2011 Edinburgh Fringe
Fear of a Brown Planet review
One of the standout tracks on Public Enemy's mighty 1990 album Fear of a Black Planet was the classic single 911 is a Joke, a furious diatribe about police attitudes towards African Americans. 21 years on, at an Edinburgh Fringe awash with beatboxers and 'gentleman rhymers', two Australian comics are making jokes about 9/11, and terrorism generally, in Fear of a Brown Planet. Is stand-up the new rap?
Nah, but it is still a useful forum to bitch about stuff that's bothering you. Nazeem Hussain and Aamer Rahman are two brown guys - as they always put it - from Australia who aren't quite as angry as Chuck D and co, but would like to raise a few issues.
They do this separately, but not before a cracking good intro video which splices serious news clips with some ludicrously camp old footage, plus the requisite Public Enemy riffs, to set a hip and funky scene. The youthful-looking Hussain is up first, and intersperses a fresh take on the burqa debate and some genuinely shocking stuff about the Oz police with more personal fare about the difficulties of fitting into Aussie society, and a fair bit of mum-based material. Most of it goes down very well indeed.
Rahman is more confrontational, in a good-natured way, mock-tutting at the ways of "white people" but giving equal stick to his fellow sub-continentals. Many of these topics have been touched on at length before but the punchlines are razor-sharp and any repetition just reiterates how big an issue it is: the ludicrous regularity that Asian guys get stopped for 'random' bag checks is so commonly accepted now that during one of his more serious segments Rahman flags that material up the way old British comics fall back on knob gags. "Don't worry, there are airport jokes coming."
Fear of a Brown Planet then: at least this brave new world's stand-up will be good.
Fear of a Brown Planet listing
