Public Enemy
Related: rap - American music
It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back (1988) - Public Enemy
[Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]At the very end of the 1990s two black hip hop groups crossed over to white audiences. Public Enemy's politically revolutionary lyrics found more controversy than hip hop had previously seen, while N.W.A. simultaneously placed West Coast hip hop at the top of the genre's charts and popularized gangsta rap.
Profile
Public Enemy, also known as PE, are a seminal hip hop group known for their politically charged lyrics and their interest in the concerns of the African American community. The Public Enemy logo. Designed by Chuck D, the image is of E. Love in the sights of a high-power rifle.
History
PE formed in Long Island, New York in 1982. They were signed on to the still developing Def Jam record label after Rick Rubin heard Chuck D freestyling on a demo. It then took roughly five years before their debut, Yo! Bum Rush The Show, was released in 1987 to critical acclaim. They went to release the revolutionary It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back in 1988, which performed better in the charts than their previous release. They also went on to release Fear of a Black Planet which was slightly less militant than their first two releases.
Public Enemy were pioneers in many ways. For instance, Terminator X elevated DJing to a more refined art. Some of his most innovative scratching tricks can be heard on the song "Rebel Without A Pause". PE revolutionized the rap world with their political, social and cultural consciousness, which infused itself into skilled and poetic rhymes with jazzy backbeats. They also changed the Internet's music distribution capability by being the first group to release MP3 albums, a format virtually unknown at the time. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Enemy [Feb 2005]
It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back (1988) - Public Enemy
It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back (1988) - Public Enemy
[Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
It Takes a Nation of Millions was the sign that hip-hop had exploded like a grenade. A rap record as abrasive, hardcore, and eloquent as a JFK speech, the 1988 disc is one classic track after another: tense, multilayered, harmonically wild music. Chuck D. declaims like a master preacher with foil Flavor Flav's voice darting around his. They've got the desperate energy of people fighting for their lives, and everything from their pumped-up rhetoric ("Prophets of Rage") to the group's quasi-paramilitary organization to the sirens and sax squeals in nearly every track declares how urgent their mission is. It's a hugely influential album, and it still sounds fresh and frightening after all these years. --Douglas Wolk, amazon.com
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