0100. Public Enemy
It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back
Dämn, I coudn't have planned it better myself! To commemmorate the hundredth album on this list, the Random Page Generator chose Public Enemy's 1988 release It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back. (by the way the second album on the list that namedrops Yoko Ono)
The setup is near perfect: Chuck D's booming pathos flanked by Flavor Flav's randomness with Terminator X and The Bomb Squad's monumental production.
The only thing that can tarnish the glow is Professor Griff, the Mel Gibson of the eighties hip hop era, but since he's not that vocal on the album the less said the better.
If you've never heard Public Enemy before nothing sums it up better than the samples from She Watch Channel Zero?!: Slayer's Angel Of Death combined with James Brown's Funky Drummer. Add to that a speech by Malcolm X (in Bring The Noise) plus a couple of instances of sampling their own tracks on the same album and you've got a serious cacophony. But with a clear intent. An intent that the Grammy awards jury apparently didn't think much about as they snubbed PE from the prize (and would continue to do so).
It's obvious that Chuck D's rap is far from technically perfect, but that's not the intent: he's more for agitating and delivering a life-changing speech than creating a party-mode or impressing with amazing lyricism. It could have been pretty bad if Chuck'd kept to a fixed structure, but the rhymes fall where they fall while the words keep coming in a constant attack.
It can be summed up in these words (from Don't Believe The Hype): Rock the hard jams treat it like a seminar.
This one goes on the GotToGets.
