Public Enemy
“YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHH BOOOYYYYYY-EEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!” – Flavor Flav
“Yeah, they suck. Rap sucks. You want the new Oasis album?” – Al
“In order to come to the aid of the hip-hop nation, we must ask those men who heroically served the Black Planet to once again don their fatigues and take up their plastic arms. We have no more options. It’s not as though we can simply call 911. That would be a joke.” – Professor Griff
Albums Reviewed:
It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back
Apocalypse 91…The Enemy Strikes Black
It Takes A Nation: The First London Invasion Tour 1987
How You Sell Soul To A Soulless People Who Sold Their Soul???
And so, ever so slowly, and despite my being a disturbingly white suburban honky cracker, I continue my attempts to improve my knowledge of that silly little genre of music called “hippety-hop” all the kiddies seem to love nowadays. And you know what? I picked a good group to tackle. Public Enemy is easily the best rap artist I’ve ever had the pleasure of listening to, and the only reason I don’t add the phrase “of all time” to that is that my collection still lacks a few of the purported contenders to the throne (such as Eric B. and Rakim). General consensus seems to be that these guys are either the top or near it, though, and I’m not gonna disagree. For a short time around 1990, these guys were not only the greatest hip-hop artist on the planet, and probably the greatest hip-hop artist of all time, but they were one of the greatest artists of all time, period. Sure, their peak didn’t last all that long and they jumped the shark wholesale only a few years later (it is rap, after all; there’s no such thing as “the Rolling Stones of hip-hop” for a reason), but the skill, conviction, sheer power, and flat out ass-kicking loudness of this band at their peak eclipses all but a few rock bands at their peak, and that is something I never thought I’d say about anyone involved in hip-hop.
The seeds
of Public Enemy were planted in the early-eighties on
Public Enemy in their prime was something never heard before, and also something that will probably never be heard again. The Bomb Squad managed to create some of the densest and most intricate soundscapes ever heard in hip-hop out of avant-garde, atonal sound collages, police sirens, myriad vocal samples, tiny snippets of too many seventies soul/funk tracks to count, and enough booty-shaking bass lines to keep even the most discerning club-hopper happy. Just one listen to “Brothers Gonna Work it Out” or “Welcome to the Terrordome” shows their genius. On top of this, Chuck D. had probably the most powerful and commanding voice in hip-hop this side of Ice Cube, and his aggressive, literate rhymes were a perfect match for the his ridiculous, yelping, lisping comic foil Flavor Flav, whose voice, while admittedly slightly annoying, was just too hilarious and charismatic not to love (although a little Flavor can often go a long way). It also goes without saying that neither rapper sounded a thing like Geddy Lee, but if Geddy Lee every decided to rap, I think that would be a sign of the apocalypse. Classic Public Enemy is, in my woefully uninformed opinion, the pinnacle of hip-hop as a genre, but, as I said before, it unfortunately did not last long. After their fall from grace, the band first tried to go for more of a party vibe with keyboards and live drums and shouted call and response vocals. This didn’t work. They then tried to incorporate “modern” (as of 1998) hip-hop trends and actually succeeded to a degree there, but abandoned this promising new direction immediately afterwards to make albums that sound like “classic” Public Enemy, only not nearly as good, and they’ve followed this path since. Anyone with any interest in rap needs copies of It Takes a Nation, Fear of a Black Planet, and Apocalypse 91 in their collection, but the rest of Public Enemy’s catalog can be avoided, although if you want Yo! Bum Rush the Show as well for historical purposes, I won’t stand in your way.
In your picture above, Professor Griff is seated on the far left, Terminator X is next to him with the flat-top and interesting sunglasses, Chuck D. is in the middle intently examining the inflatable plastic globe, Flavor Flav is standing to Chuck D.’s right making a “Flavor Flav face,” and I believe the guy in the black standing to the right of Flavor is Hank Shocklee, though I’m not entirely certain of that. The remaining four dudes waiting to serve you a lovely platter of shrimp puffs while you’re on your Caribbean cruise I’m assuming are S1W’s, who to my knowledge were pretty much a revolving door situation.
And, onto the reviews!
Yo! Bum Rush The Show (1987)
Rating: 6
Best Song: “You’re
Gonna Get Yours”
Overrated debut that repeatedly gets more praise than it deserves because of the three albums that come after it. Or maybe my whiteness just doesn’t “get” this old-school rap hibbity jibbity joo. Either way, except for a handful of tracks (well…one) that totally rule and show glimpses of the sheer power this group harnessed so magnificently the next few years, for the first outing from such a “revolutionary” group as Public Enemy, this is frankly disappointing and underwhelming. The opening “You’re Gonna Get Yours” sounds like classic Public Enemy through and through, albeit a bit sparser in the production department, with the cleverly sampled/repeated scratchy guitar thing and Chuck’s cutting baritone in full force and all that fun stuff, and this, combined with the general reputation of the group, is probably why most reviews of this record are so laudatory. They’re wrong, though. You should totally trust me, the painfully white guy who’s listened to less than thirty rap albums in his life. I’m clearly the authority on this.
Anyway,
this album is way too “old-school”-sounding in every way to be
revolutionary. It Takes a Nation, in both production and lyrics, is
revolutionary. This is just another Rick
Rubin Def Jam rap album. Chuck D.
probably sounded angrier and more aggressive than whoever else was floating
around at the time (not that I have thorough knowledge of that or anything),
and I can’t imagine anyone had ever looked or sounded like Flavor Flav unless
The Bearded One had at some point pulled a random, Tyrone Biggums-esque
crackhead off the street and given him a recording contract. Otherwise, though, if you’re familiar with
the Beastie Boys and/or Run DMC this won’t be all that surprising to you. Metal guitar samples? Check.
Tinny backbeats? Check. To be fair, a few songs do have exceedingly loud backbeats in lieu of the tinny silliness
that’s typical of stuff from around this period (“Miuzi Weighs a Ton,” for
instance), but they’re certainly in the minority. Lyrically, at times this is different from the “I’m the best MC ever!” old-school
rap stuff, such as (again) “Miuzi Weighs a Ton” (it’s a little more violent
than people were probably used to…you probably could’ve guessed that from the
title) and the more political parts of “Timebomb,” although even that one has
lyrics like “You
go ooh and ahh when I jump in my car, people treat me like Kareem Abdul Jabbar” and “I'm number one
- you know it weighs a ton, and I'll be the burger - you can be the bun, girl!” stuffed
in there. It also goes without saying
that the Flavor songs aren’t the most overtly political things in the world
yet, (“Too Much Posse” deals with the crippling social problem that is…um,
having too much posse, I suppose).
However, to criticize a rap album in 1987 for not being politically
strident enough is like criticizing a Charlie Chaplin movie for not being in
stunning Technicolor. It’s asinine.
I’ll obviously admit that this is certainly more aggressive,
both musically and lyrically, than what most of their peers were probably
tossing around at the time (again, though, I’ve heard fewer than 30 rap albums
in my life), and a handful of songs beyond the fantastic “You’re Gonna Get
Yours” are still winners, even if they come up a good deal short of being
“classic Public Enemy.” “Miuzi Weighs a
Ton” (now mentioned for a third time already!) is a winner, for instance, and
so is “Public Enemy No. 1,” whose noisy, droning synth line thing is a nice
preview of future Bomb Squad triumphs. I
like “Tomebomb” and “Rightstarter,” too, even if they sound really old-school and the beat in the
latter loses itself like five separate times.
The lyrics, despite not being “powerful,” are a hoot, too (hearing Chuck
D. in his commanding “Chuck D. voice” say shit like “funky-fresh lyrics!” or
“Make the fly girls wanna have my photo!” like he’s LL Cool J or something is funny, man), and all the references to
stuff like “the ‘Velt” and “the LIR” make me nostalgic for those two wonderful
years I spent on Long Island (though on second thought…no, no they don’t. At all).
Plus Flavor’s silliness actually fits this context better than It Takes a Nation, and lines like “Girls
on my jock like ants on candy!” are fucking great. It may not be all that groundbreaking or
original (especially in relation to
their subsequent material), but parts of this are pretty damn fun.
A lot of the second half just totally loses it, though, to the
point where some tracks (“M.P.E.,” for instance) have absolutely nothing going
on beyond the computerized percussion and rapping. The title track is annoying, and Flavor’s
“I’LL SHOW YOU SOME OF MY TECHNIQUES!!!” monologues in there are borderline retarded
(does he have to lisp like that?).
“Raise the Roof” is OK, I guess (some of the turntabled guitar things
are neat), but the last two songs are just the group saying “You know what? We ran out of material.” “Megablast” is downright embarrassing (one
overly-simple beat, some ass-poor quasi-rapping, some other guy going “oh
please oh please oh please!” in a downright disturbing way), and the closing
“Terminator X Speaks With His Hands” is one minute of a decent beat that
probably should’ve been used in a song, which then segues into a minute of the
crap beat from “M.P.E.,” which then ends the album. Way to go out with a bang, guys.
