Fear of a Black Planet
Encyclopedia
Fear of a Black Planet is the third studio album
by American hip hop
group Public Enemy, released April 10, 1990, on Def Jam Recordings
and Columbia Records
. Production for the album was handled by the group's production team The Bomb Squad
, who expanded on the dense, sample
-layered sound of the group's previous album, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back
(1988). They constructed elaborate sound collages for the album's music, incorporating varying rhythms, numerous samples, media sound bites, and eccentric music loops, which reflected the content's confrontational tone. Fear of a Black Planet contains themes concerning organization and empowerment within the African-American community, while presenting criticism of social issues affecting African Americans at the time of the album's conception.
The album debuted at number 40 on the US Billboard Top Pop Albums
, selling one million copies in its first week. It subsequently peaked at number 10 on the chart and was certified platinum
by the Recording Industry Association of America
. Upon its release, Fear of a Black Planet received general acclaim from music critics, who praised its musical quality, sonic detail, societal themes, and insightful lyrics, and was ranked one of the best albums in 1990 by various publications. It has since been recognized as one of hip hop's greatest and most important albums, as well as musically and culturally significant. In 2003, the album was ranked number 300 on Rolling Stone
magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time
. In 2005, it was chosen by the Library of Congress
to be added to the National Recording Registry
.
to critical recognition and sufficient sales, while fulfilling their creative ambitions to create what they considered to be a hip hop-equivalent to Marvin Gaye
's What's Going On
, an album noted for its social commentary. The album's dense musical textures exemplified a new production aesthetic in hip hop at the time, while the controversial, politically charged content by the group's lead MC Chuck D
, whose braggadocio raps contained references to political figures such as Assata Shakur
and Nelson Mandela
, as well as endorsements of Nation of Islam
-leader Louis Farrakhan
, intensified the group's affiliation with black nationalism
and Farrakhan. It Takes a Nations success helped raised hip hop music's profile as both art and sociopolitical
statement, amid criticism of the genre by the media. The group had also expanded their live shows and performing dynamic. With the album's content and their rage-filled showmanship in concert, Public Enemy became the vanguard of a movement in hip hop that reflected a new black consciousness and the sociopolitical dynamics that were taking shape in America at the time.
Fear of a Black Planet was conceived at the time of the controversy surrounding anti-Semitic
remarks allegedly made by group member Professor Griff
. In a May 1989 interview for The Washington Times
, he was quoted as saying that Jews were the cause of "the majority of the wickedness" in the world. Public Enemy received criticism from religious organizations and liberal rock critics, as well as media scrutiny, which added to charges against the group's politics as being racist, homophobic, and misogynistic. Chuck D subsequently fired Griff from the group, but he later rejoined and has since denied holding anti-Semitic views and apologized for the remarks. Def Jam director of publicity Bill Adler later said that the controversy "partly [...] fueled the writing of Fear of a Black Planet".
's theory of "Color Confrontation and Racism (White Supremacy)" into an album-length recording, "telling people, well, color's an issue created and concocted to take advantage of people of various characteristics with the benefit of a few". He said of their concept in an interview for Billboard
, "We wanted really to go with a deep, complex album [...] more conducive to the high and lows of great stage-performance". He has said that the commercial circumstances for hip hop at the time, having quickly transitioned from a single
s to an album
medium in the music industry during the 1980s, also influenced the group's creative vision, and stated in an interview for Westword
, "We understood the magnitude of what an album was, so we set out to make something that not only epitomized the standard of an album, but would stand the test of time by being diverse with sounds and textures, and also being able to home in on the aspect of peaks and valleys". On their musical direction, Chuck D said, "We wanted to create a new sound out of the assemblage of sounds that made us have our own identity [...] When we made It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back we were shooting to make What’s Going On by Marvin Gaye and when we made Fear of a Black Planet I was shooting for Sgt. Pepper's
."
The album's artwork followed Chuck D's concept of two planets, the "Black" planet and Earth, eclipsing. The group enlisted B.E. Johnson, a NASA
illustrator, to create the cover. Cey Adams, creative director for Def Jam at the time, later said of the creative decision for the artwork, "It was so interesting to me that a black hip-hop act did an illustration for their album cover. At that time black hip-hop artists, for the most part, had photos of themselves on their covers. But this was the first time someone took a chance to do something in the rock'n'roll vein".
in New York City
, The Music Palace in West Hempstead, New York
, and Spectrum City Studios in Long Island, New York. Fear of a Black Planet was produced entirely by the group's production team, The Bomb Squad
, which included Chuck D, Eric "Vietnam" Sadler, and brothers Hank and Keith Shocklee
. It marked the first time that Keith Shocklee was credited as a member of the team; he played a significant role in composing the main tracks and music for the album. Hank Shocklee was the production team's director and referred to by Chuck D as "the Phil Spector
of hip-hop". For the album, they sought to expand on the dense, sample
-layered "wall of noise
" sound of It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. Having worked out an elaborate method that involved the members assembling different types of sounds in the studio, the Bomb Squad reconfigured and recontextualized musical fragments from various sources into their own compositions. Each member brought a different philosophy to making music, arranging sounds, and working with technology, with source material coming from singles, LP albums, and radio, among others. Hank Shocklee viewed the group as "a production assembly line where each person had their own particular specialty." According to him, he came "from a DJ
’s perspective. Eric [Sadler] is coming from a musician’s perspective. So together, you know, we started working out different ideas." Sadler advocated a more traditional, structured approach to songwriting, while Shocklee's approach was less conventional. As the group's main lyricist, Chuck D wanted to recontextualize the sampled material into his lyrics and create a theme for the album.
During the recording sessions, the Bomb Squad listened to various music records and used devices such as the E-mu SP-1200
drum machine
and sampler
, the Akai S900 sampler, and a Macintosh
computer to arrange samples and sequence
tracks. The sessions, which were recorded by Shocklee for future reference, had the group playing beats and records, while collecting potential sample material. Chuck D has said that "95 percent of the time it sounded like mess. But there was 5 percent of magic that would happen." Shocklee compared their production to that of filmmaking, "with different lighting effects, or film speeds, or whatever", while Chuck D found their intention to "blend sound" similar to a visual artist "tak[ing] yellow and blue and come up with green". He further explained their technique and conceptual approach in a 1990 interview for Keyboard Magazine
, stating "We approach every record like it was a painting. Sometimes, on the sound sheet, we have to have a separate sheet just to list the samples for each track. We used about 150, maybe 200 samples on Fear of a Black Planet." Instead of selecting from the numerous, basic backing tracks that Sadler had collected before the sessions, Chuck D wanted for the production team to improvise beats in the studio, leading to much of the album's music being composed on the spot. Chuck D has said that he spent numerous hours listening to various tapes, music records, and other audio sources in search of samples for the album. Hank Shocklee said of their search for samples to use, "When you’re talking about the kind of sampling that Public Enemy did, we had to comb through thousands of records to come up with maybe five good pieces. And as we started putting together those pieces, the sound got a lot more dense."
In order to synchronize the samples, the Bomb Squad used SMPTE timecodes and arranged and overdubbed particular bits of backing tracks, which had been inspected by the members for snare, bass, and hi-hat sounds. Chuck D said of this approach to their production and sampling, "Our music is all about samples in the right area, layers that pile on each other. We put loops on top of loops on top of loops, but then in the mix we cut things away". Music journalist Jeff Chang
said of their methodology in retrospect, "They’re figuring out how to jam
with the samples and to create these layers of sound. I don't think it’s been matched since then." For the track "Burn Hollywood Burn", he dealt with clearance issues from different record labels in order to collaborate with rappers Big Daddy Kane
and Ice Cube
, who had been pursuing the Bomb Squad to produce his debut album. The recording marked one of the first times in which MCs from different rap crews
collaborated together, and it led to the Bomb Squad working with Ice Cube on his 1990 debut album AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted. Once all the tracks were completed, sequencing began of the seemingly discontinuous album for The Bomb Squad, amid internal disputes among its members. Sadler later reflected on the album's post-production, saying "A lot of people were like, 'Wow, it's a brilliant album'. But it really shoulda been much better. If we had more time and we didn't have to deal with the situation of nobody talking".
The album was conceived during the golden age of hip hop, a period roughly between 1987 and 1992 when artists took advantage of newly emerging sampling technologies before being perceived by record labels and lawyers. Accordingly, Public Enemy were not compelled to obtain sample clearance for the album. This preceded the legal limits and clearance costs later placed on sampling, which effectively limited hip hop production and the complexity of musical arrangement in hip hop. In an interview with Stay Free!
, Chuck D discussed the use of sampling on the album at the time, stating "Public Enemy's music was affected more than anybody's because we were taking thousands of sounds. If you separated the sounds, they wouldn't have been anything--they were unrecognizable. The sounds were all collaged together to make a sonic wall". An analysis by law professors Peter DiCola and Kembrew McLeod
estimated that under the sample clearance system that had emerged in the music industry since the album's release, Public Enemy were to lose at least five dollars per copy if they were to clear the samples for the album at 2010 rates; McLeod noted in the analysis, "a loss of five million dollars on a platinum record".
s that draw on numerous aural sources. The production's musique concrète
-influenced approach reflects the political and confrontational tones of the group's lyrics, with sound collages that feature varying rhythms, aliased
or scratchy samples, media sound bites, and eccentric music loops. Journalist and writer Kembrew McLeod
calls the album's music "both agitprop
and pop, mixing politics with the live-wire thrill of the popular music
experience", and comments that the Bomb Squad "took sampling to the level of high art
while keeping intact hip-hop's populist
heart. They would graft together dozens of fragmentary samples to create a single song collage." Music writer Simon Reynolds
calls the album "a work of unprecedented density for hip hop, its claustrophobic, backs-against-the-wall feel harking back to Sly Stone
's There's a Riot Goin' On
or even Miles Davis
' On the Corner
". Music recordings sampled for the album include those from genres such as funk
, soul
, rock
, and hip hop. Elements such as choruses, guitar sounds, or vocals from sampled recordings are reappropriated as riffs in songs on the album, while sampled dialogue from speeches are incorporated to support Chuck D's arguments and lyrics on certain songs.
Some tracks use elements from Public Enemy's previous material, which Pete Watrous of The New York Times
interprets as "reminding listeners that the group itself is not only part of a tradition, but has a history of its own." Watrous describes the music as "the sound of urban alienation, where silence doesn't exist and sensory stimulation is oppressive and predatory", and writes that its dense textures "envelop Chuck D's voice and make his rapping sound as if it is under duress, as if he were fighting against a background intent on taking him over. [...] Layer after layer of sounds are placed on top of each other until the music becomes nearly tactile". Chuck D describes Fear of a Black Planet as "completely an album of found sounds [...] probably the most elaborate smorgasbord of sound that we did." He explained the music's layering and context in his interview for Keyboard Magazine, saying "When we put together our music, we try to put together layers that complement each other, and then the voice tries to complement that, and the theme tries to complement that, and then the song itself tries to complement the album as a whole, fitting into the overall context." In his essay on hip hop aesthetics
, writer Richard Schur interprets such layering as a motif in hip hop and as "the process by which [...] new meanings are created and communicated, primarily to an equally knowledgeable audience", concluding that "Public Enemy probably took the ideal of layering to its farthest point".
Fear of a Black Planet contains themes of organization and empowerment within the African-American community, and of confrontation. Chuck D's critical lyrics on the album, interspersed with the surrealism of Flavor Flav
, also concern contemporary black life, the state of race relations, and criticisms of institutional racism
, White supremacy
, and the power elite
. Music critic Greg Sandow
calls Chuck D's language "strong and elusive, often fragmentary" and "embedded [with] critical, sometimes brutal thoughts". Although he views that "some people might disagree with some of these ideas", Sandow writes that "it's hard to dispute the lyrics' assertion that many Whites are afraid of blacks", adding that the album "touches on" the idea of "an age when whites understand that they're a minority in the world". Music author Robert Hilburn
writes that songs on the album "decr[y] what Chuck D. sees as the consequences of white, European cultural domination
in the United States and throughout much of the world". Sputnikmusic
's Nick Butler notes "two recurring themes - inter-racial relationships [...] and the racism inherent in the American media
", adding that Public Enemy's "anger is more focused and streamlined" than on their previous work. In his book Somebody Scream!: Rap Music's Rise to Prominence in the Aftershock of Black Power, Marcus Reeves states that the album "was as much a musical assault on America's racism as it was a call to blacks to effectively react to it". According to music writer Greg Kot
, the album is "hardly a black power
manifesto for world domination, but a statement about racial paranoia. Though he spares virtually no one with his withering raps, Public Enemy's Chuck D is harshest of all on his fellow blacks, expounding on everything from history to fashion: Use your brain instead of a gun. Drugs are death. Know your past so you won't screw up the future. Gold chains worn around the neck demean the brotherhood in South Africa."
