Khalid Abdul Muhammad - Musical Influence

Musical Influence

As a prominent Afrocentrist and speaker on African history, Muhammad attracted interest from several hip-hop artists, who sampled him in their songs. Public Enemy quoted him in the introduction of its 1988 track "Night of the Living Baseheads," from the album It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back:

Have you forgotten that once we were brought here, we were robbed of our name, robbed of our language. We lost our religion, our culture, our god...and many of us, by the way we act, we even lost our minds.

Rage Against the Machine later paraphrased this quote in the lyrics of "Freedom" (Rage Against the Machine, 1992) with the line, "Brotha, did you forget your name?"

He also appeared on Ice Cube's albums Death Certificate (1991) and Lethal Injection (1993) as a guest rapper. On the former album, Muhammad appeared in the tracks "Death" and "The Birth". On the latter, he appeared in the song "Cave Bitch," a song ridiculing white women. On MC Ren's 1996 album The Villain in Black Muhammad appeared in the track "Muhammad Speaks," where he spoke about the history of the rights of African-Americans. Tupac Shakur's Makaveli album featured Muhammad on the track "White Man'z World."

Musical references to Muhammad since his death include a quote of his "Kill the White Man" speech on The Used's 2009 album Artwork and a sample of his interview with Louis Theroux in the Chase & Status song "Hocus Pocus": "We're not going to stand here and speak of some hocus pocus, some shazam, some abracadabra magic."