FEATURE:
Louder Than a Bomb
Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back at Thirty-Five
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ON 28th June…
one of the most important albums ever released turns thirty-five. Even that is over a month away, I think that Public Enemy’s second studio album took them to new heights - and so should be celebrated readily. They hit hard with their stunning 1987 debut album, Yo! Bum Rush the Show, but they ascended to fresh heights on the follow up. With tracks such as Louder Than a Bomb, Bring the Noise, Don’t Believe the Hype, and Rebel Without a Pause enduring as classics, the sonic assault and poetic lyrics (from Chuck D) mean It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back is one of the greatest and most influential albums ever released. It is that mix of hard-hitting and powerful lyrics together with innovative samples and compositions that make this such a deep work. Even if It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back did not chart hugely high in the U.S. upon its release in 1988 – though it did get to number one on the US Billboard Top Black Albums -, in years since, its legacy and impact has been confirmed. I am not sure whether there is a thirty-fifth anniversary release planned for the seismic It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. In August, the world marks fifty years of Hip-Hop’s birth. It is such an important date. We get to look back at its foundations and recognise all the artists who have sharped the genre and changed music forever. There is no doubt that Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back is among the kings and champions. One of the biggest and most influential Hip-Hop albums in history. I want to get to some features and reviews, just to show how this incredible album has reshaped and redefined Hip-Hop.
Quite a few publications have told the story behind It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. It is an album that will be back under the microscope ahead of its thirty-fifth anniversary on 28th June. SLANT investigated and spotlighted Public Enemy’s classic in 2008. Two decades after its release, and it was clearly still such a seemingly fresh album. I think that, unfortunately, a lot of the issues and subjects addressed on the album are current today – in terms of inequality, police brutality, and violence towards the Black community. Its take on politics and society could be applied easily today. It makes me wonder why we have not seen a recent, modern-day It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back:
“In hindsight, it’s best to see Public Enemy as the first and maybe only successful hip-hop group whose music extended directly from their politics, and not the other way around. Born into activism and influenced by the now-outmoded ideas of Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam, Chuck D didn’t just unsettle the middle class—he lobbed a “loud, obnoxious” bomb at it, to steal a phrase from Rolling Stone’s review of It Takes a Nation in its list of 500 Greatest Albums. Public Enemy stole from rock in more ways than sound: They adopted the bratty swagger of a punk band, filtered it through a DJ’s turntable, and wrote about what it was like to be black. The success of It Takes a Nation was, in part, a product of its own insistence; on “Bring the Noise,” the closest thing to a Chuck D manifesto, he defies the listener, black radio stations, and rock critics alike to pay attention: “Whatcha gonna do?/Rap is not afraid of you.”
Calling Public Enemy “underground” is a misnomer. Though they agitated authority, their universal beats spoke to anyone and everyone with simple honesty. It was easy, even natural, to see Do the Right Thing’s frustrated Brooklyn nobodies bumping to “Fight the Power.” Chuck D uses It Takes a Nation as a sounding board. The famously hectic, swerving beats, samples, and sirens form the backdrop to his urgent political protest: At the same time they seduce, distract, and confuse the picture, they also force you to listen to the words he’s spinning. The classic Public Enemy song (“Bring the Noise,” “Don’t Believe the Hype”) starts with a sample that forms the basis for Chuck D’s sinewy stream of consciousness. Eventually, Flavor Flav, playing comic relief, will cut in riffing on a situation or a question (“Yo, Chuck, they’re saying we’re too black, man”), Chuck will answer, and so on. It feels like a busy conversation or a raucous party, but above the white noise, there’s always Chuck D, making sense of things. If hip-hop is “CNN for black people,” as the rapper suggested, then he’s its ultimate pundit.
Like a much funnier version of Green Day’s “American Idiot,” It Takes a Nation purposefully plays on paranoia about government, cops, and the media. Chuck D talks in street codes (he likes to call people “suckers”), but his lyrics build surprisingly complex narratives out of simple observations. On “Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos,” an annoying draft letter becomes a symbol of the U.S. government’s handed-down tradition of slave-labor tactics: “I wasn’t wit’ it, but just that very minute/It occurred to me/The suckers had authority.” The static-like beats and jumbled words in “She Watch Channel Zero?!” stand in for television’s manufactured truth (the album’s intro famously says “the revolution will not be televised”), and “Night of the Living Baseheads” likens crack-cocaine use to an infectious beat. Above it all hangs Malcolm X’s quote, “Too black, too strong,” which Public Enemy plays twice and embraces as its own mantra. If the group plays to stereotype by acting like an angry mob, they also reclaim their outrage and use it to subvert wrongheaded ideas about black life.