The opening track, "Contract on the World Love Jam", is a sound collage made up of samples, scratch cuts
, and snippets recorded by Chuck D from radio stations and sound bites of interviews and commercials. The tension-building track introduces the album's dense, sample-based production. According to Chuck D, the song features "about forty-five to fifty [sampled] voices" that interweave as part of an assertive sonic collage and underscore the album’s themes. "Incident at 66.6 FM", another collage that segues into "Welcome to the Terrordome", contains snippets from a radio call-in show interview of Chuck D and alludes to the media persecution perceived by Public Enemy. "Burn Hollywood Burn" assails the use of black stereotypes in movies, and "Who Stole the Soul?" condemns the record industry's exploitation of black recording artists and calls for reparations. "Revolutionary Generation" celebrates the strength and endurance of black women with lyrics related to black feminism
, an unfamiliar topic in hip hop. It also addresses sexism
within the black community and misogyny in hip hop culture
.
The title track discusses racial classification and the root of White fear of African Americans, particularly racist concerns by some Whites over the effect of miscegenation
. In the song, Chuck D argues that they should not worry as the original man
was black and "white comes from black / No need to be confused". The song features a vocal sample of comedian and activist Dick Gregory
saying, "Black man, black woman, black child / white man, black woman, black child?". "Pollywanacraka" also concerns interracial relations, including Blacks who leave their communities to marry wealthy Whites, and societal views of the matter: "This system had no wisdom / The devil split us in pairs / and taught us white is good, black is bad / and black and white is still too bad". Music writer Robert Christgau
commented on Chuck D's performance and style on the track, writing that "people keep bringing in Barry White
or Isaac Hayes
, but he's playing the pedagogue
, not the love man, maybe some Reverend Ike
figure". "Meet the G That Killed Me" features homophobic
etiology
and condemns homosexuality: "Man to man / I don't know if they can / From what I know / The parts don't fit". Written by hypeman
Flavor Flav and Bomb Squad-producers Keith Shocklee and Eric "Vietnam" Sadler, "911 Is a Joke
" features Flav as the main vocalist and criticizes the inadequacy of 9-1-1
, the emergency telephone number
used in the United States, and the lack of police response to emergency calls in predominantly African-American neighborhoods.
Songs such as "Fight the Power", "Power to the People", and "Brothers Gonna Work It Out" propose a response by African Americans to the issues criticized throughout the album. "Power to the People" has a tempo of approximately 125 beats per minute and mixes elements of Miami bass
, electro-boogie
, and fast-paced Roland TR-808
. Addressing the plight of African Americans at the turn of the 1990s, "Brothers Gonna Work It Out" features cacophonic sound textures and a central theme of unity among African Americans, with Chuck D preaching "Brothers that try to work it out / They get mad, revolt, revise, realize / They're superbad / Small chance a smart brother's gonna be a victim of his own circumstance". Richard Harrington of The Washington Post
writes that songs such as "War at 33⅓" and "Fight the Power" "may sound like a call to ohms and arms, but they are really a call to action ('turn us loose and we shall overcome'), a message to conscience and a plea for unity ('move as team, never move alone,' both cautionary advice and game plan)". "War at 33⅓" has a theme of resistance and a 128 bpm-tempo, which was cited by Chuck D as "the fastest thing I've ever rapped to, rapping right on top of the beat".
" peaked at number one on Billboard
s Hot Rap Singles chart. It features revolutionary rhetoric by Chuck D and was used by director Spike Lee
as a leitmotif
in his acclaimed 1989 film Do the Right Thing
, a film about racial tension in a Brooklyn neighborhood. Lee approached the group in 1988 after the release of It Takes a Nation with the proposition of making a song for his movie. Chuck D later said of writing most of the song, "I wanted to have sorta like the same theme as the original 'Fight the Power' by The Isley Brothers
and fill it in with some kind of modernist views of what our surroundings were at that particular time". The song's third verse contains disparaging lyrics about popular American icons Elvis Presley
and John Wayne
, as Chuck D rhymes "Elvis was a hero to most / But he never meant shit to me' / Straight up, racist the sucker was / Simple and plain", with Flavor Flav following, "Muthafuck him and John Wayne!". The lyrics were shocking and offensive to many listeners upon the single's release. Chuck D was influenced to write the lines after hearing proto-rap artist Clarence "Blowfly" Reid
's "Blowfly Rapp" (1980), in which Reid enganges in a battle of insults with a fictitious Klansman
who makes a similarly phrased, racist insult against him and boxer Muhammad Ali
. Chuck D's lyrics express the identification of Presley with racism—either personally or symbolically—and the largely held notion among Blacks that Presley, whose musical and visual performances owed much to African-American sources, unfairly achieved the cultural acknowledgment and commercial success largely denied his black peers in rock and roll
. The line regarding John Wayne refers to his controversial personal views, including racist remarks made in his 1971 interview for Playboy. "Fight the Power" has since become the group's best-known song and has been named one of the best songs of all time by numerous publications.
The single "911 Is a Joke" also reached number one on the Hot Rap Singles. According to Flavor Flav, he was given the idea by Chuck D to write the song, "He gave me that as a project to do [...] and I went and wrote the record. I went and got high and wrote the record. I went and got ripped, I went and got out of my mind, and I started speaking all kinds of crazy shit 'cos usually back in the days when I used to smoke, it used to broaden my ideas and everything". The humorous and satirical lyrics of the song were reflected in its music video, which featured a severely injured Flav being mistreated by a remiss, overdue ambulence staff. Another Flavor Flav-solo track, "Can't Do Nuttin' for Ya Man", peaked at number 11 on the Hot Rap Singles. Its lyrics advocate African-American self-reliance, denouncing welfare dependence, and its subject matter reflects Flav's experiences with acquaintances from poor neighborhoods. Flav later said of his inspiration for the song, "I was in my Corvette riding from Long Island going to The Bronx. I was slipping. I was roasting. I mean I was smoked-out crazy. And everybody kept asking me for stuff and yet nobody wanted to give me stuff. So then if anybody ever asked me for something I would be like, 'Yo, I can't do nothing for ya man.' Next thing you know I started to vibe on it: 'I can't do nothing for ya man,' um ahh um um ahh. So I went and told that to Chuck. Chuck was like, 'Record that shit man'". Writing of both tracks, music critic Tom Moon comments that Flav "affects a tone of gimme-a-break sarcasm that is crucial to both tracks, and is welcome respite from Chuck D.'s assault". "Can't Do Nuttin' for Ya Man" was featured in the 1990 comedy film House Party
.
The album's controversial single "Welcome to the Terrordome" makes references to the murder of Yusef Hawkins
and the 1989 riots in Virginia Beach, and it has Chuck D criticizing Jewish leaders who protested Public Enemy in response to Professor Griff's anti-Semitic remarks. Its dense production incorporates numerous samples, including several James Brown
tracks and the guitar line from The Temptations
' "Psychedelic Shack
". Several other samples are heard amid Chuck D's rapping, such as the line "come on, you can get it-get it-get it" from Instant Funk
's "I Got My Mind Made Up (You Can Get It Girl)
". Chuck D addresses the controversy as being in the center of political turmoil, with criticisms of the media and lyrical references to the Crucifixion of Jesus
: "Crucifixion ain't no fiction / So called chosen frozen / Apology made to who ever pleases / Still they got me like Jesus". He is also critical of Blacks and those who "blame somebody else when you destroy yourself": "Every brother ain't a brother / 'cause a Black hand squeezed on Malcolm X
the man / the shootin of Huey Newton
/ from the hand of Nig who pulled the trigger". His lyricism on "Welcome to the Terrordome" involves dizzying raps and incorporates internal rhyme
: "Lazer, anastasia, maze ya / Ways to blaze your brain and train ya [...] Sad to say I got sold down the river / Still some quiver when I deliver / Never to say I never knew or had a clue / Word was heard, plus hard on the boulevard / Lies, scandalizin', basin' / Traits of hate who's celebratin' wit Satan?". Allmusic's John Bush cites the track as "the production peak of the Bomb Squad and one of Chuck D.'s best rapping performances ever [...] [N]one of their tracks were more musically incendiary".
and Columbia Records
. Although It Takes a Nation garnered Public Enemy more exposure with black audiences and music journalists, urban radio outlets had mostly rejected Def Jam's requests to include the group's singles in their regular rotation. This incited Def Jam co-founder Russell Simmons
to attempt grassroots promotional tactics from his earlier years of promoting hip hop shows. In promoting Fear of a Black Planet, he recruited young street crews to put up posters, billboards, and stickers on public surfaces, while Simmons himself met with nightclub DJs and college radio program directors to persuade them to add albums tracks such as "Fight the Power", "911 is a Joke", and "Welcome to the Terrordome" to their playlists.
The album debuted at number 40 on the US Billboard
Top Pop Albums
chart, with first-week sales of one million copies in the United States. It also reached number three on Billboards Top Black Albums
and number four on the Top 40 Albums
chart in the United Kingdom. In its second week, the album moved up the Billboard Top Pop Albums to number 19. By June 1990, it had reached number 16 on the chart and sold over one million copies in the US. It ultimately peaked at number 10 and spent 27 weeks on the Billboard Top Pop Albums. On June 7, 1990, the album was certified platinum
by the Recording Industry Association of America
(RIAA), for shipments of at least one million copies in the US. It reached sales of 1.5 million copies in July 1990. Since 1991, when the tracking system Nielsen SoundScan
began tracking domestic sales data, Fear of a Black Planet has sold 561,000 additional copies as of 2010.
The controversy surrounding the group and their exposure through the singles "Fight the Power" and "Welcome to the Terrordome" helped Fear of a Black Planet exceed the sales of their previous two albums Yo! Bum Rush the Show and It Takes a Nation of Million to Hold Us Back at the time, 500,000 and 1.1 million copies, respectively. The latter single's lyrics were initially viewed by religious groups and the media as anti-semitic upon its release. Fear of a Black Planet contributed to hip hop's commercial breakthrough at the beginning of the 1990s, despite its limited radio airplay
. The album's success made Public Enemy the top-selling act, both domestically and internationally, for Def Jam Recordings at the time. Ruben Rodriguez, Columbia's senior vice president at the time, said in one of the label's press releases, "What's happening with Public Enemy is unbelievable. The album is selling across the board to all demographics and nationalities". In a December 1990 article, Chicago Sun-Times
writer Michael Corcoran discussed Public Enemy's commercial success with the album and remarked that "more than half of the 2 million fans who bought [Fear of a Black Planet] are white".
s upon its release, earning praise for its production and lyrics. Rolling Stone
s Alan Light praised Public Enemy's "determination and realism" and viewed the album as a maturation of the group's previous work, stating "The careening rage of Nation of Millions hasn't been diluted – it's been given focus and substance". Q
gave it four out of five stars and found it on-par with It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. Los Angeles Times
writer Robert Hilburn
found that the album "rivals the force and the power of It Takes a Nation" and stated "The secret in maintaining commercial and artistic credibility in the fast-changing rap world is keeping the music fresh, and Public Enemy recognizes that challenge in Fear of a Black Planet". Greg Sandow
of Entertainment Weekly
called it "a formidable piece of work, and the one pop album released so far this year that no one interested in the current state of American culture can afford to ignore". Sandow noted its music as "more settled" than the group's previous work and stated "There's nothing in pop music quite like it. It sounds like a partly African, partly postmodern collage, stitched together on tumultuous urban streets". Richard Harrington of The Washington Post
commented that its "sonic assault is as uniform as the angry energy that fuels and informs this 20-cut alarm" and stated in conclusion, "[W]hile raising political consciousness, sparking self-awareness and challenging the very foundations of institutional racism must be both daunting and thankless, on Fear of a Black Planet the group shows it's willing to work on the edge, without a safety net. This album is less a revolutionary gesture than a challenge. How it's met depends on how it's understood". The Milwaukee Sentinel
s Robert Tanzilo wrote "Public Enemy has proven to be the only consistently thought-provoking and musically incendiary rap act to date, and Fear of a Black Planet serves only to strengthen the group's position in the music world".