Anyway, this album’s OK, but anyone coming to it after
digesting its three immediate successors (which I’d imagine is just about
everyone who’d ever come to it) is gonna be shocked by how old-school and
un-“revolutionary” it sounds, especially considering it only precedes It Takes a Nation by a year (though the
group didn’t completely shake the issues this album has until the monstrous Fear of a Black Planet). It’s just kind of slapdash and skimpy, and
“Terminator X Speaks With His Hands” by itself tells me they didn’t really have
enough material for an album yet.
“You’re Gonna Get Yours” owns, though.
They might have a future, these guys.
It Takes A Nation Of Millions To
Hold Us Back (1988)
Rating: 8
Best Song: “Bring The Noise”
An absolute quantum leap over their debut, but, at
least when compared to what came after it, this one’s also a little bit
overrated. In terms of historical
importance, though, unquestionably it’s the top. With the by-now-old caveat that my hip-hop
knowledge is pretty substandard and well below my knowledge of “white person
music” (mostly due to my being a stupid honky), in 1988 this stuff probably
sounded like nothing else. First of all,
who was throwing out lyrics this violent and political? N.W.A. hadn’t hit yet, remember, and they
rapped about completely different stuff anyway.
And who was as loud and aggressive as this? And whose production could match up to what
the Bomb Squad’s tossing around here?
Run DMC? Bullshit they can. The only album I can think of not also by Public Enemy that’s as layered
as this and uses samples as well is Paul’s
Boutique, but that hadn’t hit yet
either, plus that one was full of seventies soul and funk samples and songs
about fried chicken and drive-by eggings.
And sure, Public Enemy is taking some
of their samples from the same sources, but they’re chopped up to hell, and the keyboard screams and sirens
and interview clips and whatever else, when added
to this funky base, was probably a goddamn revolution
in hip-hop when it came out, and it all matches Chuck’s voice and lyrics
perfectly.
So yeah, it’s great. Ofcourse it is (a lot of it at least). Still, I’m just never as impressed by this
album as its reputation would suggest.
First of all, it pushes an hour, and while Yo! Bum Rush the Show was a real good, like, 20-minute EP padded
out to 45 minutes, this one suffers from the same problems, albeit less
pronounced, and it’s more like a fantastic 40-45 minute album padded out with
15-20 minutes of filler. And while the
great stuff is great, it’s still less great than the face-melting rushes
of sound that constitute the best stuff on Fear
of a Black Planet. Take “Bring the
Noise,” for instance. Great song,
right? Right! That looped horn part and siren-sounding
synth thing in the background are ace,
and both Terminator X’s turntable work and the vocal sampling during the “bring
the noise!” parts are awesome. Compare
it to, say, “Brothers Gonna Work it Out” or “Welcome to the Terrordome,”
though, and (at least I think) it
comes up a little short. And sure,
that’s like comparing Rubber Soul to Sgt. Pepper’s, but there’s still a difference
there, you know?
Anyway, yeah, “Bring the Noise”
kicks ass, and so do a bunch of other tunes here, like the relatively (for this
album) relaxed “Don’t Believe the Hype,” the fast and catchy “Louder than a
Bomb” and the huge “Night of the
Living Baseheads,” which is almost like Fear
of a Black Planet two years early.
The looped sax line (which, although it probably made sense in its
original context, here just sounds atonal, but in a good way, you see) is the main basis, sure, but christ, how much
stuff is going on in this song? Plus
Chuck’s yelling “BASS!” from “Bring the Noise” is sampled like 500 times, which
is just awesome and shows off Public Enemy’s impressive ability to repeatedly
sample themselves without sounding contrived and/or starved for ideas. And it’s about crackheads! But it’s anti-crackhead,
you see. Militant black power doesn’t
work if everyone looks and acts like Flavor Flav. One of him is quite enough, and on this album
one of him is almost too much. All this
serious Black Panther political rhetoric admittedly needs a Flavor to balance it out (Public Enemy would never have
worked as well without him), but that doesn’t mean “Cold Lampin’ with Flavor”
isn’t annoying. Great production and
beat, ofcourse, and it’s funny for like a minute or two, but there’s simply too
much Flavor here. The lisp is still
present, for instance, and he says “Cold Medina” like 50 goddamn times. And his misogynistic monologues in “She Watch
Channel Zero?!” are crap (Really, Flav?
You wanna watch the game? Can’t
you ask nicely? And yes, I understand
that the point of the song is that people watch crap on TV instead of learning
about their culture, blah blah blah, but that doesn’t mean I care), although the main reason I’m not
a big fan of this song is the ham-handed Slayer guitar riff, which doesn’t fit
that well at all. I know Rick Rubin
signed you guys, but that doesn’t mean you have
to use metal guitar samples.
Most of the rest of the album is
ace, though. For instance, “Terminator X
to the Edge of Panic” samples Queen’s Flash
Gordon theme! Sweet. And “Rebel Without a Pause” is a good time,
too, though I swear it uses the same screamy synth line thing as “Terminator X
to the Edge of Panic.” Likewise, “Black
Steel in the Hour of Chaos” is supremely powerful despite its clunkiness, but
that “I’m goin’ for the steel” line is eerily reminiscent of “I’m louder than a
bomb” from (weirdly enough) “Louder than a Bomb.” Lack of ideas? The closer “Party For Your Right to Fight” is
fantastic, though, and while their whole “lets make a 90-second instrumental of
a random beat” trick is still occasionally stupid and/or boring (“Security of
the First World”), they’re showing signs of making their little excursions more
entertaining (“Show ‘Em Whatcha Got,” with yet another cool looped sax sample), so that’s nice to see.
High 8 here, but I can’t go any
higher because, although this stuff is huge and loud and powerful and original
and revolutionary and yadda yadda yadda, they’d do all of it better in the coming few years, and, as
I said in the last review, they haven’t shaken all the bad habits they
displayed on Yo! Bum Rush the Show. The sound collages are more interesting and
detailed on Fear of a Black Planet,
and the anger and power is more visceral on both Fear and Apocalypse 91. There’s some filler, some random, useless
instrumentals, some “old-school” stuff that sounds dated today, etc., but it
only comes up lacking when compared to other albums by Public Enemy. By itself, and trimmed a little bit, it’s
great.
Mike
Noto (thepublicimage79@hotmail.com) writes:
Everyone agrees without
question that this is, in all senses of the word,
the most revolutionary hip-hop album to ever break upon the genre; however,
there is justified debate as to whether it's Public Enemy's best. I happen
to agree with Brad and think that "Fear of a Black Planet" is even
better
than this one (Note to Self: I need to get "Apocalypse 91" ASAP,
since I've
heard "Lost at Birth" and that KICKS ASS), so this one gets a 9 - regardless
of the problems that it does have.
However, Public Enemy's second-best and by far most influential album is an
astounding thing in itself. There are tons of stone cold classics here, from
the catchy-AND-avant-garde-as-hell "Bring The Noise" to the
unquestionable
grooving brilliance of "Don't Believe The Hype" (somehow the track's
even
funkier than the James Brown song - "I've Got Ants In My Pants Pt. 1"
- it
samples the guitar from), to the nonstop combustible energy of "Terminator
X
To The Edge of Panic" and "Louder Than A Bomb" (check Chuck's
vocal on that
one), to the final relentless three-song smackdown of "Rebel Without A
Pause," "Prophets of Rage," and "Party For Your Right To
Fight" (well, the
last one isn't so good, but the first two are amazing). The best tracks
might be "Night of the Living Baseheads" (the breakdown is
mind-boggling and
the looped car-horn sax riff might be the catchiest thing PE ever laid on
tape) and "Black Steel In The Hour of Chaos" (the chilling piano
sample is
great, but Chuck's lyrics on this one are what really shine). Even some of
the DJ instrumentals rule, like "Show 'Em Whatcha Got," which
combines yet
another great looped sax riff with cut-up Chuck/Flav samples, a thudding
beat and a woman giving a half-muddled but still lacerating speech.
But some songs here kinda smoke the cock, and there are parts of the album
that sound pretty damn dated
now. "Cold Lampin' With Flavor" is barely
articulate and alternately relies on slang so dated that no one knows what
it means anymore (cold lampin'? cold medina? WTF?) and one really clumsy
Flav rap about...ya guessed it, food, cause he's "the king of all
flavors."
The beat's pretty great, but Flav's rapping stinks. ("911 Is A Joke"
and
"Can't Do Nuttin' For Ya Man" off of "Fear of a Black
Planet" beat this
track into the ground.) "She Watch Channel Zero?!" suffers from most
of the
same problems - good beat, this time a sample of Slayer at prime facemelt
matched to idiotic, dated, clumsy, and misogynistic lyrics (what this track
could have been in the age of Fox News...) - and "Party For Your Right To
Fight" has a crap beat. "Caught, Can I Get A Witness" is dated,
but no
matter - it still whips ass.
