The Hip Hop Equivalent to Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On
“The revolution wasn't televised, but it was recorded. It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back exploded like a nuclear weapon in 1988, announcing Public Enemy as the premiere rap group to be reckoned with.” RV “Their deft command of their medium and their widespread appeal continued hip-hop’s development from New York street-party noise to the voice of millions.” CS However, Nation isn’t just considered to be the greatest rap album ever made by many, but is considered “one of the greatest and most influential albums of all-time” WK in any genre.
Public Enemy “were aware of history and its truths, but also defied it in the name of creating a new reality.” CM It’s “like some of those psychedelic albums from the sixties…where ‘art’ and commerce for once intersected.” JSH Rapper Chuck D proclaimed their goal to remake Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On for the hip hop generation. CM Nation accomplished that goal by merging “strong social commentary” WK with a “we’re angry as hell and we’re not gonna take it anymore” punk vibe that made the album “even more important than The Clash.” JSH “Anarchy never sounded so funky.” VB
“The fierce Nation made traditional rock & roll posturing seem museum-bound.” BL “Though this music is certainly a representation of its time, it hasn’t dated at all. It set a standard that few could touch then, and even fewer have attempted to meet since.” AM
How Nation Changed Rap
Yo! Bum Rush the Show, the rap group’s debut album, “announced Public Enemy as an emerging force to be reckoned with.” PM It “was an invigorating record, but it looks like child’s play compared to its monumental sequel.” AM “Before this multilayered black-noise masterpiece was released, most rap artists thought politics were best avoided.” VB “Public Enemy showed it was possible to wring revolution from two turntables and a microphone.” TM They dared listeners “to keep up mentally and not to physically stand still” CM as they “tilled the soil for future socio-political hip-hop and proved that the revolution could also be a party.” PM
“Chuck D drops jewels on subject ranging from Malcolm X to the dangers of crack.” VB The record also addressed “police brutality, institutional racism, the overwhelming percentage of blacks in American prisons, and the hypocrisy of white government." CS “With this record, Public Enemy single-handedly changed the idea of what a hip-hop group and rap album could be, influencing an entire generation of socially conscious youth in the process.” CQ “PE ushered in the era of rap-as-black activism and self-identity.” JSH
Individual Identities
That’s not to say the album is without precedent…Public Enemy used the template Run-D.M.C. created of a rap crew as a rock band,” AM even following that trio’s development of “individual identities ala the Beatles.” JSH The core of the group was Carlton Ridenhour (stage name Chuck D), “a graphic design student at Adelphi University on Long Island who worked as a DJ at the student-run radio station.” CS His “righteous indignation does the driving” EW’12 as he “rhymes like a prophet of rage.” RV However, while the group “saw themselves as messengers, they love hip-hop too much to reduce everything to a lecture.” TM
To achieve that balance, Chuck D’s anger is “spurred on by vitriolic court jester Flavor Flav,” RV “a multi-instrumentalist, former church choir singer and previously jailed burglar” CM born William Drayton Jr. They met while delivering furniture as a part-time job. Flav “would prove to be Chuck’s aural counterpoint” CM who “bobs and weaves with playful antics as they bring the noise, dispel the hype and drop the double truth on pressing issues like the ‘80s crack epidemic and the industrial prison complex.” PM
Chuck D also recognized, as he said, that “an important message should have its importance embedded into the way its relayed.” CM To that end, the rapping is fleshed out by “considerable production and DJing support from Professor Griff (Richard Griffin)” CS and “the tornado turntable of DJ Terminator X,” RV Bill Stephney, and Hank Shocklee. The latter three comprised the production trio known as the Bomb Squad.
