911 Is a Joke

Flavor Flav wrote and performs the song, with Keith Shocklee and Eric Sadler of the Bomb Squad credited as writers. It began when Chuck D suggested that Flav write a song. Flav recalled that he went and got high and wrote it. It is about the lack of response to emergency calls in a black neighborhood, and it is about paramedic crews, not the police, as is often assumed. The samples include Vincent Price's laughter from Michael Jackson's Thriller, Parliament's Flash Light and Eddie Murphy.

It was released as a single in April 1990 and went to number one on the Hot Rap Singles chart, the group's second after Fight the Power, and to 15 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles chart. Billboard noted that only one station on its Top 40 panel was playing it. Charles Stone III directed the video, which shows an injured Flav being mistreated by a late ambulance crew, and includes a then-unknown Samuel L. Jackson.

Afterlife

Faith No More covered a snippet at several shows in 1990, and Duran Duran recorded it in 1995 on Thank You. The Fox series New York Undercover used it in the opening scene of an episode in October 1994. It appears in 186 of the 311 logged setlists.