Rap Group Public Enemy Rapped

NEW YORK - The rap group Public Enemy has raised hackles again with a new single that has been denounced as anti-Semitic by the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith and others.

The song, ``Welcome to the Terrordome,'' was released last Wednesday. Its lyrics - a multitude of statements and images focusing on black life in 1989 - include the lines ``Told the rab, get off the rag'' and:

``Crucifixion ain't no fiction

``So-called chosen, frozen

``Apology made to whoever pleases

``Still they got me like Jesus.''

The group's critics argue that Public Enemy is accusing the Jews of killing Christ and of treating Public Enemy the same way. The same critics say descriptions of Jews as the ``so-called chosen people'' are common among Black Muslims who say they and not the Jews are the chosen people.

Public Enemy leader Chuck D. said the song refers to last summer's controversy involving Professor Griff, the group's nonperforming ``minister of information,'' who was quoted as saying that Jews were responsible for most of the wickedness in the world.

Chuck D. fired Professor Griff and disbanded Public Enemy. Within weeks, the group came together again, with Griff as a community liaison who was no longer supposed to give interviews.

Chuck D. insisted that the criticized lyrics of ``Welcome to the Terrordome'' were not anti-Semitic.

``It says I apologized (for Griff's comments) and then the media crucified me. Griff was wrong and I was the first to admit it. . . . But a lot of wrong things happened after that, too,'' he told the Daily News.

He said ``so-called chosen'' referred to both Jews and Muslims - he does not believe that any people are chosen, he said. And he suggested that critics were misinterpreting the record because they were ignorant of rap language.

Ridiculous, said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies in Los Angeles.

``The people who wrote it, the people who sang it, the people who produced it, the people who distributed it all know that this song is anti-Semitic,'' Cooper said.

``We've been in the business for 25 years, and the Anti-Defamation League is very familiar with the language of bigotry. We know it when we see it,'' said Jeffrey Sinenski, head of the ADL's Civil Rights Division.

In a letter to Tommy Mottola, president of CBS Records, which is distributing the record, Sinenski said the song revives ``the repulsive and historically discredited charge'' that the Jews killed Christ.