This is an album for the ages, but "Fear of a Black Planet" simply
KILLS.
I also watched that link you put up to that Fox News broadcast, and find it
safe to say that that entire clip is absolutely repugnant, rank, right-wing
paranoid bullshit designed to attack universal health care through the
premise of terrorist vigilance. Neil Cavuto is an idiotic piece of shit who
would be out of his depth in a parking lot puddle.
Fear Of A Black Planet (1990)
Rating: 10
Best Song: “Welcome
To The Terrordome”
It
Takes a Nation
was where everything came together for Public Enemy. Chuck D. found his voice, the Bomb Squad
found their sound, and the group as a whole found their message. It was aggressive, powerful, original, and
catchy as hell all at the same time, and it’s rightly hailed as one of the most
influential rap albums of all time, if not the most influential.
Fear
of a Black Planet
destroys it. Everything, and I mean everything (production, power,
aggression, lyrics, danceability, grooves, album cover, everything) is not only better than what Public Enemy did on It Takes a Nation, it’s much better. And as you often see with such landmark
records, it was also produced in a swirl of controversy, namely the whole
“Professor Griff is an anti-semite” thing I talked about in the intro (much of
which is again brilliantly recounted in the album’s centerpiece “Welcome to the
Terrordome.” “Told the rab, get off the
rag!” Ha!), but also because it’s not
like it was Chuck D.’s m.o. to “play nice” with the media. If Chuck D. was angry before It Takes a Nation,
let’s just say the next two years didn’t help him calm down any, and, with the
help of the best production work by the best production team in the history of
hip-hop, as well as Flavor (I guess), he made what is to me the defining statement of rap music.
On Mark Prindle’s Public Enemy page,
this album is called both “the Sgt.
Pepper of rap” (which, admittedly, the commentator stole from an actual
review) and “an overwhelming brain-hammer of noise,” and both descriptions are
equally apt. The Bomb Squad’s
concoctions on this album are so frequently mindboggling they sometimes make It Takes a Nation look like Yo! Bum Rush the Show by comparison, and
the degree to which this was so far and away better than anything else that had
come before probably did make people
shit themselves the way that rock bands shat themselves when Sgt. Pepper came out back in 1967 (and
you know what? This album is just as good as Sgt. Pepper, and probably better).
The beats and grooves are often extremely
funky and danceable (“911 is a Joke,” “Fight the Power”) or, failing that,
absolutely kick your ass like the
best rock music can (“Welcome to the Terrordome,” “Burn Hollywood Burn”). On top of this, the screaming guitar blasts
and sirens and synth screams and sirens and whistles and interview/speech
snippets and turntable work are not only incredibly thick, detailed, and
interesting, but MASSIVELY FUCKING LOUD. It’s literally a wall of sound, but one whose
sole purpose is to be as loud, in-your-face, and ass-kicking as possible, yet still remain catchy. The number of rock bands that were as
powerful and ass-kicking as Public Enemy were in 1989/1990 is not many, and
quite possibly zero. What rocks harder,
“Unskinny Bop” or “Welcome to the Terrordome?”
Is there even a fucking question?
Lyrically, this album touches on just about everything, but two ideas take prominence. The opening “Brothers Gonna Work it Out,” on the strength of an irresistible bass groove, fantastic Prince guitar sample, and enough vocal samples to make the Beastie Boys circa-Paul’s Boutique blush (including a bunch from Public Enemy themselves!), is sort of a call to arms to the black community to “get involved,” claiming that “brothers that try to work it out, they get mad revolt, revise, realize,” and ending with the line “now we are ready if you are ready,” and this idea of self-awareness and political self-help recurs in “Power to the People,” “Fight the Power,” and even a Flavor song (“Can’t Do Nuttin’ For Ya Man”). Needless to say, Flavor’s take on the whole thing is a bit less serious (“Your mama’s got gold nipples!”), but no less effective. The other concept that runs throughout the album is prejudice against and fear of interracial relationships, and so hence the album title and title track (“Excuse us for the news, I question those accused. Why is this fear of black from white influence who you choose?”), but also the hilarious spoken word pseudo-instrumental “Pollywannacracka,” which makes it clear this prejudice works both ways in Public Enemy’s world. And while all this social commentary is well and good, the reason it all works so well is that the songs are fucking amazing. “Power to the People” is one of the most ridiculously fast songs in the entire Public Enemy catalog, “Can’t Do Nuttin’ For Ya Man” one of the funniest, and “Fight the Power” just one of the best. And sure, the title track might be a little clunky, and that squeaky falsetto voice effect a little annoying, but it’s still better than like half of It Takes a Nation, and, as we all know, that’s not a bad album right there.
“Welcome to the Terrordome,” though, is something else entirely. Neither a forward-thinking message of black power nor social commentary of any kind, it’s just Chuck’s manifesto, as he angrily and brutally honestly vents all the frustrations he’s been holding in the last two years. “I got so much trouble on my mind!” he shouts at the beginning before diving into lyrics so apparently controversial that the song’s single release was an instrumental version (and it was still a hit). In reference to the constant criticism and controversy he kept courting (including from Alan Colmes! Listen to “Incident at 66.6 FM!” That’s totally Alan Fucking Colmes!), he bitterly spits “Crucifixion ain't no fiction, so called chosen frozen, apology made to whoever pleases. Still they got me like Jesus” (that didn’t go over so well), and lyrics like “Every brother ain't a brother cause a Black hand squeezed on Malcolm X the man” show once again that Public Enemy was as much about criticizing what they thought was “bad” black culture as white racism. Moreover, to match Chuck’s irate vocal assault, the Bomb Squad created probably the loudest and most overwhelmingly thick soundscape of their career, as James Brown sample is piled on James Brown sample until the dam practically bursts. Just like no rap album will ever match this one, no rap song will ever match “Welcome to the Terrordome.”
There is so
much other stuff here, though, to the point where you’ll start finding little
treasures in one and two-minute linking nothings like the adrenaline rush of
“Meet the G that Killed Me” and the crushing
“War at 33 1/3.” The group takes on
racism in entertainment with the (again) massively loud and powerful “Burn Hollywood Burn,” in which Ice Cube and Big
Daddy Kane guest-star and almost upstage Chuck D., and Flavor provides probably
the funniest moment of the entire album (“Now we’re considering you for a part
in our new production. How do you feel
about playing a controversial negro?”).
The effortlessly funky “Revolutionary Generation” shows the group have
come a long way since “Sophisticated Bitch” (yeah, forgot to mention that one
in the Yo! Bum Rush the Show review;
it’s not very good) with its pro-women lyrics like “They disrespected mama and treated
her like dirt.
This is not only by far the best rap album I’ve ever had the
pleasure of listening to, it’s one of the top 20 or 30 albums I’ve ever heard
of any genre. It’s the most thought-provoking and lyrically
astute rap album I’ve ever heard. It’s
the loudest, most aggressive, and most powerful rap album I’ve ever heard. It’s the funkiest and most entertaining rap
album I’ve ever heard (seriously; this often gets lost in the discussion. Take a listen to “911 is a Joke” and try not
to dance like an idiot). It’s awesome. If you don’t like rap, this is the album that
will change your mind. And if it
doesn’t, well, you really, really
don’t like rap.
David
Dickson (ddickso2@uccs.edu) writes:
Brad, Brad, Brad. . . I have
terrible, terrible news.
Geddy Lee HAS decided to rap. In the band's 1991 hit single "Roll
The
Bones." The apocalypse has occurred. . . 15 years prior to now.
THAT'S RIGHT, SINNERS!!!!! YOU HAVE BEEN LIVING IN HELLLLLL SINCE YOU
WERE IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL!!! REPENT UNDER THE FORCE OF GEDDY LEE'S
PITCHFORK AND GREAT FORKED TONGUE!!!! BLEHAAHAHEYAH!
BLEYEYAHEYAYEHYEH!! BLEHAEAHEHAAHAAYAHAYAYAAyeyeh alright enough
already.
Fear of a Black Planet, eh? Eh. It's far more dense, diverse, and
risk-taking than the album that precedes it, but. . . meh, it's too
unfocused and messy as a whole for me to give it the Palme d'War it
typically seems to get. Some live-Prodigy-soundalike like "Power to
the People" I can't characterize as anything but "space filler."
And
"Meet the G That Killed Me" and "Anti-Nigger Machine"
should both be
about four times longer than they are.
But to me the real classic is the same predictable one everyone else
drools over: ITANOMTHUB. Such FOCUS, such HOOKS, such INCREDIBLE
POWER. Sounds generic, but that album's one of the few I've ever
heard without a second of wasted space or a single misplaced note.
