Brownout is an Austin-based Latin funk group that was formed about fifteen years ago by members of Grupo Fantasma. The group had been touring, lending support as a backing band, and releasing albums for quite some time before they garnered even more attention for their Brown Sabbath album which came out it 2015, which featured their interpretations of Black Sabbath songs. It was so successful, in fact, that they came out with a second volume just last year. While they were getting ready to shift out of that mode and get back to original material, Joseph Abajian of Fat Beats approached them about doing a Public Enemy album. With the band being huge fans of the seminal hip hop group, the opportunity was too good to pass up. So with an album of original material now slated for release next year, Brownout now present Fear of a Brown Planet.

An album like this is an interesting listening experience. There’s a certain amount of novelty built into the concept, even if the band is being completely earnest in their performance. It just takes a little while for the brain to process through hearing different versions of songs that we know so well. First, it should be noted that while the title of this album is a reference to Fear of a Black Planet, this isn’t a track-by-track remake of the album. While most of the tracks that Brownout perform come from that album, they aren’t in order, and there are a few songs here and there from other Public Enemy albums, such as It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. Once you get all of this processed in your brain, and it might take a moment, the second time listening through the album becomes much more enjoyable, once you’re able to pass from the compare/contrast mode and just enjoy the music for what it is. And what is this music? Funky as hell, that’s what. What this album really does is serve as a good reminder that once you peel apart the layers of the Bomb Squad’s dense hip hop beats, what you’re left with is some killer old-school funk, built from samples of James Brown, Sly and the Family Stone, The Meters, George Clinton, Kool and the Gang, Isaac Hayes, and many others. It just so happens that that’s right in Brownout’s wheelhouse, so what we end up getting is an album that might use Public Enemy as a bouncing off point, but Brownout is really able to translate the material and make it their own, delivering on just some great instrumental funk. The group has been around so long and played so many shows, they are as tight as a group could be, which is exactly what you need to be a successful funk outfit. These guys just really know how to feel each other out, stay in the pocket, and feed off each other’s energy. My personal favorite on the album is their interpretation of “By The Time I Get To Arizona,” which really drives home the connection between the P.E. song and Isaac Haye’s version of “By The Time I Get To Phoenix,” and features some killer guitar work. Ultimately, what this album ultimately accomplishes is serving as a great reminder that political music can come in all shapes and sizes, and the instrumental funk of a Latin American band from Texas bringing together the funk and soul of the late sixties and early seventies through the filter of hip hop form the late eighties and early nineties performed in 2018 can be a pretty damn powerful thing.

I didn’t quite know what to expect when I first hit play on Fear of a Brown Planet, and it did take a minute for me to process exactly what’s going down, but once it clicked, I loved it. Brownout are a fantastic funk band, tight as can be, and with a great knowledge and understanding of the music that came before them. They worked really hard to find arrangements that paid respect to the hip hop and the source material they sampled from, and still managed to find a way to make it all their own. That’s no small feat.