Public Enemy Sample Rolling Stones on New Album

If at first you don't succeed in sampling the Rolling Stones, try, try again.

That's the lesson enterprising young DJs can learn from Public Enemy's recently released new LP, Man Plans, God Laughs, which contains a track partly built out of a sample from the Stones classic "Honky Tonk Women" — some 25 years after the group originally planned on releasing it. As PE leader Chuck D tells Entertainment Weekly, not even Stones singer Mick Jagger's fondness for his group helped the song clear publishing hurdles.

"It’s probably one of the best records we’ve ever done," Chuck D argued. "But you didn’t hear it on [1990 album] Fear of a Black Planet because we had to wait and go through some things so we could clear it through the publishers."

You can check out the track, titled "Honky Tonk Rules," above. According to Chuck D, Jagger had his first taste of Public Enemy while both groups were on tour in Europe around the time Fear of a Black Planet came out. "I remember in 1990, we were getting ready to tour France, and the Rolling Stones were playing somewhere before we actually came in, and a journalist told one of our tour managers that they actually gave the record to Mick Jagger, and he had listened to it and gave it a thumbs up like, ‘This is some s---!’"

With "Honky Tonk Rules" finally cleared, the group made a little extra room for an additional Stones tribute on Man Plans, God Laughs: Another song on the record is titled "No Sympathy from the Devil" — a play on the Stones classic "Sympathy for the Devil." Check it out below.

Listen to Public Enemy's 'No Sympathy from the Devil'

See the Rolling Stones and Other Rockers in the Top 100 Albums of the '60s

You Think You Know the Rolling Stones?