Editor's note: "Essential" is a series from Dallas Morning News writers spotlighting timeless works of art and culture.
Essential listening: It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, Public Enemy (1988)
The most groundbreaking hip-hop album of all time is now the age beyond which you're not supposed to trust anyone. Yes, Public Enemy's It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back turns 30 on June 28. Hard to believe, but there it is: three decades since Chuck D, Flavor Flav and their merry band of agitprop flamethrowers changed rap forever.
If you're of a certain age — say, 47 — you might remember the first time you heard Nation of Millions. Maybe you were already familiar with the group's underrated debut album, 1987's Yo! Bum Rush the Show, but you probably weren't; it didn't sell big. You inserted your Nation of Millions cassette, or put the needle on the record, and you heard a deep, urgent, angry voice rapping about racism, media misrepresentation, prison breaks, the burgeoning crack epidemic and restrictive radio formats. Wait, was that a Charles Barkley reference? (Rewind. Yes, "I'll throw it down your throat like Barkley," on the song "Rebel Without a Pause").
But chances are you couldn't process the lyrics that first time, despite Chuck D's knack for enunciating every syllable. First there were the beats, more fast and furious than anything you'd previously heard. And are those sirens? Is that an Isaac Hayes loop on "Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos?" The sheer density of sounds on Nation of Millions, a shape-shifting collage conjured by the masterminds of the Bomb Squad production team, creates adrenaline and a bit of disorientation.
This was still the Wild West days of sampling, when using the right hook didn't break the bank. The following year, Prince Paul pushed the sampling boundaries even further with 3 Feet High and Rising; the year after that, the Bomb Squad would return with their last full-length masterpiece, Ice Cube's Amerikkka's Most Wanted.
But first, there was Nation of Millions.
I was 17 when the album dropped. Heavy metal and classic rock had been the staples of my musical diet. I had only dabbled in hip-hop, mostly through P.E's Def Jam label mate Run-DMC, who scored the mother of rap/rock crossover hits when they collaborated with Aerosmith on "Walk This Way" in 1986. The '90s Golden Age of hip-hop was around the corner. Public Enemy helped get it started. But even in light of what was yet to come, from the unbridled nihilism of N.W.A. (whose debut album Straight Outta Compton arrived less than two months after Nation of Millions) to the jazz-rap of A Tribe Called Quest, Public Enemy sounded like a musical revolution.
Never has an album's sonic boom meshed so well its lyrical content. When Chuck staccato-rapped "Never badder that bad 'cause the brother is madder than mad/At the fact that's corrupt like a senator," on the album-opening "Bring the Noise," the James Brown "Funky Drummer" beat backs him and creates a bridge between Black Power past and present. Chuck was the supreme provocateur of hip-hop, Flavor Flav his hype man and court jester, the showmanship leavening but somehow also enhancing the militancy.
It might be hard to remember now, but Public Enemy was at the center of cultural conversation in the late '80s and early '90s. They were the musical complement to Spike Lee, who used their hit "Fight the Power" to great effect in his breakthrough 1989 film Do the Right Thing. Public Enemy was the soundtrack to a period of racial unrest and growing consciousness. Their work was parsed and debated, celebrated and scorned. In short, they mattered. Their 1990 album Fear of a Black Planet might be even more socially adventurous and thematically provocative than Nation of Millions; you'll regularly find it at or near the top of lists compiling the best albums of the '90s.
But Nation of Millions is still the one, for me, anyway. It was my bridge between rock and hip-hop, a bridge the group acknowledged by using a sample of Slayer's "Angel of Death" as the backbone of "She Watch Channel Zero?!" At a time when rock had largely lost the power to outraged parents, Public Enemy jumped into that void. That's part of their legacy. They also opened the door for politically minded hip-hop artists, from Dead Prez to the Coup. That potential was always there; Grandmaster Flash's "The Message" came out in 1982. But P.E. put it front-and-center as the core of their identity.
They brought the noise. And it's still echoing, 30 years later.