The Bomb Squad
“This boom-bap juggernaut is ignited by the aptly named Bomb Squad’s sample-heavy, gloriously discordant rocket fuel.” EW’12 “In the late 1970s and early 1980s most hip-hop records involved a rapper performing over the top of another record spun by a DJ…By the mid 1980s, however, hip-hop producers had begun to make use of the new technology of the sampler, a digital recording device that allows the user to capture a short element of an existing recording and then repeat it to create something new.” TB It was a time when laws were not yet in place “to regulate the plundering of past recordings.” TB
Shocklee “took this process several steps further than his predecessors…weaving together complex, claustrophobic rhythm tracks out of the tiniest fragments of other songs, utilizing literally hundreds of sonic fragments of other people’s music to create something wholly original.” TB As Shocklee said, “We believed that music is nothing but organized noise.” CM Chuck D called Shocklee “the Phil Spector of hip-hop.” CM
The Bomb Squad “brought in elements of free jazz, hard funk, even musique concrète…creating a dense, ferocious sound unlike anything that came before.” AM They developed “a dense and chaotic production style that relied on found sounds and avant-garde noise as much as it did on old-school funk.” WK It makes for a “compelling, joyous overload of sound.” CM
Their “innovative production” CQ gave the music a “militant sound” BL with their “apocalyptic sample barrage” BL of “everything from funky James Brown horns and drums to spoken-word clips of Malcolm X and Louis Farrakhan.” CQ They “laced every track with siren-wails and funk explosives that ratcheted the tension ever higher.” TL
“What’s amazing is how the words and music become intertwined, gaining strength from each other.” AM Shocklee said, “Chuck’s a powerful rapper. We wanted to make something that could sonically stand up to him.” WK
The Power of Chuck D
The album owes much of it status to Chuck D, “a cross between a Black Panther rally and a neighborhood block party.” PM He delivered his message via a “baritone he patterned after sportscaster Marv Albert” TM and Nation represented “a breakthrough in Chuck D’s writing, both in his themes and lyrics.” AM With his “hectoring black-power agenda” BL and “a delivery that made retributive black violence seem inevitable, rational and – egad! – cool,” TL “Chuck D. scared the hell out of America’s white parents.” TL Beastie Boys’ Adam Yauch said, “Chuck D grabs you by the collar and makes you listen.” CM
“It’s not that Chuck D was smarter or more ambitious than his contemporaries – certainly, KRS-One tackled many similar sociopolitical tracts, while Rakim had a greater flow – but he marshaled considerable revolutionary force, clear vision, and a boundless vocabulary to create galvanizing, logical arguments that were undeniable in their strength.” AM As Los Angeles Times critic Robert Hilburn said, Chuck D “isn’t afraid of being labeled an extremist, and it’s that fearless bite – or game plan – that helps infuse his black-consciousness raps with the anger and assault of punk pioneers like the Sex Pistols and Clash.” WK
The Recording
The album was recorded in just over six weeks at Greene Street Recording in New York. Because the Bomb Squad didn’t tour with the rap collective, they had a “welter of semi-completed instrumental beds and possible samples” CM prepared once Public Enemy headed into the studio. Then Chuck D wrote lyrics for the songs, “with contributions and catcalls from Flavor Flav.” CM Shocklee “would then finish the potent sonic brew by adding more sound effects and samples, including a number of well-chosen snatches of spoken social commentary.” TB
The Songs
Here are thoughts on individual songs.
“Bring the Noise”
Chuck D’s “deeply felt and commercially calculated radicalism was best expressed in Bring the Noise and ‘Rebel Without a Pause,’ whip-smart, reference-filled songs saved from pretension by Flavor Flav, rap’s greatest hype man.” TL
“Rebel Without a Pause” et al
“’Yo Chuck!’ Flav says on Rebel Without a Pause, ‘they’re Americans, they can’t take us.’ Chuck agrees (as would most Americans) and says his goal is to make ‘the Man piss in his pants.’” RV
The song’s title is one of several to reference other works from popular culture. It’s a play on the 1955 movie Rebel Without a Cause, starring James Dean. Similarly, the track Louder Than a Bomb was influenced by the Smiths’ 1987 collection Louder Than Bombs.
“Party for Your Right to Fight”
Finally, PE rearrange the Beastie Boys’ groundbreaking 1987 rap single “You Gotta Fight for Your Right to Party!” into Party for Your Right to Fight. That song “attacks the government and its oppression, while pointing out that mankind evolved from Africa.” RV
“Don’t Believe the Hype”
“Chuck D booms like a play-by-play sportscaster, while hype man extraordinaire Flavor Flav manically interjects on driving tracks like ‘Bring the Noise’ and Don’t Believe the Hype, which are equal parts PSA and house party.” CQ
“Caught, Can We Get a Witness?”
The group responded here to “the growing controversy in hip-hop over samping – ‘This is a sampling sport,’ raps Chuck D, ‘But I’m giving it a new name’ – and the song, which storms forth, is at once a riposte to hose threating to issue writs and an example of the Bomb Squad’s blistering style, this was funk pushed to its extreme.” CM
“She Watch Channel Zero?!”
“Public Enemy were just as likely to dissect the easy acceptance of the status quo by the majority of the African-American community, with She Watch Channel Zero?! ripping into a woman who values the fantasy satisfaction of her television soaps about the needs of family and friends. ‘Her brain’s retrained , by a 24-inch remote,’ raps Chuck D.” CM
“Night of the Living Baseheads”
“Night of the Living Baseheads swings on a siren-like horn sample to condemn the drug dealers who prey on their own communities and create the bleakly ubiquitous environment of black-on-black crime.” CM
“Cold Lampin’ with Flavor”
“Flavor Flav proved his worth by not only accentuating the themes, but playing the livewire eccentric whose interjections often provided an off the wall alternative. Cold Lampin’ with Flavor was madcap, taking the idea of flavour to a whole new level.” CM It “was a reminder that Public Enemy worked as a unit (or a sports team) where they were only as good as their weakest lin. In 1988 it was clear that they didn’t have one.” CM
“Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos”
Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos is “a brooding mantra about a prison-break that reeks of anger-to-the-brink.” JSH “Chuck D details a fictitious prison escape over a teetering Isaac Hayes piano sample; it’s a bone-chilling commentary on the effects of both American racism and the country’s prison system. Chuck D, perhaps, said it best: ‘Hip-hop is the CNN of the black community, and nobody broadcasts louder than Public Enemy.’” CQ
“This is one of the fiercest pieces of music ever waxed.” JSH Flavor Flav “makes the prison break…seem like daffy fun.” TL
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