SUPER Tuesday is one of the landmark days of American democracy, the day that sets the tone for the election of a nominee candidate for the presidential elections. The big political story was the near Lazarus-like revival of Joe Biden who remarkably won critical states such as Texas, Virginia and North Carolina and finished first in Massachusetts and Minnesota, where doom mongers had predicted he could limp in at the rear of the race, fishing only fourth.

It seems from early exit polls that Biden benefitted from his associations with former president Barack Obama. Biden’s support among black voters was substantial and he consistently won around 60% of the black vote across the south.

The big story was the humiliation of Michael Bloomberg, who despite an eye watering war-chest and an army of campaign workers never convinced the delegates that he was anymore than a celebrity candidate. Money resolutely refused to talk, and Bloomberg spent $500 million and failed to win a single Super Tuesday state. He immediately backed Biden and is now supposedly looking to reorient his army of paid supporters to stay on the job and lend their substantial weight to Biden.

But who in their wildest dreams would have imagined that Super Tuesday would be the hill on which the radical rap group Public Enemy would fight their final civil war, a battle which looks likely to bring one of black music’s most inspirational groups to its bickering finale?

Predictably, if you know anything about their contrarian history, Public Enemy’s battle was about neither Biden nor Bloomberg. The fervently radical group argued about the level of support they should show to Bernie Sanders, the democratic socialist senator from Vermont and the preferred candidate of both the left and first-time voters.

I have known Public Enemy through their many trials and tribulations. I first came face to face with the Long Island rap band when I was thrown off their tour bus in a busy north London street during a promotional tour for their second album, the historic It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back.

The album screeches like the angry voice of the outsider in a system stacked against them. The album not only announced the arrival of a significant new talent and lacerated mainstream media with tracks such as Don’t Believe The Hype and the unambiguous rap-signature, RRRadio, The Motherf*****s Never Plays us.’

Anyone who was at the Barrowlands Ballroom when Public Enemy came to Scotland will have their power and unshakable self-confidence permanently franked in their mind. The room levitated, the floor swayed and thousands of mostly white young Scots endorsed the slogans of black power and war on authority.

The Democratic primaries apart, the key members of Public Enemy have been at war for years, possibly even from the outset. When the group first formed they self-consciously drew on ghetto archetypes to shape their identity.

The outspoken leader was Chuck D, a street warrior and radio DJ from the projects who took on the guise of a community activist, influenced in part by Malcolm X and the great soul messengers of black radio – E Rodney Jones, of WVON in Chicago, and Georgie Woods, ‘‘The Guy with the Goods’’ in Philadelphia.

Chuck was always the spokesperson, fearsomely bright, emotionally argumentative and insistent that he was an outsider – the self-styled Public Enemy No 1. True to form he took to the stage in Glasgow’s east end, where he declared himself a Yes supporter and advocated a left-leaning independent Scotland.

Our argument aboard the tour bus had preceded all of that and hinged on a debate about the relevance of white working-class youth to the Public Enemy cause. It was a pantomime fight and, as I was heaved off the bus, Chuck assured me that they would have to publish a press release of our altercation. Media savvy to a fault, he knew that expelling an NME journalist would generate its own sub-cultural story.

Chuck’s cartoon partner and now his fiercest critic is Flava Flav, a character only hip-hop could invent. Flav was fashioned from the African-American proselytiser but the ghetto pimp, with his trademark limp and burlesque clothing. Flav was th hype man, always shouting slogans and endorsing the group’s militancy.

He was comically obsessed about time and wore a gigantic clock styled as a pendant round his neck and boasted about ‘‘knowing what time it was’’, a precursor of the concept of “woke”. Despite his daft attire, Flava Flav was always attuned to what was going on and his clowning masked a prodigious talent. He was proficient in 15 musical instruments and was a talented pianist since his infancy.

THE final battle was not exactly a surprise. Chuck and Flav have been drifting apart for years, sometimes exchanging lawyers’ letters about perceived slights. In truth, their studied archetypes were always going to drag them in different directions. Chuck embraced radical causes from Black Lives Matter to prison reform while Flav moved on to comedy, reality television and debilitating drug addiction.

The dispute deepened in 2016 when Flav refused to support a benefit for Sankofa, a social justice organisation founded by the veteran actor and campaigner Harry Belafonte. After his failure to show up for the Sankofa benefit, Flava Flav was suspended from Public Enemy and the group’s official statement said that his no-show was “the last straw”. “He had previously missed numerous live gigs from Glastonbury to Canada, album recording sessions and photo shoots,” they said. “He always chose to party over work.”

When Public Enemy were invited to support Bernie Sanders’s campaign the dispute flared up again. Chuck told his social media followers that Flav was reluctant to take part, implying that was because there was no money in it for him. “If there was a $bag,” Chuck claimed. “Flav would’ve been there front and center. He will NOT do free benefit.”

Chuck’s endorsement of Sanders was driven by personal circumstances as much as his radical past. “My dad passing in 2016 and granddaughter being born automatically put healthcare and childcare at the top of my brain,’’ he told one rally. In his defence, Flava Flav spoke to Rolling Stone and told them. “I don’t have anything against Bernie, I think he’s a good person and I wish him luck. I think they’re all good people. Except Trump. Some people tried to say I did this because I’m a Trump supporter and that’s not true. F*** Trump!”

In an exchange that was devastating in its animus, Chuck leaked that Flava Flav simply had the wrong priorities. Citing the founding principles of the Sankofa movement, he referred to Paul Robeson’s remark when he said: “The artist must elect to fight for freedom or for slavery. I have made my choice.” Then with a withering update, said Flava Flav could not attend as he was judging a bikini contest. Whether true or false, insight or hype, the torn relationship between two of the founding figures is now too great to repair.

Faced with raging personal animosity and the prospect of years of legal disputes, Chuck D has taken the strategic decision to set up new entity Public Enemy Radio – which has no connections to Flava Flav and hints back to Chuck’s own origins as a ghetto DJ and a supporter of community radio.

As events unfolded on the biggest stage of Democratic Party politics, back home in Scotland a much smaller event was announced.

Doune The Rabbit Hole, the only dog-friendly festival in Scotland, announced that Public Enemy Radio’s debut appearance in Scotland will be at the Cardross Estate in Stirlingshire in July. All things lead back to Scotland, even hip-hop’s most bitter disputes, and although I will always mourn the split in one of pop music’s greatest political bands, at least it was about socialism and not the familiar cliches of musical difference.