The Philadelphia Inquirer
s Tom Moon commented that the album has "some of the genre's most sophisticated sound designs and unconventionally agile rapping", calling it "a major piece of work, the first hard evidence of rap's maturity and a measure of its continuing relevance". Moon commended the group for "using elaborate, sometimes radical imagery" and stated "At a time when most pop music equals fast, thoughtless, responsibility-free escape, Fear preaches, educates, mobilizes and energizes. As its political messages have grown more refined, Public Enemy's insights have grown correspondingly sharper". USA Today
s Edna Gundersen called it "a masterpiece of innovation [...] challenging music" and expressed that "PE's pro-black agenda grows more credible and compelling". In his consumer guide for The Village Voice
, critic Robert Christgau
gave the album an A- rating, which he later revised to an A. Christgau found the group's lyrics "no more suspect ideologically than they've ever been" and stated "Shtick their rebel music may be, but this is show business, and they still think harder than anybody else working their beat". Peter Watrous of The New York Times
called it "an essential pop album" and found the music complimentary to its lyrics, writing "On their own, the lyrics seen functional. Taken with the music, they bloom with meaning". Simon Reynolds of Melody Maker
viewed that the album's content epitomizes the group's significance at the time, stating "Public Enemy are important [...] because of the angry questions that seethe in their music, in the very fabric of their sound; the bewilderment and rage that, in this case, have made for one hell of strong, scary album". Chicago Tribune
critic Greg Kot
remarked that with the album, "Public Enemy affirms that it is not just a great rap group, but one of the best rock bands on the planet-black or otherwise". Kot analyzed Chuck D's lyrical themes and message throughout the album, writing "It's fear that divides us, he says; understand me better and you won't run. Fear of a Black Planet is about achieving that understanding, but on Public Enemy's terms. In presenting their view of life from an Afro-centric
, as opposed to Euro-centric
, perspective, P.E. challenges listeners to step into their world".
, George Clinton
, and Bob Marley
on each of their respective genres and eras, having "given it legitimacy and authority far beyond its core following". Writing of the group's cultural significance with Fear of a Black Planet at the time, Peter Watrous of The New York Times
commented that Public Enemy "has jerked rap music into an active political sphere" and found the album significance to both hip hop and popular music, stating:
Fear of a Black Planet also epitomized the resurgence in black consciousness among African-American youths at the turn of the 1990s, amid a turbulent social and political zeitgeist with the Bush administration and South African apartheid. With its increasing popularity evident in Public Enemy's work, black consciousness became the prevailing subject matter of many hip hop acts, exemplified by X-Clan
's cultural nationalism on their debut album To the East, Blackwards
, the revolutionary, Black Panther
-minded The Devil Made Me Do It
by Paris
, and the Five Percenter
religious nationalism of Poor Righteous Teachers
' debut Holy Intellect
. Music author Marcus Reeves wrote of the album's thematic impact, "For the post-black power generation, black consciousness was now in full effect with many a hip-hop youth, as leather African medallions made popular by rappers like P.E. replaced thick gold chains as the ultimate fashion statement [...] P.E.'s million seller sat at the front of a full-blown black pride resurgence within rap". However, this resurgence shortly became commodified as a trend, while actual awareness within the African-American community was limited and ineffectual to issues such as drug dealing
and the prevalence of liquor stores in such neighborhoods. Public Enemy responded to this and other deep-rooted problems of Black America on their following album, Apocalypse 91... The Enemy Strikes Black (1991), which featured more critical assessments of African-Americans, denouncing Black drug dealers who donned Afrocentric merchandise, hip hop artists who promoted malt liquor
, Black radio stations for lacking significant airplay to hip hop, and even the Africans at the onset of the Atlantic slave trade
for lacking unity.
s in musical history". On the significance of its hip hop production
, journalist Kembrew McLeod
writes that "Even though the group was working with equipment that was rudimentary by today’s standards, they made the most of the existing technologies, often inventing techniques and workarounds that electronics manufacturers never imagined." In a retrospective review of the album, Allmusic editor Stephen Thomas Erlewine
said that "as a piece of music, this is the best hip-hop has ever had to offer", calling it "a remarkable piece of modern art, a record that ushered in the '90s in a hail of multi-culturalism and kaleidoscopic confusion". In a 1995 review upon the album's reissue, Q gave Fear of a Black Planet five out of five stars and said that it "achieved the near impossible by being every bit as good as its predecessor. The music was Public Enemy's now-familiar scream but was augmented with a percussive tinge that reflected the ever greater Afrocentricity". Peter Relic of Rolling Stone also gave it a five-star rating in the 2004 edition of The New Rolling Stone Album Guide, noting the album as "more varied stylistically and more downtempo [...] but its greatest tracks contain just as much lightning" as the group's It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back.
NME
stated in a 1995 issue, "the content remained as astonishingly tough and intelligent as before". Sputnikmusic
staff writer Nick Butler commented on its musical significance as a hip hop work, stating "Hip-hop has a habit of moving at such a pace that records date in a matter of years, but Fear Of A Black Planet is utterly timeless. Musically, it's funky, avant-garde, dense, and original [...] Lyrically, it's inspired, intelligent, emotive, and angry as hell [...] Essential, in every sense". Giving it a 10 out of 10 rating, Steve Juon of RapReviews commented that Fear of a Black Planet "rocks like no other album did before it and very few have since. It's inspiring to hear hip-hop done so masterfully, with every cylinder and piston firing in a beautiful symphonious harmony that keeps the audible engine running start to finish with each listen [...] Even though time passes and we all get older, Fear of a Black Planet remains powerfully timeless".
critics' poll, and the publication's Robert Christgau ranked it number 10 on his own "Dean's list". The Press-Telegram named it the fifth best album of the year. The Boston Globe
ranked it number two and stated "In a banner year for hardcore rap, these bitter maximalist
s still dropped the big one, refracting the sound of urban chaos through the dense prism of production team The Bomb Squad". Pittsburgh Press
writer Peter B. King ranked it third on his list and noted its "dense collage of recycled sounds, provocative lyrics and Chuck D's peerless rapping". Greg Kot of the Chicago Tribune included it on his list of the year's 10 best rock musical recordings and wrote that it "explodes with information, political pronouncements, poetry and passion – it's as dissonant and divisive as the time we live in". USA Today
ranked the album number three on its list of best albums of 1990 and commended its "stinging rapidfire essays and sonic booms". Chicago Sun-Times
writer Michael Corcoran included the album on his top albums list and cited Public Enemy as "currently the best rockn roll band in the world", writing "This fierce LP is Ben Gay for white guilt
as Chuck D assails the oppression of blacks in no uncertain terms. Besides the angry yet often illuminating messages, this record just plain sounds great". The State named it one of the year's best albums and hailed it as "possibly the boldest and most important rap record ever made. A sonic tour de force". Robert Hilburn of the Los Angeles Times
ranked the album number five on his year-end list, noting that it "dissects aspects of the black experience with an energy and vision that illustrates why rap continues to be the most creative genre in pop".
Fear of a Black Planet was nominated for a Grammy Award
for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group
, for the 33rd Grammy Awards in 1991. The Guardian
named it the fiftieth-best album of all-time in their 100 Best Albums Ever list, which was voted on by a panel of various artists, critics, and DJs. In 1998, the album was selected as one of The Source
s 100 Best Rap Albums. The album was ranked number 21 in Spin
s "100 Greatest Albums, 1985–2005" publication. Pitchfork Media
named it the seventeenth-best album of the 1990s. It was included in Rolling Stones list of the Essential Recording of the '90s. In 2003, Fear of a Black Planet was ranked number 300 on Rolling Stones list of the 500 greatest albums of all time
. In 2004, it was one of 50 recordings chosen that year by the Library of Congress
to be added to the National Recording Registry
, which selects recordings annually that are "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". According to a press release for the 2004 registry, "Fear of a Black Planet brought hip-hop respect from critics, millions of new fans and passionate debate over its political content. The album signaled the coupling of a strongly political message with hip-hop music".
.
Studio album
A studio album is an album made up of tracks recorded in the controlled environment of a recording studio. A studio album contains newly written and recorded or previously unreleased or remixed material, distinguishing itself from a compilation or reissue album of previously recorded material, or...
by American hip hop
Hip hop music
Hip hop music, also called hip-hop, rap music or hip-hop music, is a musical genre consisting of a stylized rhythmic music that commonly accompanies rapping, a rhythmic and rhyming speech that is chanted...
group Public Enemy, released April 10, 1990, on Def Jam Recordings
Def Jam Recordings
Def Jam Recordings is an American record label, focused primarily on hip hop and urban music, owned by Universal Music Group, and operates as a part of The Island Def Jam Motown Music Group...
and Columbia Records
Columbia Records
Columbia Records is an American record label, owned by Japan's Sony Music Entertainment, operating under the Columbia Music Group with Aware Records. It was founded in 1888, evolving from an earlier enterprise, the American Graphophone Company — successor to the Volta Graphophone Company...
. Production for the album was handled by the group's production team The Bomb Squad
The Bomb Squad
The Bomb Squad is an American hip hop production team, known for their work with the rap group Public Enemy. The Bomb Squad are noted for their dense, distinct, innovative production style, often utilizing dozens of samples on just one track...
, who expanded on the dense, sample
Sampling (music)
In music, sampling is the act of taking a portion, or sample, of one sound recording and reusing it as an instrument or a different sound recording of a song or piece. Sampling was originally developed by experimental musicians working with musique concrète and electroacoustic music, who physically...
-layered sound of the group's previous album, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back
It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back
It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back is the second studio album by American hip hop group Public Enemy, released April 14, 1988, on Def Jam Recordings. Recording sessions for the album took place at Chung King Studios, Greene Street Recording, and Sabella Studios in New York City...
(1988). They constructed elaborate sound collages for the album's music, incorporating varying rhythms, numerous samples, media sound bites, and eccentric music loops, which reflected the content's confrontational tone. Fear of a Black Planet contains themes concerning organization and empowerment within the African-American community, while presenting criticism of social issues affecting African Americans at the time of the album's conception.
The album debuted at number 40 on the US Billboard Top Pop Albums
Billboard 200
The Billboard 200 is a ranking of the 200 highest-selling music albums and EPs in the United States, published weekly by Billboard magazine. It is frequently used to convey the popularity of an artist or groups of artists...
, selling one million copies in its first week. It subsequently peaked at number 10 on the chart and was certified platinum
RIAA certification
In the United States, the Recording Industry Association of America awards certification based on the number of albums and singles sold through retail and other ancillary markets. Other countries have similar awards...
by the Recording Industry Association of America
Recording Industry Association of America
The Recording Industry Association of America is a trade organization that represents the recording industry distributors in the United States...
. Upon its release, Fear of a Black Planet received general acclaim from music critics, who praised its musical quality, sonic detail, societal themes, and insightful lyrics, and was ranked one of the best albums in 1990 by various publications. It has since been recognized as one of hip hop's greatest and most important albums, as well as musically and culturally significant. In 2003, the album was ranked number 300 on Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time
The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time
"The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time" is the title of a 2003 special issue of American magazine Rolling Stone, and a related book published in 2005.Related news articles:...
. In 2005, it was chosen by the Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
to be added to the National Recording Registry
National Recording Registry
The National Recording Registry is a list of sound recordings that "are culturally, historically, or aesthetically important, and/or inform or reflect life in the United States." The registry was established by the National Recording Preservation Act of 2000, which created the National Recording...
.
Background
In 1988, Public Enemy released their second album It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us BackIt Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back
It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back is the second studio album by American hip hop group Public Enemy, released April 14, 1988, on Def Jam Recordings. Recording sessions for the album took place at Chung King Studios, Greene Street Recording, and Sabella Studios in New York City...
to critical recognition and sufficient sales, while fulfilling their creative ambitions to create what they considered to be a hip hop-equivalent to Marvin Gaye
Marvin Gaye
Marvin Pentz Gay, Jr. , better known by his stage name Marvin Gaye, was an American singer-songwriter and musician with a three-octave vocal range....
's What's Going On
What's Going On
What's Going On is the eleventh studio album by soul musician Marvin Gaye, released May 21, 1971, on the Motown-subsidiary label Tamla Records...
, an album noted for its social commentary. The album's dense musical textures exemplified a new production aesthetic in hip hop at the time, while the controversial, politically charged content by the group's lead MC Chuck D
Chuck D
Carlton Douglas Ridenhour , better known by his stage name, Chuck D, is an American rapper, author, and producer. He helped create politically and socially conscious rap music in the mid-1980s as the leader of the rap group Public Enemy.- Early life :Ridenhour was born in Queens, New York...
, whose braggadocio raps contained references to political figures such as Assata Shakur
Assata Shakur
Assata Olugbala Shakur is an African-American activist and escaped convict who was a member of the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army...
and Nelson Mandela
Nelson Mandela
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999, and was the first South African president to be elected in a fully representative democratic election. Before his presidency, Mandela was an anti-apartheid activist, and the leader of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing...
