Chuck D always has something to say. Yet I wasn’t expecting the Public Enemy founder to have a lot to say about President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s push for a national interstate highway system. When we sat down to chat, the rapper who told generations of young people, “Don’t Believe the Hype,” launched into a detailed history of the Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways. Turns out that driving those roads mapped out by a bygone administration has played an integral part in Chuck D’s songwriting process and thus is central to Public Enemy’s and hip-hop’s history.

Born Carlton Ridenhour, Chuck D, who is now sixty-one, spent a lot of time behind the wheel as he meandered along the highways and byways around his childhood home in Long Island, New York. He was studying graphic design at Long Island’s Adelphi University when he cofounded Public Enemy in 1986. Chuck D teamed up with DJ Terminator X, Professor Griff, and clock-enthusiast rapper Flavor Flav, and the group released their politically conscious debut rap album, Yo! Bum Rush the Show, in 1987. Public Enemy quickly established themselves as a no-holds-barred, opinionated rap group who didn’t mind pissing the right people off. Their song “Fight the Power” was memorably blasted out of Radio Raheem’s boom box in Spike Lee’s film Do the Right Thing, while songs like “Don’t Believe the Hype,” “Fear of a Black Planet,” and “Bring the Noise” have been in heavy rotation for decades. All this has helped cement Chuck D’s spot in the Long Island Music Hall of Fame, alongside Billy Joel and Mariah Carey.