Today, Public Enemy released a music video for “The Hits Just Keep on Comin’,” the first visual from Black Sky Over the Projects: Apartment 2025, the album they released in June. The Rhiannon Rae Ellis-directed video is characteristically provocative, interspersing clips of revolutionary figures like Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., and Muhammad Ali with Chuck D and Flavor Flav in a room full of televisions.
The video begins with footage of Ruby Bridges walking into New Orleans’ William Frantz Elementary School in 1960, ending the school’s years of segregation. It then shifts to actress Safara-Cree Stiggers depicting a young Bridges, opening a door that leads into the video’s main setting. From there, Olympian water polo player Ashleigh Johnson assumes the roles of beloved figures such as Prince, Tommie Smith, Serena Williams, and Amanda Gorman as Public Enemy’s members trade bars over a rambunctious guitar loop.
Flavor Flav sets the resilient tone, rapping, “Knock us down, we … won’t stop now, B,” and Chuck follows up, rhyming, “Listen — yall got radio permission?/Hit ‘em hard, knock ‘em out of commission.” From the snippet of late congressman and activist John Lewis’ speech at the 1963 March on Washington, to Johnson smashing a TV with the word “hate” beaming onscreen, the visual aims to reflect the world’s turbulent political state as urgently as Public Enemy’s refrain of “what ya got, ya got to do somethin’.”
“These lyrics are still relevant today as much as yesterday, and when they’re juxtaposed with these heroes that never stopped, no one can make excuses,” Chuck tells Rolling Stone in an emailed statement. “It’s time to wake up and DO something. Emphasis on the ‘DO.’ And Flav outdid himself on this one.”
Flavor Flav adds, “This music video for ‘The Hits Just Keep on Comin’ got a real important history lesson, a real important message, and a real important warning. My girl Ashleigh Johnson from the Olympic water polo team did a phenomenal job honoring some of the greatest heroes of modern civil and cultural rights. I’m very proud of the important artwork and messaging that Public Enemy continues to put out.”
The video follows Public Enemy’s “Black Sky VIDmash” clip, a mashup of three different songs that they released on Monday. Flavor Flav was an official sponsor of the U.S. women’s water polo team, which included Johnson, at the 2024 Olympics; he recently announced that he will play the same role for the U.S. bobsled and skeleton team at the 2026 games.
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