Chuck D Schools Gene Simmons on Rock Hall, Says KISS “Don’t Have a Lot of Roll”

Chuck D has patiently dismantled Gene Simmons’ latest comments about hip-hop not belonging in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. In an interview with TMZ, the Public Enemy rapper said the KISS singer-bassist was forgetting about the “roll” part of the Hall’s name, which encompasses several genres, including hip-hop.

“Everything else other than rock, when rock ‘n’ roll splintered in the ’60s, is the roll,” Chuck D explained, adding that Simmons seems to say something similar every three years. “Soul music, reggae, hip-hop, which is rap music. Hip-hop is a culture, so it embodies sight, sound, story, and style.”

He continued, “But music, the vocal on top of the music, has already been determined. So that’s the roll, that’s flow, that’s the soul in it. KISS are rock gods, but they don’t have a lot of roll to them.”

Chuck D then speculated that Simmons is likely to hold this mindset “for the rest of his life. He’s entitled to his opinion, and he’s dealt in the music for so long that his opinion is probably going to be stuck to him.”

To that point, Simmons recently doubled down on his thinly-veiled racist commentary from the Legends N Leaders podcast, in which he said that he’s not “from the ghetto” while criticizing the inclusion of hip-hop in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

In a new statement, Simmons stood by his words, adding, “Ghetto is a Jewish term… How could you be [racist] when rock is Black music? … One, I admire and respect hip-hop. Two, it is not rock ‘n’ roll. And three, when are Led Zeppelin and AC/DC going to be inducted into the Hip-Hop Hall of Fame?”

Chuck D actually agreed with Simmons about the word “ghetto,” saying it originated from a “European term” for a “cluster of people who are kind of like the same tribe, all in the same area.”

It is worth noting that while Chuck D praised KISS’ induction into the Rock Hall in 2014 and said the band “deserved” the honor, Simmons said in an interview around that time that Public Enemy didn’t belong in the Hall. Unfortunately, not much has changed in the decade-plus since then.

Ultimately, Chuck D told TMZ, “We gotta watch the narratives, and we just gotta understand that people are gonna stay with their beliefs ’til the day they die, so don’t try to change them. Just try to make sure you keep the facts and narrative as much as possible.”