Even the short filler instrumentals are perfect on that one. And
for
my money, I've never thought of "She Watch Channel Zero" as
misogynist. How that can be the most controversial song on the album
is a mystery for us all.
Twelve songs, twelve classics. As of now, it stands at number #4 on
my Desert Island List, right behind Dark Side of the Moon, Hotel
California, and
God help us all.
David
Dickson (ddickso2@uccs.edu) writes:
My last comment on this album
stunk and sucked and was silly. Here's a replacement:
I couldn't disagree more, Brad. I will agree that both this record and
Apocalypse are more agressive, atonal, angry, and loud than It Takes a Nation
of Millions--that doesn't mean they're BETTER albums by any means, but the fact
cannot be denied. The production's more sophisticated, the lyrics cover
more issues--basically, the band's making an overwhelming attempt to show that
It Takes a Nation was no fluke.
Unfortunately, that's PRECISELY the problem--they're trying too hard. Instead
of making good songs the priority, they make GROUNDBREAKING the priority, and
in so doing, give a whole host of other traits that constitute a
"masterpiece" short shrift. Now, I'm not saying the album is
BAD per se, it's just a mess of a listening experience. Yes, there are
parts of it that equal anything on It Takes a Nation of Millions, but they're
frustratingly few. (Annoyingly enough, the ones I seem to like seem to be
the ones everyone else considers "minor": "Revolutionary
Generation" and "Who Stole the Soul?" Come ON, people--do
the singles ALWAYS have to be picked as the highlights?)
But that's not the big issue. Highlights aside, one of the bigger
problems with the album is its structure. One of the reasons It Takes a
Nation worked so well is that groundbreaking aside, it remained very much a
song-focused work. Even taking the album track-by-track, without any of
the surrounding tunes reinforcing each other, it played almost as a
greatest-hits compilation. Not the case with Fear of a Black Planet.
I'm not sure whether they listened to too much Frank Zappa before they
recorded, or whether they just stopped in the middle of track recordings a la
Wire because they figured this or that dinky ninety-second snippet was great
"as is." But DUDE. What were they THINKING cutting off
"Anti-Nigger Machine" and "War at 33 1/3" after two
minutes? What is the PURPOSE of "Reggae Jax" or "Final
Countdown of etc."? Am I supposed to be IMPRESSED by the fact that
"Power to the People" has no written lyrics? (None of this
would be a problem, mind, if the fragments were all good, or even if they were
sequenced well--take a listen to Zappa's We're Only in it for the Money for proof
of fragmentary potential.)
But when even the fabled PRODUCTION work--which is admittedly impressive, and
can, indeed be described as "massively fucking loud," as you put
it--seems occasionally misguided, you know there's something wrong with your
Public Enemy album. Yes, it's layered and mindblowing, but so's Tricky,
and he's boring. More to the point, production generally has the purpose
of serving the songs, not the other way around, and the other way around has
its way in a BIG way on "Brothers Gotta Work it Out." It's only
one song, mind, but it's the first real song on the album, and it starts us off
with a sour, needlessly shrill taste in our mouths. (Of course, keep in
mind that I'm not the biggest fan of Prince's Purple Rain album, so that might
color my judgment on the matter.)
Don't worry--I admit, as all honest people should, that "Terrordome,"
"Fear of a Black Planet," and "911 is a Joke" are decent
songs (though they're easily blown away by everything on the previous album bar
"Rebel Without a Pause"). And "Leave This Off Your Fucking
Charts" and the extended coda to "Power to the People" are
actually pretty awesome uses of the band's new, "everything but the
kitchen sink" production approach. But the album as a whole just
doesn't measure up to It Takes a Nation of Millions. Though taken as a
simple historical document and audio experimentm, it's occasionally
fascinating.
If you like this "noise in rap" thing, Brad, you'd do well to check
out GZA's Liquid Swords and Company Flow's Funcrusher Plus. Granted, they
don't mention politics that much, and their beats are much slower. But
the former one in particular is one of the best albums of ANY kind you'll hear
from the '90's. Of course, neither of them are anywhere near as good as
It Takes a Nation of Millions, but take what you can get from this genre.
Apocalypse 91…The Enemy Strikes
Black (1991)
Rating: 9
Best Song: “Nighttrain”
Between Fear and this album, and largely as a result of the groundbreaking
sound collages on both Fear and the
Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique, the
“golden age of sampling” ended when people realized they could sue samplers
over copyright infringement. This is
perhaps the biggest reason, at least outside of the inherently short shelf life
of rap music itself, that Fear will
never be equaled in the genre (damn this country’s litigiousness!). However, even if you don’t consider the unfortunate
new legal landscape that greeted hip-hop artists in 1991, there’s no way Public
Enemy was gonna equal Fear. Unless you’re someone like Bob Dylan or the
Beatles, you can only have one
“career-defining absolute masterpiece” (and most artists don’t even have that), and, as soon as it came out, it
should have been clear to everyone that Fear
was Public Enemy’s.
Thankfully, though, even with the new sampling rules, and even with the Bomb Squad’s moving “upstairs” and leaving most of the nitty-gritty production duties to some group of people called “The Imperial Grand Ministers of Funk,” and even with the somewhat embarrassing album title and ass-cheap cover art, Public Enemy are still at or near the top of their game. The labyrinthine production of Fear may be a thing of the past, yes, but it’s not like anyone else could do that, either, so they’re not behind the curb here. A lot of this actually sounds like a tighter, more aggressive, and louder version of It Takes a Nation, since the production is roughly as thick, detailed, and interesting as that record, but it’s faster and Chuck’s vocals are more cutting and confident. It may lack a bit of the “newness” of It Takes a Nation, and the production may not be as occasionally gloriously atonal (the awesome sax riff thing in “Bring the Noise,” for instance, is not equaled anywhere here), but, dammit, this album is so focused in its anger. Even more so than Fear, which was a bit “sprawling.” The opening “Lost at Birth” and its repeated police siren noise is just a massive punch to the gut, and after the fantastic little interlude “Rebirth” (“The beat is too large for that!”), “Nighttrain” is the most balls-out aggressive song Public Enemy’s ever done. It may not be as original as “Bring the Noise” or as fascinatingly layered as “Brothers Gonna Work it Out” or “Welcome to the Terrordome,” but, for the love of cheese, listen to Chuck D.’s vocals. He has never sounded this angry before. He’s almost guttural. It’s pure fucking aggression, man (“Land of the free, but the skin I’m in identifies me!”), and nothing else, and it’s awesome.
While
obviously nothing on the remainder of the album can match “Nighttrain” for
sheer power (and, honestly, how much in hip-hop, period, can match it in that
way?), the album never loses the song’s aggression (well, at least when Chuck’s
rapping it doesn’t. It’s not like anyone
factors in Flavor tracks when talking about Public Enemy’s anger and
aggression, though. How else do you
explain “Cold Lampin’ with Flavor” being one of the featured tracks on It Takes a Nation, allegedly the
greatest and most aggressive rap album of all time?). “Can’t Truss it” may use the same vocal
sample that was the basis of “Brothers Gonna Work it Out” one album ago, and
this may be unfortunate, but who cares when the song is this fucking good? The duo of “Move!” and “1 Million Bottlebags”
are as fast and exhilarating as anything the group has ever done, and “By the
Time I Get to Arizona,” while not, you know, “fast,” is FUCKING LOUD and, in
subject matter, the angriest thing ever written by the band. The female backup singers going “hooo,
hooo!!” may sound cheesy on a mid-eighties Bob Dylan album, but paired with
Chuck D.’s threatening to personally kill the governor of
Even before factoring in the violent
broadside that is “By the Time I Get to
“I'd like to express our deepest gratitude at the destruction of the inferior nigger race, and I'm especially pleased to report it's destroying itself without our help. To all you gangs, hoodlums, drug pushers and users, and other worthless niggers killing each other, we'd like to thank y'all for saving us the time, trouble and legality for the final chapter of riddin' y'all off the face of the Earth. Your solution to our problem is greatly appreciated, so keep selling us your soul.”
Maybe in print it doesn’t come across as well, but on record
it’s brilliant, cutting, clever, funny, and tragic. To Chuck D., the racism of
A song or two near the end don’t quite hold up, I guess, and the closing thrash-metal version of “Bring the Noise” with Anthrax is simply unnecessary, but the massive, in-your-face aggression of the album is still something to behold all the way from start to finish (again, unless Flavor is the featured rapper, in which case it’s still great and funny). It’s not the massive clusterfuck of sound that Fear was, but what is? It’s just another great Public Enemy album. Unfortunately, it’s also the last.