, as well as endorsements of Nation of Islam
Nation of Islam
The Nation of Islam is a mainly African-American new religious movement founded in Detroit, Michigan by Wallace D. Fard Muhammad in July 1930 to improve the spiritual, mental, social, and economic condition of African-Americans in the United States of America. The movement teaches black pride and...
-leader Louis Farrakhan
Louis Farrakhan
Louis Farrakhan Muhammad, Sr. is the leader of the African-American religious movement the Nation of Islam . He served as the minister of major mosques in Boston and Harlem, and was appointed by the longtime NOI leader, Elijah Muhammad, before his death in 1975, as the National Representative of...
, intensified the group's affiliation with black nationalism
Black nationalism
Black nationalism advocates a racial definition of indigenous national identity, as opposed to multiculturalism. There are different indigenous nationalist philosophies but the principles of all African nationalist ideologies are unity, and self-determination or independence from European society...
and Farrakhan. It Takes a Nations success helped raised hip hop music's profile as both art and sociopolitical
Political sociology
Contemporary political sociology involves much more than the study of the relations between state and society . Where a typical research question in political sociology might have been: "Why do so few American citizens choose to vote?" or even, "What difference does it make if women get elected?" ...
statement, amid criticism of the genre by the media. The group had also expanded their live shows and performing dynamic. With the album's content and their rage-filled showmanship in concert, Public Enemy became the vanguard of a movement in hip hop that reflected a new black consciousness and the sociopolitical dynamics that were taking shape in America at the time.
Fear of a Black Planet was conceived at the time of the controversy surrounding anti-Semitic
Anti-Semitism
Antisemitism is suspicion of, hatred toward, or discrimination against Jews for reasons connected to their Jewish heritage. According to a 2005 U.S...
remarks allegedly made by group member Professor Griff
Professor Griff
Professor Griff is an American rapper and spoken word artist. He is a member of the hip hop group Public Enemy and head of the Security of the First World.-Early years in Public Enemy:...
. In a May 1989 interview for The Washington Times
The Washington Times
The Washington Times is a daily broadsheet newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States. It was founded in 1982 by Unification Church founder Sun Myung Moon, and until 2010 was owned by News World Communications, an international media conglomerate associated with the...
, he was quoted as saying that Jews were the cause of "the majority of the wickedness" in the world. Public Enemy received criticism from religious organizations and liberal rock critics, as well as media scrutiny, which added to charges against the group's politics as being racist, homophobic, and misogynistic. Chuck D subsequently fired Griff from the group, but he later rejoined and has since denied holding anti-Semitic views and apologized for the remarks. Def Jam director of publicity Bill Adler later said that the controversy "partly [...] fueled the writing of Fear of a Black Planet".
Concept
To follow-up It Takes a Nation, the group pursued a different direction, content-wise. According to Chuck D, they sought make a more thematically focused work and to condense Dr. Frances Cress WelsingFrances Cress Welsing
Frances Cress Welsing Frances Cress Welsing Frances Cress Welsing (born March 18, 1935 in Chicago is an African American psychiatrist practicing in Washington, D.C.. She is noted for her "Cress Theory of Color Confrontation", which explores the practice of white supremacy...
's theory of "Color Confrontation and Racism (White Supremacy)" into an album-length recording, "telling people, well, color's an issue created and concocted to take advantage of people of various characteristics with the benefit of a few". He said of their concept in an interview for Billboard
Billboard (magazine)
Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis...
, "We wanted really to go with a deep, complex album [...] more conducive to the high and lows of great stage-performance". He has said that the commercial circumstances for hip hop at the time, having quickly transitioned from a single
Single (music)
In music, a single or record single is a type of release, typically a recording of fewer tracks than an LP or a CD. This can be released for sale to the public in a variety of different formats. In most cases, the single is a song that is released separately from an album, but it can still appear...
s to an album
Album
An album is a collection of recordings, released as a single package on gramophone record, cassette, compact disc, or via digital distribution. The word derives from the Latin word for list .Vinyl LP records have two sides, each comprising one half of the album...
medium in the music industry during the 1980s, also influenced the group's creative vision, and stated in an interview for Westword
Westword
Westword is a free alternative weekly newspaper based in Denver, Colorado.Westword was established independently in 1977. In 1983 it was bought by New Times Media. In 2005, New Times acquired Village Voice Media, and changed its name to Village Voice Media...
, "We understood the magnitude of what an album was, so we set out to make something that not only epitomized the standard of an album, but would stand the test of time by being diverse with sounds and textures, and also being able to home in on the aspect of peaks and valleys". On their musical direction, Chuck D said, "We wanted to create a new sound out of the assemblage of sounds that made us have our own identity [...] When we made It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back we were shooting to make What’s Going On by Marvin Gaye and when we made Fear of a Black Planet I was shooting for Sgt. Pepper's
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is the eighth studio album by the English rock band The Beatles, released on 1 June 1967 on the Parlophone label and produced by George Martin...
."
The album's artwork followed Chuck D's concept of two planets, the "Black" planet and Earth, eclipsing. The group enlisted B.E. Johnson, a NASA
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...
illustrator, to create the cover. Cey Adams, creative director for Def Jam at the time, later said of the creative decision for the artwork, "It was so interesting to me that a black hip-hop act did an illustration for their album cover. At that time black hip-hop artists, for the most part, had photos of themselves on their covers. But this was the first time someone took a chance to do something in the rock'n'roll vein".
Recording
Recording sessions for the album took place during June to October 1989 at Greene Street RecordingGreene St. Recording
Greene St. Recording was a New York City recording studio, located at 112 Greene St. in SoHo. until its close in 2001. It was one of the early headquarters of hip-hop during the 1980s and 1990s....
in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, The Music Palace in West Hempstead, New York
West Hempstead, New York
Not to be confused with West Hampstead, London.West Hempstead is a hamlet in Nassau County, New York, United States. The population was 18,862 at the 2010 census...
, and Spectrum City Studios in Long Island, New York. Fear of a Black Planet was produced entirely by the group's production team, The Bomb Squad
The Bomb Squad
The Bomb Squad is an American hip hop production team, known for their work with the rap group Public Enemy. The Bomb Squad are noted for their dense, distinct, innovative production style, often utilizing dozens of samples on just one track...
, which included Chuck D, Eric "Vietnam" Sadler, and brothers Hank and Keith Shocklee
Keith Shocklee
Keith Matthew Boxley , better known as Keith Shocklee or Wizard K-Jee, is an American hip hop producer and DJ. He was an original member of Public Enemy and The Bomb Squad...
. It marked the first time that Keith Shocklee was credited as a member of the team; he played a significant role in composing the main tracks and music for the album. Hank Shocklee was the production team's director and referred to by Chuck D as "the Phil Spector
Phil Spector
Phillip Harvey "Phil" Spector is an American record producer and songwriter, later known for his conviction in the murder of actress Lana Clarkson....
of hip-hop". For the album, they sought to expand on the dense, sample
Sampling (music)
In music, sampling is the act of taking a portion, or sample, of one sound recording and reusing it as an instrument or a different sound recording of a song or piece. Sampling was originally developed by experimental musicians working with musique concrète and electroacoustic music, who physically...
-layered "wall of noise
Wall of Sound
The Wall of Sound is a music production technique for pop and rock music recordings developed by record producer Phil Spector at Gold Star Studios in Los Angeles, California, during the early 1960s...
" sound of It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. Having worked out an elaborate method that involved the members assembling different types of sounds in the studio, the Bomb Squad reconfigured and recontextualized musical fragments from various sources into their own compositions. Each member brought a different philosophy to making music, arranging sounds, and working with technology, with source material coming from singles, LP albums, and radio, among others. Hank Shocklee viewed the group as "a production assembly line where each person had their own particular specialty." According to him, he came "from a DJ
Disc jockey
A disc jockey, also known as DJ, is a person who selects and plays recorded music for an audience. Originally, "disc" referred to phonograph records, not the later Compact Discs. Today, the term includes all forms of music playback, no matter the medium.There are several types of disc jockeys...
’s perspective. Eric [Sadler] is coming from a musician’s perspective. So together, you know, we started working out different ideas." Sadler advocated a more traditional, structured approach to songwriting, while Shocklee's approach was less conventional. As the group's main lyricist, Chuck D wanted to recontextualize the sampled material into his lyrics and create a theme for the album.
During the recording sessions, the Bomb Squad listened to various music records and used devices such as the E-mu SP-1200
E-mu SP-1200
E-mu SP-1200 is a classic drum machine and sampler released in August 1987 by E-mu Systems, Inc. as an update of the SP-12, which was originally created for dance music producers...
drum machine
Drum machine
A drum machine is an electronic musical instrument designed to imitate the sound of drums or other percussion instruments. They are used in a variety of musical genres, not just purely electronic music...
and sampler
Sampler (musical instrument)
A sampler is an electronic musical instrument similar in some respects to a synthesizer but, instead of generating sounds, it uses recordings of sounds that are loaded or recorded into it by the user and then played back by means of a keyboard, sequencer or other triggering device to perform or...
, the Akai S900 sampler, and a Macintosh
Compact Macintosh
"Compact Macintosh" or "Classic Macintosh" are informal terms that refer to the direct descendants of the original Macintosh personal computer case design by Apple Computer, Inc. All of them are all-in-one desktop computer designs with the display integrated in the computer case, but not the...
computer to arrange samples and sequence
Music sequencer
The music sequencer is a device or computer software to record, edit, play back the music, by handling note and performance information in several forms, typically :...
tracks. The sessions, which were recorded by Shocklee for future reference, had the group playing beats and records, while collecting potential sample material. Chuck D has said that "95 percent of the time it sounded like mess. But there was 5 percent of magic that would happen." Shocklee compared their production to that of filmmaking, "with different lighting effects, or film speeds, or whatever", while Chuck D found their intention to "blend sound" similar to a visual artist "tak[ing] yellow and blue and come up with green". He further explained their technique and conceptual approach in a 1990 interview for Keyboard Magazine
Keyboard Magazine
Keyboard Magazine is a magazine that originally covered electronic keyboard instruments and keyboardists, though with the advent of computer based recording and audio technology, they have added digital music technology to their regular coverage, including those not strictly pertaining to the...
, stating "We approach every record like it was a painting. Sometimes, on the sound sheet, we have to have a separate sheet just to list the samples for each track. We used about 150, maybe 200 samples on Fear of a Black Planet." Instead of selecting from the numerous, basic backing tracks that Sadler had collected before the sessions, Chuck D wanted for the production team to improvise beats in the studio, leading to much of the album's music being composed on the spot. Chuck D has said that he spent numerous hours listening to various tapes, music records, and other audio sources in search of samples for the album. Hank Shocklee said of their search for samples to use, "When you’re talking about the kind of sampling that Public Enemy did, we had to comb through thousands of records to come up with maybe five good pieces. And as we started putting together those pieces, the sound got a lot more dense."
In order to synchronize the samples, the Bomb Squad used SMPTE timecodes and arranged and overdubbed particular bits of backing tracks, which had been inspected by the members for snare, bass, and hi-hat sounds. Chuck D said of this approach to their production and sampling, "Our music is all about samples in the right area, layers that pile on each other. We put loops on top of loops on top of loops, but then in the mix we cut things away". Music journalist Jeff Chang
Jeff Chang (journalist)
Jeff Chang is an American journalist and music critic on hip hop music and culture. His 2005 book, Can't Stop Won't Stop, which chronicles the early hip hop scene, won an American Book Award in 2005...
said of their methodology in retrospect, "They’re figuring out how to jam
Jam session
Jam sessions are often used by musicians to develop new material, find suitable arrangements, or simply as a social gathering and communal practice session. Jam sessions may be based upon existing songs or forms, may be loosely based on an agreed chord progression or chart suggested by one...
with the samples and to create these layers of sound. I don't think it’s been matched since then." For the track "Burn Hollywood Burn", he dealt with clearance issues from different record labels in order to collaborate with rappers Big Daddy Kane
Big Daddy Kane
Antonio Hardy better known by his stage name Big Daddy Kane, is an American rapper who started his career in 1986 as a member of the rap group the Juice Crew. He is widely considered to be one of the most influential and skilled MC's in Hip Hop...
and Ice Cube
Ice Cube
O'Shea Jackson , better known by his stage name Ice Cube, is an American rapper and actor. He began his career as a member of the hip-hop group C.I.A. and later joined the rap group N.W.A. After leaving N.W.A in December 1989, he built a successful solo career in music, and also as a writer,...
