Public nuisances

Comparing the post-punk band Public Image Ltd. (PiL) and the hip-hop band Public Enemy (PE) just because their names are similar might seem whimsical. But unlike, say, The Who and The Guess Who or Neal McCoy and Real McCoy, PiL and PE actually have a lot in common.

First, both have new albums: Man Plans God Laughs (Spitdigital) and Live from Metropolis Studios (Def Jam) (PE) and What the World Needs Now … (PiL Official) (PiL). And all three are loud, abrasive, and angry enough to appease fans of both acts’ long and controversial catalogs.

Second, both acts’ catalogs are long and controversial. Why controversial? Because PiL has sometimes confused legitimate bile with rank obnoxiousness and PE has sometimes confused black self-esteem with reverse racism.

Third, neither PiL’s John Lydon (the former Sex Pistol Johnny Rotten) nor PE’s Chuck D and Flavor Flav have mellowed with age. At 59, Lydon keeps raising the bar of the misanthropic high dudgeon that he’s been dishing with maniacal glee for almost 40 years. And at 55 and 56 respectively, D and Flav still hector, heckle, and jive with the goal of advancing what they (often incorrectly) perceive to be the cause of black folk everywhere.

Fourth, both Lydon and D and Flav—their occasional cleverness, wit, and humor notwithstanding—rely overmuch on profanity. Thus they create more heat than light and do their myopic but by no means totally worthless causes less good than they otherwise might.

Fifth, both Lydon (a Brit) and D and Flav (Americans) view the United States through gimlet eyes. In What the World Needs Now’s “Bettie Page,” a tribute to the risqué 1950s pinup queen of the same name, Lydon declares the United States the “greatest pornographic country in the world.” In Man Plans God Laughs’ “No Sympathy from the Devil,” Chuck D sympathizes with America’s 9/11 attackers.

Sixth, both PiL and PE have long had Christianity (or at least their perception of it) in their crosshairs. There’s nothing as scathing on What the World Needs Now … as “Religion I,” “Religion II,” or the anti-exorcism “Annalisa” (from PiL’s eponymous 1978 debut). But Lydon has described PiL’s latest cover art as an homage to Hopi Indian spirituality, the both-and universalism of which he considers superior to the divisive potential of either-or creeds.

And six tracks on Live from Metropolis Studios come from It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, the 1988 album that put PE on the map and the lyrics of which ricocheted mostly within Louis Farrakhan’s and Malcolm X’s ideological parameters. (Curiously, Malcolm X deplored profanity, a fact that seems to have been lost on D and Flav.)

Seventh, both PiL and PE extol universal brotherhood. “No matter your color,” howls Lydon in “Corporate,” “you are family to me!” And in Man Plans God Laughs’ “Earthizen” (as in “citizen of Earth”), Chuck D claims that “no lives matter if we don’t matter,” implying, of course, that all lives matter.

Last, both PiL and PE owe a debt to The Rolling Stones. Besides paraphrasing a Stones title (the aforementioned “No Sympathy from the Devil”), PE layers Man Plans God Laughs’ racism-reversing “Honky Tonk Rules” atop a “Honky Tonk Women” sample. And in the new PiL song “I’m Not Satisfied,” Lydon clearly can’t get no satisfaction. But at least, not unlike D and Flav, he’s trying.

Sometimes, in fact (also not unlike D and Flav), he’s very trying.