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Let’s Get Ready To RUMMMMMMBLE!!!

It was back during the end of the summer last year that I visited upon Combat Jack and his family in the heart of the new post-riot, post-racial Crown Heights. It was a lovely Sunday afternoon and what could have been a perfect late summer cool out became a fierce yet friendly argument over substance and style.

Our opinions meshed and differed over Hip-Hop and the reasons for its decline and devaluation. At the same time we agreed that Hip-Hop was also alive and well in regions and places that we might have never expected. The arguments centered around old and new rap acts and the classics that are surely Hip-Hop’s legacy. We discussed at length some of the genre’s most influential groups. The Wu-Tang Clan, De La Soul and the most important rap group in the history of Hip-Hop, Public Enemy.

The debate between Combat Jack and I wasn’t about the iconic status of P.E. since C.J. and I both share a mutual respect for the group’s achievements, but about which of their albums is the greatest. If you visit Combat Jack over at his site, Daily Mathematics, I am sure he will tell his side of the story. But before you waste your time over there reading his Rolling Stone hyperbole take my facts with you so that you will have a better understanding of why I chose ‘Fear Of A Black Planet’

If you had spent the majority of the 1980’s in and around the streets of New York City then you would remember that this was a town that simmered with racial unrest right below its glittering surface. NYC was just as populous then as it is today and it still held many elements that made it a cosmopolitan outpost. Though as soon as you left the island of Manhattan you were transported into neighborhoods that still reeled from the blackouts during the 1970’s. Urban blight was entrenched even before they were delivering crack to the ‘hood by the busloads.

Under this environment rap music was beginning to flourish, but it rarely addressed the conditions its artists emerged from with anything more than lip service. Being that was rap music, one might think that all it could bring to the table was words exiting lips. Public Enemy was the force that ushered in a new era of understanding about the urban centers that were being abandoned to poverty and depression. New York City was a focal point because it was not only the birth place of Hip-Hop but was a city where racial tension burst into the spotlight frequently.

None of you will remember the name Willie Turks, or Eleanor Bumpurs, but you probably know of Michael Stewart and definitely Yusuf Hawkins. There was a steady stream of Blacks that were lynched by white mobs or the police and it appeared that there would never be justice for these victims. Oppressed people respond to their aggressors in different manners as you can see from the worldwide newsreels. The disenfranchised express their rage outwardly AND inwardly. Being Black in the center city was rough from all angles. It was the worst of times, yet it was still the best of times.

‘Fear Of A Black Planet’ is a summation of the Black experience during the 1980’s in America. Even more than ‘It Takes A Nation Of Millions’ could have dreamed, ‘Fear’ tackles the issues dealing with the Black experience head on. Where ‘Nation’ makes your body rock, ‘Fear’ makes your brain tick-tock. Public Enemy crafted this masterpiece when they were directly inside the cross hairs, as their classic silhouetted logo suggests. No one has since been so brave and so bold as to stand up to the mainstream media machine as Chuck D did to defend the message of empowerment that his music describes.

‘Brothers Gonna Work It Out’

‘Fear’ gets right in the face of the haters who want to obfuscate what this group really represents. ‘Fear’ is so powerful because it is the last album of its kind. The Bomb Squad easily sampled over 100 songs to make this Public Enemy album. You would never be able to release an epic music disk this dense with how nowadays the industry litigates what artists may use which samples. The clearance costs alone would shelve this album. Public Enemy changed how we heard music on several different levels. Chuck D challenged you with his lyrics, while the Shocklee-helmed Bomb Squad challenged you to name that sample.

Welcome 2 The Terrordome

The main reason I have to place ‘Fear’ over ‘Nation’ is that while ITANOMTHUB is clearly a music rich masterpiece that challenged me to do the knowledge, FOABP was the album that challenged me to be a better man. This was the griot call to take the knowledge of self and use it for good. This was the herald of change almost twenty years prior to Obama. Hip-Hop music in its essence is the sound of the drum and the voice. Ancient and everlasting. ‘Fear Of A Black Planet’ is the zenith of Hip-Hop. Drums, percussion, horn hits, sampled and live, selected for resonance along with the voice of the messenger. Celebrating life.

Fight The Power