, who had been pursuing the Bomb Squad to produce his debut album. The recording marked one of the first times in which MCs from different rap crews
Musical collective
Musical collective is a phrase used to describe a group of musicians in which membership is flexible and creative control is shared. Such entities have transitioned from the traditional hierarchical configuration that features either a frontman , or a plurality of band members in tension for...
collaborated together, and it led to the Bomb Squad working with Ice Cube on his 1990 debut album AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted. Once all the tracks were completed, sequencing began of the seemingly discontinuous album for The Bomb Squad, amid internal disputes among its members. Sadler later reflected on the album's post-production, saying "A lot of people were like, 'Wow, it's a brilliant album'. But it really shoulda been much better. If we had more time and we didn't have to deal with the situation of nobody talking".
The album was conceived during the golden age of hip hop, a period roughly between 1987 and 1992 when artists took advantage of newly emerging sampling technologies before being perceived by record labels and lawyers. Accordingly, Public Enemy were not compelled to obtain sample clearance for the album. This preceded the legal limits and clearance costs later placed on sampling, which effectively limited hip hop production and the complexity of musical arrangement in hip hop. In an interview with Stay Free!
Stay Free!
Stay Free! is a non-profit magazine about the politics of culture based in Brooklyn, New York. Founded by Carrie McLaren in 1992 while working at Matador Records, it tends to focus on "the perversions of media and consumer culture." Each issue has a theme, such as pranks, copyright, or marketing...
, Chuck D discussed the use of sampling on the album at the time, stating "Public Enemy's music was affected more than anybody's because we were taking thousands of sounds. If you separated the sounds, they wouldn't have been anything--they were unrecognizable. The sounds were all collaged together to make a sonic wall". An analysis by law professors Peter DiCola and Kembrew McLeod
Kembrew McLeod
Kembrew McLeod is an American journalist, artist, activist, and professor of Communication Studies at the University of Iowa.He is best known as a performance artist or "media prankster" who filed an application in 1997 to register the phrase "Freedom of Expression" as a trademark in the United...
estimated that under the sample clearance system that had emerged in the music industry since the album's release, Public Enemy were to lose at least five dollars per copy if they were to clear the samples for the album at 2010 rates; McLeod noted in the analysis, "a loss of five million dollars on a platinum record".
Music and lyrics
The album's music is made up of assemblage compositionAssemblage (composition)
Assemblage refers to a text "built primarily and explicitly from existing texts in order to solve a writing or communication problem in a new context". The concept was first proposed by Johndan Johnson-Eilola and Stuart Selber in the journal, Computers & Composition, in 2007...
s that draw on numerous aural sources. The production's musique concrète
Musique concrète
Musique concrète is a form of electroacoustic music that utilises acousmatic sound as a compositional resource. The compositional material is not restricted to the inclusion of sounds derived from musical instruments or voices, nor to elements traditionally thought of as "musical"...
-influenced approach reflects the political and confrontational tones of the group's lyrics, with sound collages that feature varying rhythms, aliased
Aliasing
In signal processing and related disciplines, aliasing refers to an effect that causes different signals to become indistinguishable when sampled...
or scratchy samples, media sound bites, and eccentric music loops. Journalist and writer Kembrew McLeod
Kembrew McLeod
Kembrew McLeod is an American journalist, artist, activist, and professor of Communication Studies at the University of Iowa.He is best known as a performance artist or "media prankster" who filed an application in 1997 to register the phrase "Freedom of Expression" as a trademark in the United...
calls the album's music "both agitprop
Agitprop
Agitprop is derived from agitation and propaganda, and describes stage plays, pamphlets, motion pictures and other art forms with an explicitly political message....
and pop, mixing politics with the live-wire thrill of the popular music
Popular music
Popular music belongs to any of a number of musical genres "having wide appeal" and is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. It stands in contrast to both art music and traditional music, which are typically disseminated academically or orally to smaller, local...
experience", and comments that the Bomb Squad "took sampling to the level of high art
Fine art
Fine art or the fine arts encompass art forms developed primarily for aesthetics and/or concept rather than practical application. Art is often a synonym for fine art, as employed in the term "art gallery"....
while keeping intact hip-hop's populist
Populism
Populism can be defined as an ideology, political philosophy, or type of discourse. Generally, a common theme compares "the people" against "the elite", and urges social and political system changes. It can also be defined as a rhetorical style employed by members of various political or social...
heart. They would graft together dozens of fragmentary samples to create a single song collage." Music writer Simon Reynolds
Simon Reynolds
Simon Reynolds is an English music critic who is well-known for his writings on electronic dance music and for coining the term "post-rock". Besides electronic dance music, Reynolds has written about a wide range of artists and musical genres, and has written books on post-punk and rock...
calls the album "a work of unprecedented density for hip hop, its claustrophobic, backs-against-the-wall feel harking back to Sly Stone
Sly & the Family Stone
Sly and the Family Stone were an American rock, funk, and soul band from San Francisco, California. Active from 1966 to 1983, the band was pivotal in the development of soul, funk, and psychedelic music...
's There's a Riot Goin' On
There's a Riot Goin' On
There's a Riot Goin' On is the fifth studio album by American funk and soul band Sly & the Family Stone, released November 20, 1971 on Epic Records. Recording sessions for the album took place primarily throughout 1970 to 1971 at Record Plant Studios in Sausalito, California...
or even Miles Davis
Miles Davis
Miles Dewey Davis III was an American jazz musician, trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. Widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, Miles Davis was, with his musical groups, at the forefront of several major developments in jazz music, including bebop, cool jazz,...
' On the Corner
On the Corner
On the Corner is a studio album by jazz musician Miles Davis, recorded in June and July 1972 and released later that year on Columbia Records. It was scorned by critics at the time of its release and was one of Davis's worst-selling recordings...
". Music recordings sampled for the album include those from genres such as funk
Funk
Funk is a music genre that originated in the mid-late 1960s when African American musicians blended soul music, jazz and R&B into a rhythmic, danceable new form of music. Funk de-emphasizes melody and harmony and brings a strong rhythmic groove of electric bass and drums to the foreground...
, soul
Soul music
Soul music is a music genre originating in the United States combining elements of gospel music and rhythm and blues. According to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, soul is "music that arose out of the black experience in America through the transmutation of gospel and rhythm & blues into a form of...
, rock
Rock music
Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...
, and hip hop. Elements such as choruses, guitar sounds, or vocals from sampled recordings are reappropriated as riffs in songs on the album, while sampled dialogue from speeches are incorporated to support Chuck D's arguments and lyrics on certain songs.
Some tracks use elements from Public Enemy's previous material, which Pete Watrous of The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
interprets as "reminding listeners that the group itself is not only part of a tradition, but has a history of its own." Watrous describes the music as "the sound of urban alienation, where silence doesn't exist and sensory stimulation is oppressive and predatory", and writes that its dense textures "envelop Chuck D's voice and make his rapping sound as if it is under duress, as if he were fighting against a background intent on taking him over. [...] Layer after layer of sounds are placed on top of each other until the music becomes nearly tactile". Chuck D describes Fear of a Black Planet as "completely an album of found sounds [...] probably the most elaborate smorgasbord of sound that we did." He explained the music's layering and context in his interview for Keyboard Magazine, saying "When we put together our music, we try to put together layers that complement each other, and then the voice tries to complement that, and the theme tries to complement that, and then the song itself tries to complement the album as a whole, fitting into the overall context." In his essay on hip hop aesthetics
Aesthetics of music
Traditionally, the aesthetics of music or musical aesthetics concentrated on the quality and study of the beauty and enjoyment of music. The origin of this philosophic sub-discipline is sometimes attributed to Baumgarten in the 18th century, followed by Kant...
, writer Richard Schur interprets such layering as a motif in hip hop and as "the process by which [...] new meanings are created and communicated, primarily to an equally knowledgeable audience", concluding that "Public Enemy probably took the ideal of layering to its farthest point".
Fear of a Black Planet contains themes of organization and empowerment within the African-American community, and of confrontation. Chuck D's critical lyrics on the album, interspersed with the surrealism of Flavor Flav
Flavor Flav
William Jonathan Drayton, Jr. , better known by his stage name Flavor Flav, is an American rapper and television personality who rose to prominence as a member of the rap group Public Enemy...
, also concern contemporary black life, the state of race relations, and criticisms of institutional racism
Institutional racism
Institutional racism describes any kind of system of inequality based on race. It can occur in institutions such as public government bodies, private business corporations , and universities . The term was coined by Black Power activist Stokely Carmichael in the late 1960s...
, White supremacy
White supremacy
White supremacy is the belief, and promotion of the belief, that white people are superior to people of other racial backgrounds. The term is sometimes used specifically to describe a political ideology that advocates the social and political dominance by whites.White supremacy, as with racial...
, and the power elite
Power elite
A power elite or The Grand Elite, in political and sociological theory, is a small group of people who control a disproportionate amount of wealth, privilege, and access to decision-making of global consequence. The term was coined by C...
. Music critic Greg Sandow
Greg Sandow
Greg Sandow is an American music critic and composer. He is a graduate of Harvard University, with a bachelor's degree in government, and of Yale University, with a master's degree in composition....
calls Chuck D's language "strong and elusive, often fragmentary" and "embedded [with] critical, sometimes brutal thoughts". Although he views that "some people might disagree with some of these ideas", Sandow writes that "it's hard to dispute the lyrics' assertion that many Whites are afraid of blacks", adding that the album "touches on" the idea of "an age when whites understand that they're a minority in the world". Music author Robert Hilburn
Robert Hilburn
Robert Hilburn is a pop music critic and author. As critic and music editor of the Los Angeles Times from 1970 to 2005, his reviews, essays and profiles have appeared in hundreds of publications around the world...
writes that songs on the album "decr[y] what Chuck D. sees as the consequences of white, European cultural domination
Cultural imperialism
Cultural imperialism is the domination of one culture over another. Cultural imperialism can take the form of a general attitude or an active, formal and deliberate policy, including military action. Economic or technological factors may also play a role...
in the United States and throughout much of the world". Sputnikmusic
Sputnikmusic
Sputnikmusic, or simply Sputnik, is a music website offering music criticism and music news alongside features commonly associated with wiki-style websites...
's Nick Butler notes "two recurring themes - inter-racial relationships [...] and the racism inherent in the American media
Media of the United States
Media of the United States consist of several different types of communications media: television, radio, cinema, newspapers, magazines, and Internet-based Web sites. The U.S...
", adding that Public Enemy's "anger is more focused and streamlined" than on their previous work. In his book Somebody Scream!: Rap Music's Rise to Prominence in the Aftershock of Black Power, Marcus Reeves states that the album "was as much a musical assault on America's racism as it was a call to blacks to effectively react to it". According to music writer Greg Kot
Greg Kot
Greg Kot is an American writer and journalist. Since 1990, Kot has been the music critic at the Chicago Tribune, where he has covered popular music and reported on music-related social, political and business issues...
, the album is "hardly a black power
Black Power
Black Power is a political slogan and a name for various associated ideologies. It is used in the movement among people of Black African descent throughout the world, though primarily by African Americans in the United States...
manifesto for world domination, but a statement about racial paranoia. Though he spares virtually no one with his withering raps, Public Enemy's Chuck D is harshest of all on his fellow blacks, expounding on everything from history to fashion: Use your brain instead of a gun. Drugs are death. Know your past so you won't screw up the future. Gold chains worn around the neck demean the brotherhood in South Africa."
Content
The opening track, "Contract on the World Love Jam", is a sound collage made up of samples, scratch cuts
Scratching
Scratching is a DJ or turntablist technique used to produce distinctive sounds by moving a vinyl record back and forth on a turntable while optionally manipulating the crossfader on a DJ mixer. While scratching is most commonly associated with hip hop music, since the late 1980s, it has been used...
, and snippets recorded by Chuck D from radio stations and sound bites of interviews and commercials. The tension-building track introduces the album's dense, sample-based production. According to Chuck D, the song features "about forty-five to fifty [sampled] voices" that interweave as part of an assertive sonic collage and underscore the album’s themes. "Incident at 66.6 FM", another collage that segues into "Welcome to the Terrordome", contains snippets from a radio call-in show interview of Chuck D and alludes to the media persecution perceived by Public Enemy. "Burn Hollywood Burn" assails the use of black stereotypes in movies, and "Who Stole the Soul?" condemns the record industry's exploitation of black recording artists and calls for reparations. "Revolutionary Generation" celebrates the strength and endurance of black women with lyrics related to black feminism
Black feminism
Black feminism argues that sexism, class oppression, and racism are inextricably bound together. Forms of feminism that strive to overcome sexism and class oppression. The Combahee River Collective argued in 1974 that the liberation of black women entails freedom for all people, since it would...