Greatest Misses (1992)
Rating: 5
Best Song: “Gotta Do
What I Gotta Do”
An all-too-accurately titled and disturbingly haphazard collection of six substandard new tracks, six useless remixes, and a crap live version of “Shut ‘Em Down” (which I neglected to mention in the Apocalypse 91 review) that presents us with a Public Enemy sadly short on ideas. Christ, the “remix album” is always such a copout, isn’t it? The only song that shows any noticeable improvement from its original version is “Megablast,” which sucked total ass in its original version and is hauled up to “mediocre” here. “Who Stole the Soul?” totally rules, but that’s because it sounds exactly like the version on Fear of a Black Planet. Is it even technically a “remix?” And “Party For Your Right to Fight” is turned into some sort of club dance track. I probably don’t need to tell you how that sounds.
It’s not
that these remixes are bad, you see,
just unnecessary, though they’re only
a little less necessary than the downright mediocre originals. What happened to the power of this
group? What happened to the anger? The only song that can even hold a candle to their last three albums is
“Gotta Do What I Gotta Do,” which has this irresistibly groovy and catchy
drum/keyboard groove going on that totally
rules. Good party rap! Unlike the first two tracks. Those are like half-assed party rap, in that
they still have like gunshot sound effects and Chuck D. (tragically
unconvincingly) trying to sound angry and stuff, but the relaxed party grooves
don’t match the rest of the production at all.
“
This album doesn’t suck, per se, but compared to Public Enemy’s last three albums it’s a huge step down. It’s not angry. It’s not powerful. It’s not invigorating. It’s not even especially loud. It’s just mediocre. And half of it is remixes! This album is useless.
Muse Sick-N-Hour Mess Age (1994)
Rating: 5
Best Song: “Whole
Lotta Love Goin On In The Middle Of Hell”
Rap music evolves and cannibalizes itself so quickly that, in just the three years since Apocalypse 91 (leaving out Greatest Misses because, well…christ, do you really need me to explain why I’m leaving out Greatest Misses?), Public Enemy had become dinosaurs. No one wanted to hear old school hip hop in 1994, and while it’s not really accurate to call Public Enemy “old school,” anything that didn’t sound like that whole Dr. Dre/G-Funk thing was qualified as “old school” at this point. They might as well have been Run DMC or something, really, so no matter how good Muse Sick turned out to be, it was never gonna be as popular or controversial or relevant as Fear or Apocalypse 91. Also, before even listening to the album, there are some disturbing signs that lead one to think Public Enemy may have jumped the shark. For instance, the title is absolutely ridiculous, and the album cover is horrid. While these may seem like trivial things, do you think this group circa 1990 would have put a skeleton with a gun pointed to its head standing behind a pair of forties on the cover? Like hell they would. And Fear of a Black Planet is such a fantastic album title, isn’t it? But Muse Sick-N-Hour Mess Age? Are you kidding me? Who in their right mind would actually think that’s clever? I get it. It’s a “pun.” Ha. Ha ha ha. Ha. No.
Unfortunately, the music inside doesn’t prove these uninformed aesthetic interpretations to be false. Fear had a bad-ass album cover, bad-ass title, and bad-ass music. Muse Sick has an awkward, clunky album cover, awkward, clunky title, and awkward, clunky music. The two big, obvious changes to the Public Enemy sound are the addition of a live drummer on nearly every track and a preponderance of massed shout vocals, neither of which I endorse. Obviously, a live drummer is normally a good thing in music, but its addition here leads the group to adopt more of a laid-back, party soul/R&B sound on a lot of tracks, which is simply not what Public Enemy are good at. Obviously they haven’t turned into the Beastie Boys circa-Check Your Head here, so the songs are still technically “fast” and “loud” and Chuck is still yelling about the same stuff he’s always been (although it seems strangely old, tired and cliched this time), but the mad blasts of atonal sound that have always made Public Enemy albums so exhilarating are extremely rare, since all these drum/bass/keyboard grooves provide a lot of the musical backing and take the place of the massive seas of samples (even the less massive but still entertaining ones we saw on Apocalypse 91) that used to make Public Enemy albums so unique-sounding. This wouldn’t even be so bad, though, if the songs were better (hell, on one track, “Give it Up,” the new party soul Public Enemy sound works really well, proving it’s not impossible for these guys) and the vocals less annoying, which leads me straight into criticism of the second new addition I mentioned. For the most part, I hate the mass-shout response vocal things. If I’m listening to hear a Public Enemy song, I expect to hear Chuck Fucking D., maybe Flavor Flav, and no one else (and if there is anyone else, they better be someone cool like Ice Cube or Big Daddy Kane). Now we have these giant groups of vocally challenged people yelling out “WHAT MOTHERFUCKIN’ SIDE YOU ON??” and “SOUL POWER!!!!” and other such nonsense, something that hits its nadir with the take-off on the “na na na na…hey hey hey…goodbye” song in “Hitler Day” (otherwise one of the best songs here and one of the few with obvious live drums that has the power of previous Public Enemy tracks). I understand that they’re going for a “party” atmosphere a lot of the time with the live drums and keyboards and songs like “Give it Up” (which really does rule), and these mass-shout vocals add to that atmosphere, but it doesn’t sound any good! It’s not even especially “fun” or “party.” “911 is a Joke?” That’s a party-rap song. A lot of these things just sound like Public Enemy hijacking a mediocre drum/keyboard groove and letting a bunch of their retard friends yell over it. Chuck D. is still Chuck D., Flavor is still Flavor, and the production crew doesn’t totally take a day off, so it’s not really that bad, but it’s shockingly ineffective for a Public Enemy album.
A few songs, thankfully, show the viewer that Public Enemy hasn’t totally lost it. I already mentioned the excellent “Give it Up” (the only funky drum/keyboard groove song that sounds nothing like old Public Enemy that actually works here) and “Hitler Day” (which is not excellent and really not all that much compared to previous Public Enemy triumphs, but on this album its energy stands out like a runway model with healthy eating habits), but two more are truly outstanding. First is “Whole Lotta Love Goin on in the Middle of Hell,” which is really just the traditional “sound collage” opener that every Public Enemy album has, but it sounds like a long-lost cousin of most of Fear, and Chuck’s “WHAT? Say WHAT?” vocal thing is probably the best moment on the record. Second is “Race Against Time,” which gets kudos for being based on a classic, speedy Public Enemy bass groove and is probably the only track to combine the new live drummer/mass-shout vocal aspects with the classic Public Enemy sound in a truly successful way. These two are great songs, and show all the anger and power than Public Enemy had at the peak of their powers, which only makes the half-assed, annoying remainder of the album all the more frustrating. I just look at these tracks and feel nothing. “So Whatcha Gonna Do Now?” “Aintnuttin Buttersong.” “Godd Complexx.” These songs just go nowhere (and the last one is one of the worst they’ve ever recorded). They’re loud, yes, but in an annoying, clunky way instead of a face-melting, powerful way. Flavor seems to pop up a lot more than is really necessary, but I may just be imagining that. “Death of a Carjacka” is entertaining, but it’s a two-minute filler track reenacting the bloody (and hilarious!) death of (funnily enough) a group of carjackers, so it’s not like I’m gonna put much stock in that one.
Greatest Misses is obviously the most useless and unnecessary Public Enemy album, but I often find myself thinking this is their worst, although that might be because it’s such a shocking fall from grace when compared to its three predecessors (like, it’s not like people were eagerly anticipating New Whirl Odor, so why even bother criticizing it?). It’s kind of sad, actually. Just a few years prior Public Enemy were the hip-hop group, and Chuck D. was one of the coolest men on the planet. Now they’re like the uncool, annoying uncle who stays too long after Thanksgiving dinner or something. It’s not just that they’re not good anymore. They’re not even relevant. The game has completely passed them by.
He Got Game (1998)
Rating: 7
Best Song: “He Got
Game”
So Public Enemy responded to their sudden and total irrelevance by taking four years to release another album, thus cementing said irrelevance. I definitely remember this movie coming out back in the day, with Denzel sporting the funny afro and Ray Allen apparently doing a surprisingly serviceable job in the lead role (I never actually saw it), and I also remember hearing that P. Diddy-approved (or is it just “Diddy” now? I don’t even know. OK, you know what? His new name is “Puff Douchebag.” I’m calling him “Puff Douchebag” from now on. Now I need to review more rap and R&B so I actually have reason to mention him and thus refer to him by the hilarious new moniker “Puff Douchebag”) sample/ripoff of “For What its Worth” on the trailer, but who gave a shit that Public Enemy did that song, or for that matter the movie’s entire soundtrack? Seriously, who did? Even the few people who were awaiting the new Public Enemy album with baited breath, even though in the seven years since Apocalypse 91 the group had produced the Muse Sick shitbox, the six mediocre random songs on Greatest Misses and NOTHING ELSE, had to have their expectations lowered when they found out it was gonna be a soundtrack to a movie about a basketball phenom. I mean, what the hell? Public Enemy, the Voice of Black America, writing a soundtrack for a basketball movie?
