Album of the week : Public Enemy - It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back

Juneteenth edition.

This album has had no shortage of accolades and placements on best of all time lists since its release in 1988 (37 years ago exactly, as it was released in late June).

Chuck D’s voice may be the most powerful in all of hip hop, and the groundbreaking production (courtesy of The Bomb Squad) still sounds modern. Frustratingly, the messages here are just as important as they were 37 years ago. For as far forward as it seemed we’d moved as a society, our country is now at a dangerous crossroads where People Of Color are being subjected to a hideous cancer of racism that’s somehow become mainstream.

I’ve spent a lot of time pondering how many white folks around my age heard this music and had so many ideas we were exposed to get rearranged. I’m so thankful for my (relatively early) exposure to hip hop (which happened around 1985), as it taught me crucial lessons that I may not have learned otherwise. I know that for me, after I first heard this album I started feeling very angry any time I heard racists in action.

There are so many levels here; it’s easy to get lost in the beats, or hypnotized by the dense layers of samples which come from all directions. Those elements draw us in and make us listen again and again, and that’s when the lyrics really hit. It’s such a whole piece that it’s sometimes even disorienting to single out the most powerful tracks, but ‘Bring The Noise’, ‘Black Steel In The Hour Of Chaos’, ‘Prophets Of Rage’, ‘Rebel Without A Pause’, ‘Party For Your Right To Fight’, and (especially) ‘Black Steel In The Hour Of Chaos’ are standouts. All tracks that are now, in 2025, making me think about what we can do right now to fight the fascist insanity of this age.