, an unfamiliar topic in hip hop. It also addresses sexism
Sexism
Sexism, also known as gender discrimination or sex discrimination, is the application of the belief or attitude that there are characteristics implicit to one's gender that indirectly affect one's abilities in unrelated areas...
within the black community and misogyny in hip hop culture
Misogyny in hip hop culture
Misogyny in hip hop culture refers to lyrics, videos or other aspects of hip hop culture that support, glorify, justify, or normalize the objectification, exploitation, or victimization of women. Misogyny in rap music instills and perpetuates negative stereotypes about women. It can range from...
.
The title track discusses racial classification and the root of White fear of African Americans, particularly racist concerns by some Whites over the effect of miscegenation
Miscegenation
Miscegenation is the mixing of different racial groups through marriage, cohabitation, sexual relations, and procreation....
. In the song, Chuck D argues that they should not worry as the original man
Recent African origin of modern humans
In paleoanthropology, the recent African origin of modern humans is the most widely accepted model describing the origin and early dispersal of anatomically modern humans...
was black and "white comes from black / No need to be confused". The song features a vocal sample of comedian and activist Dick Gregory
Dick Gregory
Richard Claxton "Dick" Gregory is an American comedian, social activist, social critic, writer, and entrepreneur....
saying, "Black man, black woman, black child / white man, black woman, black child?". "Pollywanacraka" also concerns interracial relations, including Blacks who leave their communities to marry wealthy Whites, and societal views of the matter: "This system had no wisdom / The devil split us in pairs / and taught us white is good, black is bad / and black and white is still too bad". Music writer Robert Christgau
Robert Christgau
Robert Christgau is an American essayist, music journalist, and self-proclaimed "Dean of American Rock Critics".One of the earliest professional rock critics, Christgau is known for his terse capsule reviews, published since 1969 in his Consumer Guide columns...
commented on Chuck D's performance and style on the track, writing that "people keep bringing in Barry White
Barry White
Barry White, born Barry Eugene Carter , was an American composer and singer-songwriter.A five-time Grammy Award-winner known for his distinctive bass voice and romantic image, White's greatest success came in the 1970s as a solo singer and with the Love Unlimited Orchestra, crafting many enduring...
or Isaac Hayes
Isaac Hayes
Isaac Lee Hayes, Jr. was an American songwriter, musician, singer and actor. Hayes was one of the creative influences behind the southern soul music label Stax Records, where he served both as an in-house songwriter and as a record producer, teaming with his partner David Porter during the...
, but he's playing the pedagogue
Pedagogy
Pedagogy is the study of being a teacher or the process of teaching. The term generally refers to strategies of instruction, or a style of instruction....
, not the love man, maybe some Reverend Ike
Reverend Ike
Reverend Ike was an American minister and electronic evangelist based in New York City. He was best known for the slogan "You can't lose with the stuff I use!"-Background:...
figure". "Meet the G That Killed Me" features homophobic
Homophobia
Homophobia is a term used to refer to a range of negative attitudes and feelings towards lesbian, gay and in some cases bisexual, transgender people and behavior, although these are usually covered under other terms such as biphobia and transphobia. Definitions refer to irrational fear, with the...
etiology
Etiology
Etiology is the study of causation, or origination. The word is derived from the Greek , aitiologia, "giving a reason for" ....
and condemns homosexuality: "Man to man / I don't know if they can / From what I know / The parts don't fit". Written by hypeman
Hype man
A hype man in hip hop music and rapping is a “backup rapper/singer who is also responsible for increasing an audience's excitement with call-and-response chants” according to The Hilltop and author Grant Barrett....
Flavor Flav and Bomb Squad-producers Keith Shocklee and Eric "Vietnam" Sadler, "911 Is a Joke
911 Is a Joke
"911 Is a Joke" is a 1990 song by American hip hop group Public Enemy, from their third album, Fear of a Black Planet. It was released as a single and became their first Top 40 hit in June 1990, reaching number 34 on the Billboard Hot 100....
" features Flav as the main vocalist and criticizes the inadequacy of 9-1-1
9-1-1
9-1-1 is the emergency telephone number for the North American Numbering Plan .It is one of eight N11 codes.The use of this number is for emergency circumstances only, and to use it for any other purpose can be a crime.-History:In the earliest days of telephone technology, prior to the...
, the emergency telephone number
Emergency telephone number
Many countries' public telephone networks have a single emergency telephone number, sometimes known as the universal emergency telephone number or occasionally the emergency services number, that allows a caller to contact local emergency services for assistance. The emergency telephone number may...
used in the United States, and the lack of police response to emergency calls in predominantly African-American neighborhoods.
Songs such as "Fight the Power", "Power to the People", and "Brothers Gonna Work It Out" propose a response by African Americans to the issues criticized throughout the album. "Power to the People" has a tempo of approximately 125 beats per minute and mixes elements of Miami bass
Miami bass
Miami bass , is a type of hip hop music, that became popular in the 1980s and 1990s. Its roots are directly linked to the Electro-funk sound of the early 1980s, pioneered by Afrika Bambataa & The Soulsonic Force and later on by UK-based musician Paul Hardcastle...
, electro-boogie
Boogie (genre)
Boogie is an electronic/funk-influenced variation of post-disco.Boogie, as one of the post-disco subgenres, lacks the four-on-the-floor beat, which is a "traditional" rhythm of disco music. Aside from the moderate influence of synthpop, boogie heavily draws from funk music...
, and fast-paced Roland TR-808
Roland TR-808
The Roland TR-808 Rhythm Composer was one of the first programmable drum machines . Introduced by the Roland Corporation in early 1980, it was originally manufactured for use as a tool for studio musicians to create demos. Like earlier Roland drum machines, it does not sound very much like a real...
. Addressing the plight of African Americans at the turn of the 1990s, "Brothers Gonna Work It Out" features cacophonic sound textures and a central theme of unity among African Americans, with Chuck D preaching "Brothers that try to work it out / They get mad, revolt, revise, realize / They're superbad / Small chance a smart brother's gonna be a victim of his own circumstance". Richard Harrington of The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
writes that songs such as "War at 33⅓" and "Fight the Power" "may sound like a call to ohms and arms, but they are really a call to action ('turn us loose and we shall overcome'), a message to conscience and a plea for unity ('move as team, never move alone,' both cautionary advice and game plan)". "War at 33⅓" has a theme of resistance and a 128 bpm-tempo, which was cited by Chuck D as "the fastest thing I've ever rapped to, rapping right on top of the beat".
Singles
The lead single "Fight the PowerFight the Power
"Fight the Power" is a single by American hip hop group Public Enemy. First released on the soundtrack for the film 1989 Do the Right Thing, a different version was released on the group's third studio album, Fear of a Black Planet . The single reached number one on Hot Rap Singles and number 20 on...
" peaked at number one on Billboard
Billboard charts
The Billboard charts tabulate the relative weekly popularity of songs or albums in the United States. The results are published in Billboard magazine...
s Hot Rap Singles chart. It features revolutionary rhetoric by Chuck D and was used by director Spike Lee
Spike Lee
Shelton Jackson "Spike" Lee is an American film director, producer, writer, and actor. His production company, 40 Acres & A Mule Filmworks, has produced over 35 films since 1983....
as a leitmotif
Leitmotif
A leitmotif , sometimes written leit-motif, is a musical term , referring to a recurring theme, associated with a particular person, place, or idea. It is closely related to the musical idea of idée fixe...
in his acclaimed 1989 film Do the Right Thing
Do the Right Thing
Do the Right Thing is a 1989 American dramedy produced, written, and directed by Spike Lee, who is also a featured actor in the film. Other members of the cast include Danny Aiello, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Richard Edson, Giancarlo Esposito, Bill Nunn, and John Turturro. It is also notably the...
, a film about racial tension in a Brooklyn neighborhood. Lee approached the group in 1988 after the release of It Takes a Nation with the proposition of making a song for his movie. Chuck D later said of writing most of the song, "I wanted to have sorta like the same theme as the original 'Fight the Power' by The Isley Brothers
The Isley Brothers
The Isley Brothers are a highly influential, successful and long-running American music group consisting of different line-ups of six brothers, and a brother-in-law, Chris Jasper...
and fill it in with some kind of modernist views of what our surroundings were at that particular time". The song's third verse contains disparaging lyrics about popular American icons Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley
Elvis Aaron Presley was one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century. A cultural icon, he is widely known by the single name Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King"....
and John Wayne
John Wayne
Marion Mitchell Morrison , better known by his stage name John Wayne, was an American film actor, director and producer. He epitomized rugged masculinity and became an enduring American icon. He is famous for his distinctive calm voice, walk, and height...
, as Chuck D rhymes "Elvis was a hero to most / But he never meant shit to me' / Straight up, racist the sucker was / Simple and plain", with Flavor Flav following, "Muthafuck him and John Wayne!". The lyrics were shocking and offensive to many listeners upon the single's release. Chuck D was influenced to write the lines after hearing proto-rap artist Clarence "Blowfly" Reid
Blowfly (artist)
Blowfly is the stage name and alternate persona of Clarence Reid , who was a songwriter for many hit R&B acts in the 1960s and 1970s. As Blowfly, he has recorded numerous albums, mostly of sex-based parodies of other songs, as well as original raps themed around sex...
's "Blowfly Rapp" (1980), in which Reid enganges in a battle of insults with a fictitious Klansman
Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as the Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present far-right organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically...
who makes a similarly phrased, racist insult against him and boxer Muhammad Ali
Muhammad Ali
Muhammad Ali is an American former professional boxer, philanthropist and social activist...
. Chuck D's lyrics express the identification of Presley with racism—either personally or symbolically—and the largely held notion among Blacks that Presley, whose musical and visual performances owed much to African-American sources, unfairly achieved the cultural acknowledgment and commercial success largely denied his black peers in rock and roll
Rock and roll
Rock and roll is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from a combination of African American blues, country, jazz, and gospel music...
. The line regarding John Wayne refers to his controversial personal views, including racist remarks made in his 1971 interview for Playboy. "Fight the Power" has since become the group's best-known song and has been named one of the best songs of all time by numerous publications.
The single "911 Is a Joke" also reached number one on the Hot Rap Singles. According to Flavor Flav, he was given the idea by Chuck D to write the song, "He gave me that as a project to do [...] and I went and wrote the record. I went and got high and wrote the record. I went and got ripped, I went and got out of my mind, and I started speaking all kinds of crazy shit 'cos usually back in the days when I used to smoke, it used to broaden my ideas and everything". The humorous and satirical lyrics of the song were reflected in its music video, which featured a severely injured Flav being mistreated by a remiss, overdue ambulence staff. Another Flavor Flav-solo track, "Can't Do Nuttin' for Ya Man", peaked at number 11 on the Hot Rap Singles. Its lyrics advocate African-American self-reliance, denouncing welfare dependence, and its subject matter reflects Flav's experiences with acquaintances from poor neighborhoods. Flav later said of his inspiration for the song, "I was in my Corvette riding from Long Island going to The Bronx. I was slipping. I was roasting. I mean I was smoked-out crazy. And everybody kept asking me for stuff and yet nobody wanted to give me stuff. So then if anybody ever asked me for something I would be like, 'Yo, I can't do nothing for ya man.' Next thing you know I started to vibe on it: 'I can't do nothing for ya man,' um ahh um um ahh. So I went and told that to Chuck. Chuck was like, 'Record that shit man'". Writing of both tracks, music critic Tom Moon comments that Flav "affects a tone of gimme-a-break sarcasm that is crucial to both tracks, and is welcome respite from Chuck D.'s assault". "Can't Do Nuttin' for Ya Man" was featured in the 1990 comedy film House Party
House Party (film)
House Party is a 1990 American comedy film released by New Line Cinema. It stars Kid and Play of the popular hip hop duo Kid 'n Play, and also stars Paul Anthony, Bow-Legged Lou, and B-Fine from Full Force, and Robin Harris . The film also starred Martin Lawrence, Tisha Campbell, A.J...
.
The album's controversial single "Welcome to the Terrordome" makes references to the murder of Yusef Hawkins
Yusef Hawkins
Yusef Hawkins was a 16-year-old African American youth who was shot to death on August 23, 1989 in Bensonhurst, a heavily Italian American working-class neighborhood in the New York City borough of Brooklyn...
and the 1989 riots in Virginia Beach, and it has Chuck D criticizing Jewish leaders who protested Public Enemy in response to Professor Griff's anti-Semitic remarks. Its dense production incorporates numerous samples, including several James Brown
James Brown
James Joseph Brown was an American singer, songwriter, musician, and recording artist. He is the originator of Funk and is recognized as a major figure in the 20th century popular music for both his vocals and dancing. He has been referred to as "The Godfather of Soul," "Mr...
tracks and the guitar line from The Temptations
The Temptations
The Temptations is an American vocal group having achieved fame as one of the most successful acts to record for Motown Records. The group's repertoire has included, at various times during its five-decade career, R&B, doo-wop, funk, disco, soul, and adult contemporary music.Formed in Detroit,...