Shockingly, it turned out pretty damn well, at least considering how washed up it seemed Public Enemy was. In being forced to write a bunch of songs that connected to the movie’s plot and thus not being allowed to attempt the kind of massive, sprawling masterpiece that Fear was and Muse Sick failed so pathetically at being, Chuck D., Flavor, Terminator X, and co. actually had to focus, and this new focus led them to turn out what’s probably the best Public Enemy album outside the Big Three. It’s not even that high of a 7, but it’s an admirable, tight, well-produced, and immaculate-sounding effort, and its clean, precise attack is almost the polar opposite of whatever it is they were trying to do on Muse Sick. With the caveat that I actually don’t know a damn thing about what commercial rap sounded like in 1998, this album also strikes me as an attempt to co-opt “modern” sounds and techniques for Public Enemy’s purposes, and a successful one at that. The songs are remarkably simple, but not in a tinny beatbox old-school way like Yo! Bum Rush the Show. The songs are built on sample bass/drum machine grooves, with occasional repeated piano or guitar licks tossed on top and tastefully employed female backup vocals (check the title track especially for that). I can’t imagine any of these songs has 1/10 as many things going on as even the simplest track from Fear, but that’s the point. When you fuck that kind of stuff up, it’s cluttered and can sometimes be downright awful. If you can’t throw twenty ideas into a song successfully anymore, focus your energy on picking the right four ideas and developing them effectively, you know? Chuck is focused and in command as well, but not the massive tidal wave of anger he was eight years ago. He’s just a good MC here, and they even manage to keep Flavor under control for an album. There is very little here that will annoy anyone.
I’m almost ashamed to admit that my favorite song here is the Puff Douchebag sample technique ripoff title track, but what can you do? They use “For What it’s Worth” in an excellent manner (especially those “he got game, I got game, where’s the game…” things), and hearing a fat, drunk, old, mumbling Stephen Stills give the “there’s something happenin’ here…” line thirty years after the original is simply a perverse pleasure, especially with Flavor going “yeah, you go boy!” and whatnot in the background while he’s doing it (he sounds horrible). As you probably could have guessed, the first half of the album is a fair bit stronger than the second half, with very nice, groovy songs like “Resurrection” and “Unstoppable” and the fantastic Flavor track “Shake Your Booty.” Dig the sped-up “Won’t Get Fooled Again” keyboard rip in the background of “House of the Rising Sun,” too. I hate the ugly rap-metal mess “Go Cat Go” and continue to thoroughly dislike that part of the Public Enemy package, but the rest is A-OK, if inconsequential.
Listen, compared to the kind of stuff Public Enemy were producing in the late-eighties/early nineties, this is bland, uneventful, safe, commercial decency. But I’ll take bland commercial decency over the ridiculous mess that was Muse Sick any day of the week, especially bland decentness that sounds so fucking good on a pair of headphones. It goes without saying that no one needs this album, and the only reason I’d ever recommend it to anyone who wasn’t an obsessed rap fiend would be to prove that Public Enemy didn’t lose completely it when people stopped caring about them commercially, but dammit, this is a remarkably decent album, and to get something so compact from Public Enemy is nice, too. 48 minutes, 13 songs, few frills. Just solid, unremarkable, but good rap music, the kind of music you didn’t think Public Enemy was capable of writing.
There’s A Poison Goin On… (1999)
Rating: 7
Best Song: “What
What”
I’m not sure about punning on the title of a classic Sly and the Family Stone album at this point in their career, and I’m even less sure about the white-toddlers-wearing-gasmasks cover, but at least it’s still better than Muse Sick in these areas, so I’ll take what I can get in the first “classic-style” Public Enemy since the justifiably unloved Muse Sick and the first Public Enemy album, period, since the out-of-nowhere semi-pseudo-success and semi-pseudo-successful co-opting of modern rap production styles on the He Got Game soundtrack. And Professor Griff is back, too! Good for him. I missed the old anti-Semite, plus the S1Ws’ dancing maneuvers were becoming dangerously un-kickass without him (probably, not that I’d actually know or anything), so that’s always nice, plus it begs the question: Can a now fully whole Public Enemy, fresh off the moderate victory of He Got Game and now far-removed from the career-killing Muse Sick, successfully employ the lessons learned from He Got Game and create a modern-day rap masterpiece?
No. Ofcourse they can’t. Plus they don’t even use the lessons learned from He Got Game all that much, as a lot of this is a crapload closer to “classic” Public Enemy style than that one, with denser production and vocals coming in from various nontraditional places and Flavor occasionally annoying the listener with his shenanigans. It’s not completely like this, ofcourse, and you could probably look at it most accurately as a happy medium between the two, but I felt they were headed in a potentially fruitful direction with He Got Game. The fact that this is actually roughly as good as that record and the subsequent fact that Public Enemy have now, shockingly, produced two above-average, decently enjoyable albums in two years does not lessen my disappointment that Public Enemy didn’t try to continue in the style of He Got Game and compete with the modern rap bullshit merchants at their own game. I think they could’ve done it, goddammit! But instead we’re left with this perfectly fine, perfectly solid rap record that had about as much chance of being a huge hit as the EP of cover songs my friends and I recorded in our lead singer’s basement (which, don’t forget, is the greatest record ever recorded by anyone ever). It didn’t help the album’s commercial potential that between He Got Game and this one Public Enemy split with Def Jam and released this, as well as all their subsequent records, on a succession of labels with silly names like “SLAMjamz” and “Guerrilla Funk,” but it’s not like this album would’ve sold worth crap anyway.
I like how I spent the entire He Got Game review praising that album and all I’m doing with this one in slamming it, when it isn’t any better or worse. It’s really not a bad album at all. There are some really cool, slightly fucked-up sounding grooves in here, like the space-keyboard-vomit sound in “LSD,” the drum break in “Here I Go,” and the saxophone fart noise in “First the Sheep Next the Shepherd?” (don’t you just love my descriptions?) The first half is better than the second, but it’s not as pronounced as in He Got Game, and the album as a whole is relatively even, with just a few exceptions (the underdeveloped and downright retarded “Crayola” (WITH THE MOST SPRAY-ON HITS!), the ugly “Kevorkian,” which Chuck D. had to know would sound dated within two years like all the protest songs on Sometime in New York City about stuff no one’s even heard of today). The lyrics don’t have the same weight they used to, as, for instance, the musically superb “LSD” features the line “I ain’t never been cuckoo for no cocoa puffs” and a reference to Nick Van Exel, someone else I bet no one under the age of 15 has ever heard of.
My favorite song is actually the silly Flavor showcase “What What,” its ridiculous lyrics about Flavor making it “more better” and seductive, blowjob-ready backup singers and all. The album is so even that the songs that do stick out in a good way only do so barely, and due to the lack of power in both the music and the lyrics, I’m going with the funny song, which finds Flavor using just the right amount of Flavorness but no more (see “Kevorkian,” for instance, for far too fucking much Flavor). The groove is pretty smooth, too, almost seductive! Or at least it would be if Flavor weren’t prominently involved (“I got a bunch o’ rhymes in my KNAPSAAAACK!”). I guess it says something about this album that my favorite track is a silly Flavor showcase because it’s “the funny one,” namely that it’s not as good as Fear of a Black Planet, but it’s not like you were expecting anything that good at this point in the group’s career (I hope). Fact is, this album is fine. For the most part, it’s tastefully done, it’s not embarrassing, it’s a got a bunch of pretty cool grooves and sounds and things, and overall it’s a decently enjoyable listen. Just like He Got Game, so they’re both low 7’s. And yes, that means I’m giving it the same rating as Achtung Baby.
I should also add that my copy has a bunch of bonus tracks and remixes and crap tacked on it for reasons unclear to me (as if this album was popular enough that people were clamoring for a “special addition”). They’re fine. I’ve only listened to them once, actually, but they seemed fine. So sure, they’re fine. Good story.
Revolverlution (2002)
Rating: 6
Best Song: “Gotta
Give The Peeps What They Need”
After releasing two full albums of new material in two years, Public Enemy take three years off before putting out a double-length, much more random, and marginally better version of Greatest Misses. Right. About half of this bloated, 75 minute thing is new songs, but this time they’re scattered around the album and surrounded by a couple remixes, a couple live tracks, a couple interview snippet things, and a hilarious outtake of Flavor trying to do the phone call part of “Burn Hollywood Burn” in which his mother is in the room and he’s trying his darnedest to hide the fact that he’s probably high on crack the whole time. Plus he yells “WHAT’S THE BALLISTICS, G????”, which is pretty funny, I think. Or not.