It Takes a Nation is universally taken to be the best rap album ever made. That’s not opinion but empirical fact: Not only have Rolling Stone, NME, Vibe, and Q all said so, but it’s also the only hip-hop album that ranks in the first 100 on Rolling Stone’s Greatest Albums list. By comparison, the record peaked at a relatively low #42 on the Billboard album chart when it first came out. Because of the media sensation he created, we tend to think of Chuck D as a cultural authority, but in most obvious ways It Takes a Nation—the “greatest” hip-hop has ever produced—doesn’t fulfill the conventional expectations of its genre, which may go a long way toward explaining its unique popularity with rock critics.
The Bomb Squad’s avant-garde production made music out of a wreck of sounds. It wasn’t just the samples, from sources as varied as Queen and Stevie Wonder, but how they were used. Everyday noises like turntable scratches bumped up against live recordings of political speeches, a saxophone in “Show Em Whatcha Got,” and the rock crunch of the Beastie Boys-inspired “Party for Your Right to Fight.” Nothing if not democratic, Chuck D also didn’t self-mythologize in the same way as Notorious B.I.G. or Jay-Z. The clattering nature of Public Enemy favored more voices, not less, in the end fulfilling the hinted promise of crossover rap during the late ’80s: “Run DMC first said a deejay could be a band/Stand on its feet, get you out your seat,” Chuck D rhymes on “Bring the Noise.” He used the casual language of black culture, but he also took his own advice to “reach the bourgeois/Rock the boulevard”.
It is not exaggeration to say that It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back changed music and transformed the idea and perceptions of Hip-Hop. Demonstrating just how powerful and potent music could be, it is small wonder we are pouring over the album all these years later! Albumism had their say about It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back for an anniversary feature in 2018:
“The album changed the perception of what hip-hop music could be about. Three decades ago, the United States was in the final months of the Reagan administration, and inner-cities across the country were reeling from the effects of his policies. Crack use was at epidemic proportions. There was the genuine belief that not only was the Government not concerned with the plight of the Black population in the United States, it was openly hostile towards them. It Takes a Nation of Millions was the aural embodiment of the widespread rage generated towards this crooked government system.
Public Enemy was the perfect vessel to deliver this message. Carlton “Chuck-D” Ridenhour had the booming voice and presence of a respected statesman and activist. William “Flavor Flav” Drayton was the volatile court jester, an unpredictable version of Bobby Byrd to Chuck D’s James Brown. Norman “Terminator X” Rogers was the stoic, wordless DJ who moved with precision when behind the two turntables. And the Bomb Squad, Public Enemy’s notorious production team, created the perfect soundscape: a pulsating, chaotic, and intense wall of sound that could overwhelm the listener, but built on a foundation of soul and funk.
This isn’t to imply that Public Enemy was the first rap group to incorporate political content and social commentary into their music. Ever since “The Message,” rap music has dealt with the crumbling of urban society to crime and drugs, and I’ve written about artists like Boogie Down Productions, Stetsasonic, and others who have delivered a political message in their music. Public Enemy was overtly confrontational, irate, and focused in a way that few other artists were, across any genre.
Yet Public Enemy were dedicated towards educating, explaining the sources of the problems, identifying those working to improve things, and even inspiring the population to action. It’s an ambitious album that tackles complex issues, but doesn’t attempt to overly simplify their complexity. And despite the frenzied feel of It Takes a Nation Of Millions, listening to it never feels like a chore.
It Takes a Nation of Millions is one of those rare albums that lives up to all the superlatives that have been heaped upon it. With all the acrimony towards the mainstream media, I often wonder if Chuck D smiles when he reflects on the level of acclaim that It Takes a Nation of Millions has received over the past 30 years. It became revered both in the hip-hop and mainstream press, and influential towards hip-hop artists and other artists across many musical genres. The explosion of socially conscious hip-hop in the late ’80s and early ’90s can be traced to It Takes a Nation of Millions. Likewise, it inspired musicians outside of the realm of rap music. For example, it’s hard to imagine a group like Rage Against the Machine existing without this album’s release.
Public Enemy never shied away from the spotlight and the attention that they earned from the album, and continued their work as hip-hop’s foremost politically aware crew. Though the next few years would prove to be bumpy, the group continued to release great music in the form of Fear of a Black Planet (1990) and Apocalypse ’91 (1991). It also set the stage for the group to eventually be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2013, 25 years after It Takes a Nation of Millions’ release.
