Now, let me tell you the story of how I came to love Public Enemy. I was into Rage Against The Machine all through Junior High. "Into" may not be the right word- obsessed! They represented all that I thought was awesome sonically and railed on all that I was angry about lyrically. Having learned this, my brother gave me a copy of Public Enemy's 1988 masterpiece It Takes A Nation Of Millions to Hold Us Back. I was skeptical because I'd never related to hip hop before this point and after a couple listens, I still didn't. It was unlike anything I'd ever heard- dense and angry, get I couldn't penetrate it because it didn't have big guitar riffs or whatever my wack hang-up was when I was 14. The breakthrough came when I started reading up on them. About how they scared the shit out of white people at their stage shows opening up for the Beastie Boys with their S1-W security team armed with Uzis. About how they said 'Mother fuck Elvis and John Wayne' (I paraphrase). About how they were basically a PUNK band. This little nugget of context blew my mind and I had a new obsession, devouring their albums and breaking down every song, looking up every reference.
A lot of people think it's kinda strange that I like a group that is so radically black and I'm a white kid from a lower-middle class background, but I've always been confronted with social issues that I find unjust. I went to Christian School in Marin, and I stood out for being ungodly and poor. I was raised by a single mother. I was born into certain circumstances and can empathize with anyone who fights back against this sort of American fatalism, and Public Enemy not only fought back, they challenged those who adhered to the status quo and scared them a lot with threats of revolutionary action.
It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back is probably the greatest whole ALBUM in hip hop right next to Wu Tang's Enter The Wu Tang, Quasimoto's The Unseen, The Beastie Boy's Paul's Boutique, Nas' Illmatic, N.W.A.'s Straight Outta Compton, A Tribe Called Quest's Low End Theory, and Biggie's Ready To Die. The production of the Bomb Squad has withstood the test of time and their technique of layering samples has yet to be duplicated. They sample Slayer, ESG, Isaac Hayes, Queen and shitload of others on Nation Of Millions and to this day I'm still picking up new sounds among the horns, drums, sirens, samples and scratches.
Public Enemy's other masterpiece- 1990's Fear of A Black Planet- riled just as many people and is equally essential to the Hip Hop canon and their 1987 debut Yo! Bum Rush the Show, is good too, but their place in music history is cemented with Nation of Millions and every person should own it if you're into hip hop or not. If you're not it may just make you come around.
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If you're down with the Bomb Squad, they also did an awesome album with Ice Cube called Amerikkka's Most Wanted, which is really the only solo album he has thats up to the standard of Straight Outta Compton.
P.S. Notice how I didn't mention Flava Flav's reality show bullshit? Yeah thats because P.E. is not about him. He was the court jester to Chuck D's king. He was hilarious for being wack and then he got into hard drugs and now he's just kinda wack. Yet, when I saw them live at Rock The Bells in 2007 it was pretty obvious Flava's still got it as the best hype man in the business.
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