could have made a huge splash with a ‘comeback’ sometime in the last 5 years and increased their audience for the 2007 album ten-fold (witness the difference in interest between a new Sonic Youth album and even the merest whiff of a possibility of a new Pixies record).

But Chuck D has a singular devotion to what he believes in, and it has absolutely nothing to do with trends or the opinions of others or record sales or what is effectual. He is a prophet, but of the old testament style, continuing with the same message whether he is talking to the world from a multi-platinum precipice or talking to himself on an empty street corner, like that time God ruined Hosea‘s life by making him marry an ingrate prostitute so she could be a living representation of the way the Israelites were treating their Supreme—and no one paid any mind to him anyway. I reckon that’d make him one of the more interesting people to listen to again, even if you’ve been ignoring him for the past 15 years.

kern