Public Enemy Prep Two New Albums for 2012

Public Enemy has not released an album since 2007, but the legendary rap group is ready to come back strong in 2012.

According to Billboard, the 25 year vets will be releasing two albums this year. The first, Most of My Heroes Still Don't Appear on No Stamp, will be a collaboration with Gary G-Wiz and is slated to hit stores in June. Without wasting any time, the crew plans to follow that up with the September release of The Evil Empire of Everything.

They will be "two concise statements that are connected in the same breath," explained Chuck D. The New York native didn't reveal many other details about the projects, but fans can be sure that they'll have the same passion and message that mark most PE releases.

The group made other news over the weekend, as they played at Operation Skid Row in California. The four-hour event was headlined by PE, and also included Kid Frost and others. The goal of the day was to bring positivity to the community and hip-hop, as Chuck explained to Billboard before it went down.

"[Outsiders] look at rap music and artists in hip-hop as being as elitist as the power structures that keep them down," he explained. "You've got organizations in your city that are trying to say and do the right thing—who are practically invisible—fighting for some media time. What other place do I have? My place in hip-hop is not to be a tycoon, making trillions with a yacht. That's not my place. My place is maybe bringing people together and me being able to identify and illuminate a cause, and we'll make it comfortable for them to be themselves but say what they've really been wanting to say all along, you know, with my protection."

The event was focused on reaching out to residents of Skid Row, a downtown Los Angeles neighborhood, but in the end, people from multiple areas comprised the few hundred person crowd. —Adam Fleischer