Synopsis

Presented as a chaotic broadcast from the fictional PETV newsroom, the video investigates the social damage caused by crack cocaine. MC Lyte plays a reporter tracking down "baseheads," while Flavor Flav serves as an animated co-anchor. Reports move from a crack house and struggling families to Wall Street executives using cocaine, exposing the different ways drug use is judged across racial and social lines. The program also includes a satirical commercial for a "beeper tie" and a storyline involving the anti-rap group the Brown Bags.

Factoids & Trivia

• The video uses the format of a television news magazine to turn Public Enemy's political message into a piece of media criticism. Its fictional PETV broadcast parodies the conventions of mainstream news, commercials, and field reporting.

• MC Lyte appears as the on-location reporter, while Flavor Flav joins the studio presentation. The cast also includes Afrika Bambaataa, Professor Griff, Terminator X, and Kool DJ Red Alert.

• The video includes footage of the Audubon Ballroom in New York City, the site where Malcolm X was assassinated on February 21, 1965.

• Its Wall Street sequence was designed to contrast the treatment of drug use in predominantly white corporate spaces with the criminalization and stigmatization associated with Black communities.

• The satirical "beeper tie" commercial reflects the late-1980s image of the pager as a professional accessory, while also linking respectability and drug dealing.

• A contemporary account in the New York Press described the video as an important example of hip-hop video functioning as social expression rather than simply as advertising for a single.

• The song's title references the horror film *Night of the Living Dead*, comparing crack users to a society of zombie-like figures.