Moreover, the success of It Takes a Nation of Millions allowed the group to tour the world many times over. It helped them shape the minds of generations to come, inspiring them to not blindly trust authority and to always seek out knowledge. It allowed the group to continue to work to empower those who live in the United States but whose existence is often barely tolerated by the police force and the local, state, and federal governments. That’s a legacy that few artists possess, but it’s one that Public Enemy has earned”.
I am going to move to Classic Album Sundays. They discussed how albums like It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back were reactions to what was happening in the U.S. under President Reagan. At a time when a lot of music was escapist and fun – perhaps as a distraction from a lot of building turbulence -, Public Enemy released an album that was confronting the issues, and not shying away. This was direct and radical music that heled start a revolution in Hip-Hop:
“The Bomb Squad, as Hank Shocklee, Keith Shocklee and Eric “Vietnam” Sadler’s production unit had been named, were developing a chaotic brand of hip hop. Hunkered down in Manhattan’s Greene St. recording studio, the team sought to push sampling technology as far as possible, extracting a plethora of sounds from an army of records, mapping them all to a song’s key and structure, and then playing each of the samples individually, as if it were a live performance. On album standout ‘Rebel Without A Pause’, they even had MC Flavor Flav play their Akai drum machine by hand for the entirety of the track’s 5 minute run time.
This was part of a conscious effort to shake listeners out of their comfort zones. As Hank notes, “We’re used to a perfect world, to seeing everything revolve in a circle. When that circle is off by a little bit, that’s weird… It’s not predictable.” Inspired by the turmoil and conflict of everyday life, distortion and messiness were desirable traits, the team often stomping on records they thought sounded a little too clean.
It was through his lyrical exploration of complex subjects such a media complicity, black incarceration and political suppression that Chuck truly excelled as an MC. Often establishing song titles before their verbal development, the MC used contentious topics as a jumping-off point, exploring the broad scope of these issues in his signature stream-of-consciousness style.
Often credited as the Yin to Chuck’s Yang, Flavor Flav’s regular spasms of ad-lib fuelled irreverence were the vital counterweight to Chuck’s relentless Black Nationalist rhetoric. But while the differences between Chuck and Flav could have represented an irreconcilable split in black artistry and ideology, they instead proved that a satisfying whole could be formed between disparate voices.
And it was indeed the idea of community, for better or worse, which lay at the core of A Nation Of Millions’ ideology. Whether or not they wished it, rappers were to be hailed as mirrors of society, filtering a mixture of daily life and personal perception into a form of mass media which had the potential to affect major change in the way black and POC voices were perceived, both politically and socially.
The symbolic value of It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back remains as potent today as it did in 1988, a vital artery of contemporary counter-culture, both within rap and far beyond. Whilst ideas of what hip hop should or shouldn’t portray have only increased in complexity since the 1980s (and in the age of Donald Trump), the genre has assumed a vital and central role in popular culture – a radical means of youth representation.
If The Velvet Underground were punk’s DIY flashpoint, Public Enemy was undoubtedly the hip hop equivalent. And despite the wild intricacies and problematic flaws of their music, the underlying message now seems radically fundamental: Pick up a microphone and make the world listen”.
I am going to round off with a couple of other features. The first is actually a review. Pitchfork looked back at It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back and its 1990 follow-up, Fear of a Black Planet, as both albums were remastered and reissued onto C.D. packages in 2014. I do hope that there is something in the way of celebration, or perhaps even another reseau, of It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, as it is thirty-five very soon:
“In retrospect, Yo! Bum Rush the Show was a blueprint. What came after it was the work of a well-rehearsed unit keenly aware of its purpose and capabilities. Released the following summer, Public Enemy’s sophomore album It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back was a brash refinement of the themes of Yo! and a jab at the jaws of detractors, high and low. “Bring the Noise” and “Don’t Believe the Hype” railed against the press, holding up the lurid sensationalism surrounding the group as a warning against trusting anything you read. “Caught, Can We Get a Witness?” is a nightmare where P.E. gets nabbed for sampling. (More on that later.) Nation teemed with a didactic social consciousness too. “She Watch Channel Zero?!” strikes out against junk television, while “Night of the Living Baseheads” addresses the crack epidemic, and “Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos” leads a draft-dodging conscientious objector through a vengeful jailbreak. Chuck’s booming ministerial baritone sparred with Flav’s piercing yawp in a masterful hero-and-sidekick interplay. The message couldn’t entice the masses without the levity; the levity was gimmicky without revolutionary grit giving it weight.
