Public Enemy would be found in any hip hop lover’s record collection, and Fear of a Black Planet is generally regarded as the pinnacle of that classic band’s career. Therefore, it was not hard to see why their show had sold out within a day of being announced.

When we arrived, Ozi Batla of legendary Sydney outfit The Herd was on stage with local DJ Wasabi ably assisting him on the wheels of steel. The crowd wasn’t giving out too much energy at this point. While Ozi’s set was solid, I was feeling as though the crowd could be more pumped up for a Public Enemy gig.

Unexpectedly, Sudanese rap duo Bangs jumped onto stage, and solved this issue. They rhymed about such controversial topics as, “Christmas coming really sooooon!” (hang about – wasn’t that last weekend?!), and something about taking us to the movies, and eating lots of popcorn. They were not afraid to use props to illustrate their point either – tossing bags of popcorn into the audience for effect. Perhaps it wasn’t intentionally funny, but it still amounted to champagne comedy.

After a 20-minute break, the familiar introduction to Fear of a Black Planet blasted out of the speakers. The crowd went crazy as DJ Lord approached the decks, his face partially concealed with a black bandana for dramatic effect. The S1W soldiers came marching in quickly after, saluting the band, and the fans. The arrival of Chuck D and Flava Flav sent the crowd into a frenzy, as they ripped through Brothers Gonna Work It Out, 911 Is A Joke and Welcome To The Terrordome.

In between tracks, Flava kept up the banter, and was on fire in the comedy department. It was encouraging to see that he had a sense of irony too, giving himself a bit of a funny diss over his Flava Of Love reality show from a few years back. Having said that, he still got up to his old tricks, giving a few shout-outs the lovely ladies in the audience, and announcing himself as “The Black Hugh Hefner”!

This was a Fear of a Black Planet themed show, and not an entire recreation of the album. So inter-spliced between tracks from that album, they played songs from other early P.E. albums, such as Bring The Noise, Don’t Believe The Hype and Cole Lampin_.

At about the halfway point of the show, Chuck announced that DJ Lord had created a tribute to Terminator X, by performing the song of the same name from Takes a Nation of Millions…, and you know what? He absolutely nailed it. The familiar Flash Gordon-sampling intro whipping the crowd in into a frenzy. If there were any doubters about DJ Lord’s ability to fill Terminator X’s shoes, then I’m thinking there most certainly was not after he then proceeded to completely rip apart Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit.

The band appeared to be much looser by this point, the lead guitarist playing his instrument behind his head. Even Flava had a go on the drums. Rounding up the evening were such classics as Rebel Without A Pause, Can’t Truss It and By The Time I Get To Arizona. These songs really benefited form the looser, live aspect.

Closing out the set proper was – yep, you guessed it – Fight The Power. Flava promised us all at the start of the evening that we would get our money’s worth, and we most definitely did. The show having already gone over 30 minutes over-time, he coaxed the band into another track, finishing with an exuberant and thrashy She Watch Channel Zero. One of my personal highlights of 2010.