' "Psychedelic Shack
Psychedelic Shack (song)
"Psychedelic Shack" is a 1969 single for the Motown label performed by The Temptations and produced by Norman Whitfield. It became a hit single in 1970....
". Several other samples are heard amid Chuck D's rapping, such as the line "come on, you can get it-get it-get it" from Instant Funk
Instant Funk
Instant Funk were a 1970s disco band, best known for their disco classic, "I Got My Mind Made Up ".-History:Instant Funk came out of New Jersey consisting of Raymond Earl, Scotty Miller and guitarist Kim Miller. The group was then called The Music Machine and they were very successful as a back-up...
's "I Got My Mind Made Up (You Can Get It Girl)
I Got My Mind Made Up (You Can Get It Girl)
"I Got My Mind Made Up " was a hit for disco band Instant Funk. Released from their self-titled debut album, the song spent three non-consecutive weeks at number one on the R&B singles chart . It also enjoyed success on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, peaking at number twenty...
". Chuck D addresses the controversy as being in the center of political turmoil, with criticisms of the media and lyrical references to the Crucifixion of Jesus
Crucifixion of Jesus
The crucifixion of Jesus and his ensuing death is an event that occurred during the 1st century AD. Jesus, who Christians believe is the Son of God as well as the Messiah, was arrested, tried, and sentenced by Pontius Pilate to be scourged, and finally executed on a cross...
: "Crucifixion ain't no fiction / So called chosen frozen / Apology made to who ever pleases / Still they got me like Jesus". He is also critical of Blacks and those who "blame somebody else when you destroy yourself": "Every brother ain't a brother / 'cause a Black hand squeezed on Malcolm X
Malcolm X
Malcolm X , born Malcolm Little and also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz , was an African American Muslim minister and human rights activist. To his admirers he was a courageous advocate for the rights of African Americans, a man who indicted white America in the harshest terms for its...
the man / the shootin of Huey Newton
Huey P. Newton
Huey Percy Newton was an American political and urban activist who, along with Bobby Seale, co-founded the Black Panther Party for Self Defense.-Early life:...
/ from the hand of Nig who pulled the trigger". His lyricism on "Welcome to the Terrordome" involves dizzying raps and incorporates internal rhyme
Internal rhyme
In poetry, internal rhyme, or middle rhyme, is rhyme that occurs in a single line of verse.Internal rhyme occurs in the middle of a line, as exemplified by Coleridge, "In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud" or "Whiles all the night through fog-smoke white," in "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." ...
: "Lazer, anastasia, maze ya / Ways to blaze your brain and train ya [...] Sad to say I got sold down the river / Still some quiver when I deliver / Never to say I never knew or had a clue / Word was heard, plus hard on the boulevard / Lies, scandalizin', basin' / Traits of hate who's celebratin' wit Satan?". Allmusic's John Bush cites the track as "the production peak of the Bomb Squad and one of Chuck D.'s best rapping performances ever [...] [N]one of their tracks were more musically incendiary".
Commercial performance
Originally intended for an October 1989 release date, Fear of a Black Planet was released on April 10, 1990 by Def Jam RecordingsDef Jam Recordings
Def Jam Recordings is an American record label, focused primarily on hip hop and urban music, owned by Universal Music Group, and operates as a part of The Island Def Jam Motown Music Group...
and Columbia Records
Columbia Records
Columbia Records is an American record label, owned by Japan's Sony Music Entertainment, operating under the Columbia Music Group with Aware Records. It was founded in 1888, evolving from an earlier enterprise, the American Graphophone Company — successor to the Volta Graphophone Company...
. Although It Takes a Nation garnered Public Enemy more exposure with black audiences and music journalists, urban radio outlets had mostly rejected Def Jam's requests to include the group's singles in their regular rotation. This incited Def Jam co-founder Russell Simmons
Russell Simmons
-External links:** * * * * * * from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum* *...
to attempt grassroots promotional tactics from his earlier years of promoting hip hop shows. In promoting Fear of a Black Planet, he recruited young street crews to put up posters, billboards, and stickers on public surfaces, while Simmons himself met with nightclub DJs and college radio program directors to persuade them to add albums tracks such as "Fight the Power", "911 is a Joke", and "Welcome to the Terrordome" to their playlists.
The album debuted at number 40 on the US Billboard
Billboard (magazine)
Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis...
Top Pop Albums
Billboard 200
The Billboard 200 is a ranking of the 200 highest-selling music albums and EPs in the United States, published weekly by Billboard magazine. It is frequently used to convey the popularity of an artist or groups of artists...
chart, with first-week sales of one million copies in the United States. It also reached number three on Billboards Top Black Albums
Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums
Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums is a chart published by Billboard magazine that ranks R&B and hip hop albums based on sales compiled by Nielsen SoundScan. The name of the chart was changed from Top R&B Albums in 1999...
and number four on the Top 40 Albums
UK Albums Chart
The UK Albums Chart is a list of albums ranked by physical and digital sales in the United Kingdom. It is compiled every week by The Official Charts Company and broadcast on a Sunday on BBC Radio 1 , and published in Music Week magazine and on the OCC website .To qualify for the UK albums chart...
chart in the United Kingdom. In its second week, the album moved up the Billboard Top Pop Albums to number 19. By June 1990, it had reached number 16 on the chart and sold over one million copies in the US. It ultimately peaked at number 10 and spent 27 weeks on the Billboard Top Pop Albums. On June 7, 1990, the album was certified platinum
RIAA certification
In the United States, the Recording Industry Association of America awards certification based on the number of albums and singles sold through retail and other ancillary markets. Other countries have similar awards...
by the Recording Industry Association of America
Recording Industry Association of America
The Recording Industry Association of America is a trade organization that represents the recording industry distributors in the United States...
(RIAA), for shipments of at least one million copies in the US. It reached sales of 1.5 million copies in July 1990. Since 1991, when the tracking system Nielsen SoundScan
Nielsen SoundScan
Nielsen SoundScan is an information and sales tracking system created by Mike Fine and Mike Shalett. Soundscan is the official method of tracking sales of music and music video products throughout the United States and Canada...
began tracking domestic sales data, Fear of a Black Planet has sold 561,000 additional copies as of 2010.
The controversy surrounding the group and their exposure through the singles "Fight the Power" and "Welcome to the Terrordome" helped Fear of a Black Planet exceed the sales of their previous two albums Yo! Bum Rush the Show and It Takes a Nation of Million to Hold Us Back at the time, 500,000 and 1.1 million copies, respectively. The latter single's lyrics were initially viewed by religious groups and the media as anti-semitic upon its release. Fear of a Black Planet contributed to hip hop's commercial breakthrough at the beginning of the 1990s, despite its limited radio airplay
Airplay
* Airplay is the amount of time a song is played on the radio.It may also refer to:* AirPlay, an audio & video streaming technology from Apple Inc.* Airplay , Foster & Graydon music project from 1980* Citroën C1, Citroën C1 Airplay...
. The album's success made Public Enemy the top-selling act, both domestically and internationally, for Def Jam Recordings at the time. Ruben Rodriguez, Columbia's senior vice president at the time, said in one of the label's press releases, "What's happening with Public Enemy is unbelievable. The album is selling across the board to all demographics and nationalities". In a December 1990 article, Chicago Sun-Times
Chicago Sun-Times
The Chicago Sun-Times is an American daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois. It is the flagship paper of the Sun-Times Media Group.-History:The Chicago Sun-Times is the oldest continuously published daily newspaper in the city...
writer Michael Corcoran discussed Public Enemy's commercial success with the album and remarked that "more than half of the 2 million fans who bought [Fear of a Black Planet] are white".
Critical response
Fear of a Black Planet received general acclaim from music criticMusic criticism
See also Music journalism for reporting on classical and popular music in the media.The Oxford Companion to Music defines music criticism as 'the intellectual activity of formulating judgments on the value and degree of excellence of individual works of music, or whole groups or genres'. In this...
s upon its release, earning praise for its production and lyrics. Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
s Alan Light praised Public Enemy's "determination and realism" and viewed the album as a maturation of the group's previous work, stating "The careening rage of Nation of Millions hasn't been diluted – it's been given focus and substance". Q
Q (magazine)
Q is a popular music magazine published monthly in the United Kingdom.Founders Mark Ellen and David Hepworth were dismayed by the music press of the time, which they felt was ignoring a generation of older music buyers who were buying CDs — then still a new technology...
gave it four out of five stars and found it on-par with It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
writer Robert Hilburn
Robert Hilburn
Robert Hilburn is a pop music critic and author. As critic and music editor of the Los Angeles Times from 1970 to 2005, his reviews, essays and profiles have appeared in hundreds of publications around the world...
found that the album "rivals the force and the power of It Takes a Nation" and stated "The secret in maintaining commercial and artistic credibility in the fast-changing rap world is keeping the music fresh, and Public Enemy recognizes that challenge in Fear of a Black Planet". Greg Sandow
Greg Sandow
Greg Sandow is an American music critic and composer. He is a graduate of Harvard University, with a bachelor's degree in government, and of Yale University, with a master's degree in composition....
of Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...
called it "a formidable piece of work, and the one pop album released so far this year that no one interested in the current state of American culture can afford to ignore". Sandow noted its music as "more settled" than the group's previous work and stated "There's nothing in pop music quite like it. It sounds like a partly African, partly postmodern collage, stitched together on tumultuous urban streets". Richard Harrington of The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
commented that its "sonic assault is as uniform as the angry energy that fuels and informs this 20-cut alarm" and stated in conclusion, "[W]hile raising political consciousness, sparking self-awareness and challenging the very foundations of institutional racism must be both daunting and thankless, on Fear of a Black Planet the group shows it's willing to work on the edge, without a safety net. This album is less a revolutionary gesture than a challenge. How it's met depends on how it's understood". The Milwaukee Sentinel
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is a daily morning broadsheet printed in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA. It is the primary newspaper in Milwaukee, the largest newspaper in Wisconsin and is distributed widely throughout the state...
s Robert Tanzilo wrote "Public Enemy has proven to be the only consistently thought-provoking and musically incendiary rap act to date, and Fear of a Black Planet serves only to strengthen the group's position in the music world".
The Philadelphia Inquirer
The Philadelphia Inquirer
The Philadelphia Inquirer is a morning daily newspaper that serves the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, metropolitan area of the United States. The newspaper was founded by John R. Walker and John Norvell in June 1829 as The Pennsylvania Inquirer and is the third-oldest surviving daily newspaper in the...
s Tom Moon commented that the album has "some of the genre's most sophisticated sound designs and unconventionally agile rapping", calling it "a major piece of work, the first hard evidence of rap's maturity and a measure of its continuing relevance". Moon commended the group for "using elaborate, sometimes radical imagery" and stated "At a time when most pop music equals fast, thoughtless, responsibility-free escape, Fear preaches, educates, mobilizes and energizes. As its political messages have grown more refined, Public Enemy's insights have grown correspondingly sharper". USA Today
USA Today
USA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003...
s Edna Gundersen called it "a masterpiece of innovation [...] challenging music" and expressed that "PE's pro-black agenda grows more credible and compelling". In his consumer guide for The Village Voice
The Village Voice
The Village Voice is a free weekly newspaper and news and features website in New York City that features investigative articles, analysis of current affairs and culture, arts and music coverage, and events listings for New York City...
, critic Robert Christgau
Robert Christgau
Robert Christgau is an American essayist, music journalist, and self-proclaimed "Dean of American Rock Critics".One of the earliest professional rock critics, Christgau is known for his terse capsule reviews, published since 1969 in his Consumer Guide columns...
gave the album an A- rating, which he later revised to an A. Christgau found the group's lyrics "no more suspect ideologically than they've ever been" and stated "Shtick their rebel music may be, but this is show business, and they still think harder than anybody else working their beat". Peter Watrous of The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
called it "an essential pop album" and found the music complimentary to its lyrics, writing "On their own, the lyrics seen functional. Taken with the music, they bloom with meaning". Simon Reynolds of Melody Maker
Melody Maker
Melody Maker, published in the United Kingdom, was, according to its publisher IPC Media, the world's oldest weekly music newspaper. It was founded in 1926 as a magazine targeted at musicians; in 2000 it was merged into "long-standing rival" New Musical Express.-1950s–1960s:Originally the Melody...
viewed that the album's content epitomizes the group's significance at the time, stating "Public Enemy are important [...] because of the angry questions that seethe in their music, in the very fabric of their sound; the bewilderment and rage that, in this case, have made for one hell of strong, scary album". Chicago Tribune
Chicago Tribune
The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...
critic Greg Kot
Greg Kot
Greg Kot is an American writer and journalist. Since 1990, Kot has been the music critic at the Chicago Tribune, where he has covered popular music and reported on music-related social, political and business issues...
remarked that with the album, "Public Enemy affirms that it is not just a great rap group, but one of the best rock bands on the planet-black or otherwise". Kot analyzed Chuck D's lyrical themes and message throughout the album, writing "It's fear that divides us, he says; understand me better and you won't run. Fear of a Black Planet is about achieving that understanding, but on Public Enemy's terms. In presenting their view of life from an Afro-centric
Afrocentrism
Afrocentrism is cultural ideology mostly limited to the United States, dedicated to the history of Black people a response to global racist attitudes about African people and their historical contributions by revisiting this history with an African cultural and ideological center...