Yeah, this is a mess, obviously. Most of the new tracks are actually pretty decent, although only a few go past that. I for one love the opening “Gotta Give the Peeps What They Need” and its seductive bongo/Spanish guitar groove thing. I also dig the metal thing “Son of a Bush” (possibly the first time I’ve actually liked one of Public Enemy’s rap-metal excursions, which is funny because aren’t I supposed to be the white guy who likes loud guitars and hates rap?), if only for the repeated “HE’S THE SON OF A BAAAAD MAAAAAN!” refrain, which is just neat coming from Chuck and Flav. The rest of the new tracks…well, they’re there. “Can a Woman Make a Man Lose His Mind?” is pretty funny courtesy of Flavor, and that’s an interesting little piano line in “54321…Boom” there, but the rest…yeah, well, they’re there. The closing “What Good is a Bomb?” is probably too long, I guess. I have no comment on the others. Let’s move on.
The interviews and public service announcements are kinda sorta OK, but they’re not music so it’s not like they’re gonna have a big effect on the album’s rating (though it’s funny to hear Flavor “Crackhead” Flav telling kids to stay off drugs). The live tracks include a short and not especially interesting version of “Miuzi Weighs a Ton,” as well as recordings of “Fight the Power” and “Welcome to the Terrordome” taken from a concert in Switzerland that are actually fantastic and somehow more superbly chaotic than the album versions (they’re far and away the two best tracks here, but on such a random toss-together record I feel obligated to pick one of the new songs as “best.” Apparently, I have principles). The remixes are a mixed bag. The one of “By the Time I Get to Arizona” is actually a decent industrial metal thing and stresses the anger inherent in the track pretty well, but the “B Side Wins Again” one might as well not exist, and the “Public Enemy #1” ass-house remix might be the worst thing I’ve heard in my life (Why in god’s name is there some dude rapping in Spanish?). There’s also a remix of “Gotta Give the Peeps What They Need,” which is interesting because that’s a track from this album, and the remix sounds not at all different from the “regular” version originally released, oh, seventy minutes ago.
If you didn’t need He Got Game or There’s a Poison Goin On, you really don’t need this one. It’s interesting for the Public Enemy enthusiast, I guess, and there’s certainly a lot of stuff here, albeit of wildly varying quality. It’s like Public Enemy went up to their attic, cleaned out a bunch of shit they found up there, and tossed it onto a CD without even bothering to organize it. It’s got a decent title and album cover, though. First one of each of those since Fear of a Black Planet, so good for them.
It Takes A Nation: The
First London
Rating: 6
Best Song: “Bring The
Noise”
The fact that I’m reviewing this is ludicrous. I’ve reviewed the CD half of CD/DVD sets before and that’s pretty ludicrous in itself, but this takes the cake for ludicrousness. Why? Let me explain. This is the CD half of a CD/DVD package, as you may have guessed, but ofcourse it doesn’t stop there. The DVD half contains an entire (very short, since they were just starting out) concert from Public Enemy’s first European tour in 1987 as well as a crapload of bonus features that, as described in Prindle’s review of this, sound pretty neat, including extra live tracks and interviews and behind the scenes footage and all other sorts of interesting stuff. I have not seen any of this. The CD half contains the audio part of the DVD concert in full and a bunch of useless remixes, and since it’s 1987 and this is probably someone’s VHS recording (not that I’d know, because ofcourse I haven’t seen the DVD), the sound is ass. Absolute ass. It sounds like it was recorded in a back alley. It’s horrid. Plus Public Enemy live simply play their records and rap along with them. I’m sure the whole visual presentation of the thing, with Flavor dancing around and the S1W’s in full regalia, was badass, but, once again, I wouldn’t know that because this is just the CD half (which I downloaded off Bittorrent anyway). So, to repeat: this “CD” consists of 22 minutes of horridly recorded live music (which is nothing more than Chuck and Flavor rapping along with the tracks from their albums (which INCLUDE THE VOCALS!)) whose only reason for existence is the visuals, along with a handful of decidedly useless “extras,” and you can only get it packaged with a really badass DVD of the same concert (with the visuals) and a bunch of really sweet extras that this CD does not contain. That is what I’m reviewing. Good stuff.
The 6
rating is essentially my saying “yeah, I don’t know what to give this.” The energy on display during the concert is
pretty cool, but it is a horribly
muffled recording of Chuck and Flavor yelling over the album versions of their
songs, so it’s hard to call it “important.”
Plus, except for “Bring the Noise” (kickass!) and “Rebel Without a
Pause” (eh), all the songs are taken from Yo!
Bum Rush the Show, so you don’t even have the best Public Enemy material at
your disposal. It turns out all the live
samples scattered all over It Takes a
Nation of Millions were taken from this concert, so that’s pretty
interesting, but it also means that two of these 22 minutes are stuff you’ve
already heard. The remaining nine “bonus
tracks” consist of two harmless but useless instrumentals, two different
remixes of “Public Enemy Number One” (one of which sucks, and one of which I’m
pretty sure is the exact same totally embarrassing one that was on Revolverlution), a live version of
“Miuzi Weighs a Ton” (fantastic because, you know, we already have one of those from the concert part
of the CD, plus there was another one
on Revolverlution), two separate
remixes of “Do You Wanna Go Our Way?” from There’s
a Poison Goin On (because everyone was asking them to remix that one,
right? Oh hell, one is actually pretty
cool), a remix of a song from New Whirl
Odor (which they haven’t even released yet!), and the exact album version
of another song from New Whirl Odor (marked as a “Bonus 2005
The DVD is probably pretty cool. Prindle seems to think so. I’m giving the 22-minute visual-less concert a 6 because it’s fun and because “Bring the Noise” is awesome. Go me.
New Whirl Odor (2005)
Rating: 5
Best Song:
“Superman’s Black In The Building”
Quick: how many of you knew Public Enemy was releasing a new album in 2005? Exactly. As easy as it is to write that Public Enemy is more vital than ever under the ever-worsening reign of King George II, what’s more vital than ever is Public Enemy circa 1990, not Public Enemy circa now, and this album doesn’t do anything to change my mind. Is it embarrassing? Is it awful? No, not at all. It’s perfectly mediocre, just like you’d expect from the group at this point. It’s just so out of date. The phrase “New World Order” hadn’t been used in the political arena for something like fifteen years (not coincidentally, when Public Enemy was really cooking at their peak), so pulling it out as the basis for a punned album title just as ridiculous as Muse Sick-N-Hour Mess Age in 2005 is not the way to prove you’re “with it.” The only album post-Apocalypse 91 that has failed to provide ammunition to those who say Public Enemy is perpetually stuck in 1990 is He Got Game, and this one’s not gonna help.
Somehow, this album does the trick of looking back way too obviously at earlier Public Enemy triumphs and fucking up in silly attempts to sound modern at the same time. A lot of the tracks try to be all political and stick-your-fist-in-the-air-and-yell like the best Public Enemy stuff from the past, but they can’t pull it off because a) the production is ass boring and b) the lyrics are hopelessly out of touch. Why is Chuck taking shots at X-Box? Yeah, that’s the way to get the youth to listen. Really. I wouldn’t even mind the wannabe-controversial-but-not-because-Chuck-is-stuck-in-1990 lyrics so much if the music were better (like There’s a Poison Goin On, for instance), but, as I’ve said before, most of it is simply ass boring! It’s not bad, per se, but how much of this sluggish cross between old Public Enemy sound collages and modern, molasses-slow minimalist bullshit can you produce? I don’t even have too many specific examples because it’s all so blah. There’s not much going on, the tempos drag, the lyrics are reworked clichés of old Public Enemy black populist sentiments…it’s just not very good. Also dig “66.6 Strikes Again,” which uses snippets from the same goddamn Alan Colmes radio interview Public Enemy sampled for “Incident at 66.6 FM” way back on Fear of a Black Planet. You’re kidding me, right? And where’s Flavor? Why is he barely involved in the proceedings beyond sampling “yeah!”’s he probably recorded years ago? Oh, that’s, right, he lives on VH1 now. I forgot.
When they try to “keep up with the times,” though, that’s when this album really fails. Occasionally there’s this pseudo-wannabe-soul thing going on, which is either trying to be like some sort of modern rap movement I’m not familiar with or hearkens back to Muse Sick, neither of which is a good idea. “Makes You Blind” is simply silly, for instance. Also, “Revolution” does that thing where a couple black guys who can’t sing slowly intoning something in a really low voice counts as a chorus, which is fantastic (you know what I’m talking about; don’t pretend you don’t). “What a Fool Believes” is possibly the worst song the group has ever recorded as well, with its shit-for-brains one-note nu-metal riffing and “THE WHO! THE WHEN! THE WHY! THE WHAT!” yelling chorus contrasted with some sort of wannabe new age Enya bridge section. It sucks.
