It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back
Public Enemy
Def Jam, 1988
loud, obnoxious, funky, political, uncompromising, hilarious — Public Enemy’s brilliant second album is all of these things — all at once. Chuck D boomed intricate rhymes; sidekick Flavor Flav was manic comic relief; and production team the Bomb Squad built mesmerizing, multilayered jams. The title of “Bring the Noise” is truth in advertising. “If they’re calling my music ‘noise,’ ” said Chuck D, “if they’re saying that I’m really getting out of character being a black person in America, then fine — I’m bringing more noise.”
Nation was conceived at Spectrum City in the band’s headquarters in Hempstead, New York. For “Rebel Without a Pause,” producer Hank Shocklee looped a piercing sample of James Brown’s “The Grunt” with Brown’s “Funky Drummer” (“That song was like my milk,” said Shocklee). To write verses that could match such a sonic assault, Chuck locked himself in his house for 24 hours, and emerged with broadsides like the media screed “Don’t Believe the Hype.” Public Enemy weren’t sure of the results until DMC, of Run-DMC, blasted it out of his Bronco on a Saturday night. Says Shocklee, “The whole block was grooving to it.”