I find it amazing that during the long build-up to a controversial war a noted freedom fighter like Chuck D could find the time to write about a journalist who gave Muse Sick N Hour Mess Age a bad review in Rolling Stone many years ago. He says I sold out by dissing Michael Jackson for his plastic surgery and his hapless album Invincible, but one hardly needs to sell out to admit that Jackson is no longer the man or the artist he once was. But Chuck's real issue is my negative review of Muse. For years Chuck has complained that I tell people I ruined PE with my review, but I have never said such a thing. During the years we were at work on his autobiography KRS-One told me he believed that I ruined PE with my review, but I did not agree with him then and I do not agree with him now.

History has backed up my review, but Chuck still wonders why Išm qualified to critique his album. The answer is passion. I live with hiphop, I study it, I imbibe it, and I always approach it in a passionate, thoughtful way. I love hiphop and make it my business to understand the history, the culture, and the music. That's why I'm qualified to write about it. If you don't like my opinion read someone else's, but donšt ever suggest I don't have the right to speak. Who licensed a college radio DJ from Long Island to become a national political commentator? No one, but thank God Chuck D did because he changed thousands of lives, including my own. But now, ironically, the brilliant iconoclast is upset because I stood up and said the emperor has no clothes when, in the case of Invincible and Muse, the emperor was, in fact, naked.