A few tracks are pretty good, though. “Bring That Beat Back” is pretty inane in terms of subject matter, but it’s fun, it’s got a nice tempo, and there’s enough going on in the production to keep me interested, and how “Superman’s Black in the Building,” the best song by far Public Enemy have done post-Muse Sick (which, remember, had 3 or 4 killer tracks to go along with an hour of retarded sludge), got onto this album is something I will never understand. It’s really, really good! I dig the live drum track, the understated guitar licks sound great, the violin thing in there is ace, and the subtle sampled female vocals are very nice. Plus, it’s the only moment on the album where Chuck really sounds like Chuck, at least as the world came to know him fifteen years ago. There’s absolutely no way in hell the song needs to be twelve minutes long (it totally loses steam after the jazz breakdown around minute 7, and I can’t recall a thing about the last few minutes), but the first four or so minutes of it are just really, really, really good stuff. An album full of this I’d give a high 8. Alas, no.
You shouldn’t get this album, but you knew that already. I’m glad Public Enemy are keeping themselves occupied, but, except for one totally out of place great track and a few other isolated moments of fun, this is some tired, poor, uninspiring stuff. Most of it still maintains at least a basic level of “not awful”-ness, but that’s about all the good I can say for a lot of this. As of now, January 2007, this is most certainly Public Enemy’s weakest album. Maybe Chuck D needs a reality show.
Also, my copy came with a DVD of a bunch of music videos and other stuff. I haven’t actually taken a look at it yet.
Rebirth Of A Nation (2006)
Rating: 6
Best Song: “Rise”
Public Enemy release albums way too fucking sporadically. They do nothing between 1994 and 1998, then release two in two years. Then they put out half an album’s worth of new material in the intervening six years, then two more in two years. At least this one’s better than the one they put out a year before, but I’m sorry to report that this is because Public Enemy didn’t actually write it. No, see, this is a “collaboration,” and it’s not actually by “Public Enemy,” but “Public Enemy featuring Paris,” which means some random guy named “Paris” produced and wrote the entire album, with Chuck contributing verses to I think four songs, and Flavor contributing (as usual) absolutely nothing to the creative process. Dig the five dollar photo-shopped album cover too. Ugh.
It’s nice
to see Public Enemy making a decent album after the messy failure (plus one
awesome song!) that was New Whirl Odor,
but it becomes depressing when you realize they were only able to make a decent
album because some rapper/producer no one’s ever heard of had to step in and
write the whole thing for them.
Seriously, what the fuck? I mean,
sure, it would probably have benefited a fair number of rock “dinosaurs” in the
midst of their respective crap periods to have more competent people writing
their songs for them (case in point: Bob Dylan and the entire decade of the
eighties), but it’s still a little ridiculous to think about. Really, the greatest rap group of all time is
hiring someone to write everything for them?
Really, you say? And this guy is
gonna provide vocals for like a third of the songs on the album too? And what’s his name again? Oh, he’s named Big Boi? That’s fine, then. I can deal with that. Oh, he’s not named Big Boi? He’s named what?
As you
could probably expect, the album is more modern-sounding and generic than the
last few Public Enemy albums, but is also much less messy and much more
compact, sort of like a He Got Game
redux, except the subject matter is focused on politics and social issues
instead of basketball and some random
dude named Paris wrote the entire album.
There are also a crapload of guest rappers who, when combined with
If this album is generally decent, well put-together, consistent, and non-embarrassing, it’s also, at times, almost frighteningly nondescript, so although I usually have a good time when the bulk of it’s playing, I can’t give it a rating any higher than a 6. It’s also not immune from complete fuckups, usually this time in the form of ridiculous direct liftings from previous Public Enemy albums. “Raw Shit” has a part where Flavor goes “Yeah, we’re Public Enemy number one in…” and then names a bunch of cities, and while that part of “Public Enemy Number One” has been sampled before, this time they actually took the time to record it anew and go on for a good minute, which is pretty fucktarded. Plus, “Invisible Man” is actually a song called “I” from There’s a Poison Goin On with a slightly different musical background. Granted, that song wasn’t any good the first time, and you’d only really pick this up if you were listening to all these albums in a row like I’ve been doing (who had listened to There’s a Poison Goin On recently when this came out in 2006? How many Public Enemy fans still had that in their regular rotation?), but it’s literally the same song. The vocal track is the exact same vocal track, with the exact same lyrics and mannerisms and everything. It’s just been layered on a different musical track (and it’s not even that different). If they wanna call it “I (Paris Field Boogie XMLKBRWBQST DJ Spooky Shadow Ice Cream Remix)” or something, then fine, but don’t go remixing a song you already did and actually pretending it’s a new song. That’s not cool, man. So not cool.
This page took me fucking way longer than I anticipated it would (thank you winter break), but, considering anyone with half a brain would have just stopped after Apocalypse 91, thank god it’s over and I can go back to listening to mediocre rock albums instead of mediocre rap albums now. Now go buy Fear of a Black Planet.
How You Sell Soul To A Soulless People Who Sold Their Soul??? (2007)
Rating: 4
Best Song: “How You Sell
Soul To A Soulless People Who Sold Their Soul???”
Another couple years, another horribly titled album. Someone needs to tell Chuck D. that Public Enemy are completely washed-up ASAP before he embarrasses himself any more than he already has with this pile of badness, the first Public Enemy album that finally dips below complete mediocrity to officially become “shite.” The leadoff title track (no, I’m not typing it out) is pretty nice with its horns and interesting live drums and Chuck’s not sounding like an idiot and the repeated “SOUL!!” yelling things (which recall the repeated “SOUL!!” yelling things from “Who Sold the Soul?” on Fear of Black Planet a little too obviously…hmmm, you know, the song and album title itself does the same thing rather blatantly as well…OK, fuck it, this is the only song on this borefest I actually like, so I’ll let it go), and there actually seems to be a fair amount of energy in it that’s admirable, but that’s pretty much it. This record provides easily the smallest amount of “good” Public Enemy music yet found on one of the group’s releases. Good thing it’s 62 minutes long, then.
The only other track that I enjoy even partially is “Harder Than You Think,” which contains enjoyable horns and interesting live drums and energy and thus is pretty much the same song as the title track, only this time Flavor takes the last thirty seconds to do that “We’re Public Enemy Number 1 in NEW YORK!!” thing that I think he’s done on every Public Enemy album ever released and wasn’t even cool way back on Yo! Bum Rush the Show when he first did it. I’ll remind you that this is the second-best track on the album. Elsewhere, the group goes back to their tried-and-tested method of letting Chuck yell incoherently over a horrible metal riff a few times (“Frankenstar” (no, seriously, that’s the actual title), “Black is Back” (which was apparently supposed to be based around “Back in Black” before the group was told to cease and desist, and while this may or may not have been badass, I’m fairly certain it would have been better than the shit non-riff that was carted in as the replacement)), which is great because Public Enemy has never, ever, ever been good at that. Ever. They also write a bunch of “modern”-sounding rap songs, which to them mean a slow, depressing, undanceable half-beat and a cheap, repetitive synth loop over which Chuck mumbles something with as little character as possible (“Amerikan Gangster,” “Can You Hear Me Now,” “The Enemy Battle Hymn of the Public,” “Eve of Destruction,” probably a bunch of others I can’t remember because there are nineteen fucking tracks on this thing). To the group’s credit, this is not that far off from what modern rap does sound like, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. The only track of this ilk I kinda sorta enjoy a little bit is “Sex, Drugs, and Violence,” and this is for two reasons. First, the little kids going “I like those gangster rhymes, just make sure they don’t corrupt our minds!” sounds kind of neat for some reason. Second, KRS-One’s guest verse is pretty great and destroys most of what Chuck D. does on this album, mainly because most of what Chuck D. does on this album is a pathetic retread of something he’s already done. I never thought I’d listen to a Public Enemy album where Chuck D. contributes heavily to the suckitude, but there you go. This album blows.
In other
news, Flavor is back! Like, really, really back. He apparently got a week or two off from his
VH-1 duties and gets a bunch of songs to himself, and while he was great as
comic relief to the lyrical atomic bombs Chuck D. used to throw, now he just
sounds like a joke. “Flavor Man” might
be the most annoying “Ha! It’s Flavor!”
novelty track I’ve yet heard on a Public Enemy album, and “Col-Leepin’” is the
EXACT SAME SONG as “Cold Lampin’ with Flavor” from It Takes a Nation of Millions!
“I’m leepin’, I’m leepin’, I’m stone-cold leepin’!” No. I
thought it was crap the first time, and you know what? I still do, only now it’s a retread and
Flavor’s like fifty, so it’s much worse.
It’s only four minutes long, but it feels like it’s about twenty. “
This album is very bad. Hell, I haven’t even talked about the most embarrassing track in the Public Enemy catalog yet, “The Long and Whining Road,” whose lyrics consist entirely of Public Enemy and Bob Dylan song titles mixed up together for reasons I’ve yet to figure out. While it’s not like anyone cares about Public Enemy anymore or has even considered purchasing this record album in the year between its release and my oh-so-eagerly-anticipated review of it, consider this my official recommendation that you (again) go buy Fear of a Black Planet and leave this one the fuck alone.