“911 Is A Joke” by Public Enemy

"911 Is a Joke" is Flavor Flav's moment in the spotlight on Fear of a Black Planet, Public Enemy's third album, from 1990: he performs it alone and turns a furious complaint into a party. He wrote it with Eric Sadler and Keith Shocklee, and the Bomb Squad produced.

The target is the paramedic crews who took their time answering emergency calls in Black neighborhoods, not the police, as people often assume. Released as a single in April 1990, it went to number one on the Hot Rap Singles chart, the group's second after "Fight the Power", and number 15 on the R&B chart. It sold its way there, too: Billboard found only one station on its Top 40 panel playing it.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.