Spike Lee’s 1989 film Do the Right Thing featured Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power” as its prominent theme song.
The film is set on a hot summer day in the Bedford–Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. Lee wrote, directed, produced, and played Mookie, a pizza-delivery worker caught amid escalating racial and social tensions.
Public Enemy recorded “Fight the Power” specifically for the film after Lee asked the group to create a song that reflected its themes. The track appears repeatedly and became closely identified with the movie’s atmosphere and central conflict.
The film is sometimes grouped with later hip-hop-centered movies such as Boyz n the Hood. However, Do the Right Thing is a Brooklyn-set drama whose musical centerpiece is Public Enemy’s politically charged song.