Nation found a way to expound on the explosive soundscapes of the debut without exhausting listeners or cluttering the mix. Chuck, Sadler, and the Shocklee brothers’ production as the Bomb Squad was as thick as its source material was diverse; it was rap, soul, rock, funk and musique concrète all at once. “Most people were saying that rap music was noise,” Hank Shocklee told Rolling Stone in 1989, “and we decided, ‘If they think it’s noise, let’s show them noise.’” "She Watch Channel Zero?!" pulls its central riff from Slayer’s thrash classic “Angel of Death”. “Night of the Living Baseheads” outfits a stable of trusty James Brown samples with over a dozen assorted soul and rap tidbits and bridges, folding in elements of ESG’s “UFO” and David Bowie’s “Fame”. Snippets of legendary speeches from Jesse Jackson and Malcolm X and stage banter from Public Enemy’s successful European tour formed connective tissue between songs for a unified listening experience that only let up briefly in the middle and finally, at the end. The Bomb Squad built beats like ships in a bottle, delicately stitching tiny pieces of black history into layered blasts of sound. Public Enemy looked and sounded a fright to the uninitiated, but careful attention showed every piece of this black radical machine moving in perfect concert.
Nation of Millions netted Public Enemy the elusive American audience and platinum sales their debut couldn’t, and it changed the face of rap music. The hip-hop landscape of ‘89-’90 was dotted with sample-heavy sons of Nation. Chuck sent early copies of the album out west to Dre and Ice Cube, and N.W.A.’s landmark Straight Outta Compton cropped up like a gangsta rap rejoinder to the Bomb Squad ethos. (Cube would later tap the team for production on his post-N.W.A. solo debut AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted.) De La Soul’s 3 Feet High and Rising and the Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique added a playful, psychedelic charm to the proceedings. Nation’s message of black self-sufficiency resonated through the proudly Afrocentric art of A Tribe Called Quest, X Clan, Brand Nubian and more. Beyond the ’80s, the music of Nation of Millions would continue to find new life in unexpected places: Weezer’s 1996 comeback single “El Scorcho” nicked its “I’m the epitome of public enemy” barb from “Don’t Believe the Hype,” and Jay-Z’s 2006 post-retirement salvo “Show Me What You Got” is a nod to Nation’s “Show ‘Em Whatcha Got.” (Without Public Enemy we don’t get Kanye West; in addition to sampling the Long Island legends liberally, Kanye inherited a bit of his fearless politics and kitchen sink beat construction from here.)”
I am going to wrap up now. One last thing I’ll drop in is from Rolling Stone. In an interview from 2020, Chuck D discussed (among other things), the legacy and importance of It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. He has been in the U.K. recently, talking about his art, and the new book, Livin' Loud: ARTitation. Of course, when interviewed, questions come up about Public Enemy’s second studio album – especially as Hip-Hop turns fifty in the summer:
“So, ‘It Takes A Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back’ jumped up to Number 15 on our new 500 Greatest Albums list. There was such a stylistic leap between that album and your debut, Yo! Bum Rush the Show. Was the change in your flow just from hearing people like Rakim?
Two guys helped me design a rhyme pattern which would help me with faster speeds. And that was Rakim, especially on “You Know You Got Soul,” and also KRS-One, particularly on the song “Poetry.” KRS-One and Rakim were able to take faster speeds and make the beats go to them. That was different from what Run-DMC and Schoolly D and Whodini and everybody were doing. They were rhyming to the beat and keeping up with the beat. And then people were able to figure out faster beats. A guy like Big Daddy Kane was just phenomenal once he went on took on faster beats, too. But nobody was messing around with our beat areas, like 109 beats per minute. So it was faster, it was stronger, and it was aggressive. So even to this day, you can’t mix Public Enemy records with a regular DJ set. It’s just totally different attacks on the music”.
It is amazing – though not surprising at all – that we are still finding new things to say about It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. As it approaches its thirty-fifth anniversary, we need to be thankful to Public Enemy because of what they gave to the world. I still think there are lessons that can be learned. If the group was tackling and confronting some ugly truths and broken politics back in the late-1980s, how far has the U.S. (and the world) come since then? Certainly, Public Enemy changed Hip-Hop and made their mark! I still think a lot of the lessons that Public Enemy laid down on It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back…
NEED to be revisited and learned.