, as opposed to Euro-centric
Eurocentrism
Eurocentrism is the practice of viewing the world from a European perspective and with an implied belief, either consciously or subconsciously, in the preeminence of European culture...
, perspective, P.E. challenges listeners to step into their world".
Impact on popular music
Since its initial reception, Fear of a Black Planet has been recognized by music writers as one of the greatest and most important hip hop albums of all time, as well as a culturally significant work. In a 1991 interview for The Village Voice, Chuck D said of the album's standing in Public Enemy's catalogue, "Fear of a Black Planet was the most successful album we had—not because of all the hype and hysteria. It was a world record. Because of all the different feels and the different textures and the flow it had". He has said of the album in retrospect, "If It Takes a Nation was our 'nation' record, Fear of a Black Planet was our 'world' record". With respect to hip hop music, the album was important in the field of sampling, as copyright laywers took notice and such a sample-heavy work would not be cost effective in the future. Chuck D later said of its sampling issues, "We got sued for everything. We knew that the door on sampling was gonna close". Subsequent use of sampled material, particularly the use of whole songs on top of a beat, by other hip hop artists prompted stricter sampling laws. The album's success with critics and consumers has been viewed as highly contributory to hip hop's mainstream emergence in 1990, dubbed by writer Paul Grein as "the year that rap exploded". In a July 1990 article, Greg Kot compared Public Enemy's influence with the album on hip hop to the impact of Bob DylanBob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...
, George Clinton
George Clinton (musician)
George Clinton is an American singer, songwriter, bandleader, and music producer and the principal architect of P-Funk. He was the mastermind of the bands Parliament and Funkadelic during the 1970s and early 1980s, and launched a solo career in 1981. He has been cited as one of the foremost...
, and Bob Marley
Bob Marley
Robert Nesta "Bob" Marley, OM was a Jamaican singer-songwriter and musician. He was the rhythm guitarist and lead singer for the ska, rocksteady and reggae band Bob Marley & The Wailers...
on each of their respective genres and eras, having "given it legitimacy and authority far beyond its core following". Writing of the group's cultural significance with Fear of a Black Planet at the time, Peter Watrous of The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
commented that Public Enemy "has jerked rap music into an active political sphere" and found the album significance to both hip hop and popular music, stating:
Fear of a Black Planet also epitomized the resurgence in black consciousness among African-American youths at the turn of the 1990s, amid a turbulent social and political zeitgeist with the Bush administration and South African apartheid. With its increasing popularity evident in Public Enemy's work, black consciousness became the prevailing subject matter of many hip hop acts, exemplified by X-Clan
X-Clan
X-Clan is a hip hop group from Brooklyn, New York, originally consisting of Grand Verbalizer Funkin' Lesson Brother J, Professor X The Overseer, Paradise the Architect, and Sugar Shaft the Rhythm Provider...
's cultural nationalism on their debut album To the East, Blackwards
To the East, Blackwards
To The East, Blackwards was the debut album from hip hop group X-Clan.The lyrics heavily promote Afrocentrism, railing against racism and socioeconomic oppression of African-Americans. Brother J serves as the main MC, while Professor X punctuates verses with powerful declarations and recitations of...
, the revolutionary, Black Panther
Black Panther Party
The Black Panther Party wasan African-American revolutionary leftist organization. It was active in the United States from 1966 until 1982....
-minded The Devil Made Me Do It
The Devil Made Me Do It
The Devil Made Me Do It was the 1990 debut album of militant Black nationalist rapper Paris. MTV banned the title track. The 13-track vinyl record version of The Devil Made Me Do It was released in Spring 1988 on Tommy Boy Records. Paris toured the USA and Europe that year to promote the record...
by Paris
Paris (rapper)
Oscar Jackson, Jr. , better known by his stage name Paris is an American rapper from San Francisco, California, known for his highly charged political and socially conscious lyrics...
, and the Five Percenter
The Nation of Gods and Earths
The Nation of Gods and Earths, sometimes referred to as NGE or NOGE, the Five-Percent Nation, or the Five Percenters is an American organization founded in 1964 in the Harlem section of the borough of Manhattan, New York City, by Clarence 13X, a former student of Malcolm X, who left his mosque...
religious nationalism of Poor Righteous Teachers
Poor Righteous Teachers
Poor Righteous Teachers is a hip hop group from Trenton, New Jersey, founded in 1989. Often referred to as PRT by its fans, Poor Righteous Teachers are known as pro-Black conscious hip hop artists, with musical content inspired by the teachings of the Nation of Gods and Earths. Wise Intelligent, as...
' debut Holy Intellect
Holy Intellect
Holy Intellect is the debut album by hip-hop group Poor Righteous Teachers, famous for its pro-Five-Percenter messages. The album includes the hip-hop classic "Rock Dis Funky Joint", which sampled "Slippin' Into Darkness" by War, a 1970s funk band....
. Music author Marcus Reeves wrote of the album's thematic impact, "For the post-black power generation, black consciousness was now in full effect with many a hip-hop youth, as leather African medallions made popular by rappers like P.E. replaced thick gold chains as the ultimate fashion statement [...] P.E.'s million seller sat at the front of a full-blown black pride resurgence within rap". However, this resurgence shortly became commodified as a trend, while actual awareness within the African-American community was limited and ineffectual to issues such as drug dealing
Illegal drug trade
The illegal drug trade is a global black market, dedicated to cultivation, manufacture, distribution and sale of those substances which are subject to drug prohibition laws. Most jurisdictions prohibit trade, except under license, of many types of drugs by drug prohibition laws.A UN report said the...
and the prevalence of liquor stores in such neighborhoods. Public Enemy responded to this and other deep-rooted problems of Black America on their following album, Apocalypse 91... The Enemy Strikes Black (1991), which featured more critical assessments of African-Americans, denouncing Black drug dealers who donned Afrocentric merchandise, hip hop artists who promoted malt liquor
Malt liquor
Malt liquor is a North American term referring to a type of beer with high alcohol content. In legal statutes, the term often includes any alcoholic beverage above or equal to 5% alcohol by volume made with malted barley. In common parlance, however, it is used for high-alcohol beers made with...
, Black radio stations for lacking significant airplay to hip hop, and even the Africans at the onset of the Atlantic slave trade
Atlantic slave trade
The Atlantic slave trade, also known as the trans-atlantic slave trade, refers to the trade in slaves that took place across the Atlantic ocean from the sixteenth through to the nineteenth centuries...
for lacking unity.
Retrospect
Music critic Alex Ross cites Fear of a Black Planet as one of "the most densely packed sonic assemblageAssemblage (composition)
Assemblage refers to a text "built primarily and explicitly from existing texts in order to solve a writing or communication problem in a new context". The concept was first proposed by Johndan Johnson-Eilola and Stuart Selber in the journal, Computers & Composition, in 2007...
s in musical history". On the significance of its hip hop production
Hip hop production
Hip hop production is the creation of hip hop music. Though the term encompasses all aspects of hip hop music, it's most commonly used to refer to the instrumental, non-lyrical aspects of hip hop. This means that hip hop producers are the instrumentalists involved in a work...
, journalist Kembrew McLeod
Kembrew McLeod
Kembrew McLeod is an American journalist, artist, activist, and professor of Communication Studies at the University of Iowa.He is best known as a performance artist or "media prankster" who filed an application in 1997 to register the phrase "Freedom of Expression" as a trademark in the United...
writes that "Even though the group was working with equipment that was rudimentary by today’s standards, they made the most of the existing technologies, often inventing techniques and workarounds that electronics manufacturers never imagined." In a retrospective review of the album, Allmusic editor Stephen Thomas Erlewine
Stephen Thomas Erlewine
Stephen Thomas Erlewine is a senior editor for Allmusic. He is the author of many artist biographies and record reviews for Allmusic, as well as a freelance writer, occasionally contributing liner notes. He is also frontman and guitarist for the Ann Arbor-based band Who Dat?Erlewine is the nephew...
said that "as a piece of music, this is the best hip-hop has ever had to offer", calling it "a remarkable piece of modern art, a record that ushered in the '90s in a hail of multi-culturalism and kaleidoscopic confusion". In a 1995 review upon the album's reissue, Q gave Fear of a Black Planet five out of five stars and said that it "achieved the near impossible by being every bit as good as its predecessor. The music was Public Enemy's now-familiar scream but was augmented with a percussive tinge that reflected the ever greater Afrocentricity". Peter Relic of Rolling Stone also gave it a five-star rating in the 2004 edition of The New Rolling Stone Album Guide, noting the album as "more varied stylistically and more downtempo [...] but its greatest tracks contain just as much lightning" as the group's It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back.
NME
NME
The New Musical Express is a popular music publication in the United Kingdom, published weekly since March 1952. It started as a music newspaper, and gradually moved toward a magazine format during the 1980s, changing from newsprint in 1998. It was the first British paper to include a singles...
stated in a 1995 issue, "the content remained as astonishingly tough and intelligent as before". Sputnikmusic
Sputnikmusic
Sputnikmusic, or simply Sputnik, is a music website offering music criticism and music news alongside features commonly associated with wiki-style websites...
staff writer Nick Butler commented on its musical significance as a hip hop work, stating "Hip-hop has a habit of moving at such a pace that records date in a matter of years, but Fear Of A Black Planet is utterly timeless. Musically, it's funky, avant-garde, dense, and original [...] Lyrically, it's inspired, intelligent, emotive, and angry as hell [...] Essential, in every sense". Giving it a 10 out of 10 rating, Steve Juon of RapReviews commented that Fear of a Black Planet "rocks like no other album did before it and very few have since. It's inspiring to hear hip-hop done so masterfully, with every cylinder and piston firing in a beautiful symphonious harmony that keeps the audible engine running start to finish with each listen [...] Even though time passes and we all get older, Fear of a Black Planet remains powerfully timeless".
Accolades
Fear of a Black Planet appeared in the top-ten of several critics' year-end album lists of 1990. It was voted the third best album in The Village Voices 1990 Pazz & JopPazz & Jop
The Pazz & Jop critics' poll is a poll of music critics run by The Village Voice newspaper. It is compiled every year from the top ten lists of hundreds of music critics...
critics' poll, and the publication's Robert Christgau ranked it number 10 on his own "Dean's list". The Press-Telegram named it the fifth best album of the year. The Boston Globe
The Boston Globe
The Boston Globe is an American daily newspaper based in Boston, Massachusetts. The Boston Globe has been owned by The New York Times Company since 1993...
ranked it number two and stated "In a banner year for hardcore rap, these bitter maximalist
Maximalism
The term maximalism is sometimes associated with post-modern novels, such as by David Foster Wallace and Thomas Pynchon, where digression, reference, and elaboration of detail occupy a great fraction of the text....
s still dropped the big one, refracting the sound of urban chaos through the dense prism of production team The Bomb Squad". Pittsburgh Press
Pittsburgh Press
The Pittsburgh Press is an online newspaper in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, currently owned and operated by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Historically, it was a major afternoon paper...
writer Peter B. King ranked it third on his list and noted its "dense collage of recycled sounds, provocative lyrics and Chuck D's peerless rapping". Greg Kot of the Chicago Tribune included it on his list of the year's 10 best rock musical recordings and wrote that it "explodes with information, political pronouncements, poetry and passion – it's as dissonant and divisive as the time we live in". USA Today
USA Today
USA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003...
ranked the album number three on its list of best albums of 1990 and commended its "stinging rapidfire essays and sonic booms". Chicago Sun-Times
Chicago Sun-Times
The Chicago Sun-Times is an American daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois. It is the flagship paper of the Sun-Times Media Group.-History:The Chicago Sun-Times is the oldest continuously published daily newspaper in the city...
writer Michael Corcoran included the album on his top albums list and cited Public Enemy as "currently the best rockn roll band in the world", writing "This fierce LP is Ben Gay for white guilt
White guilt
White guilt refers to the concept of individual or collective guilt often said to be felt by some white people for the racist treatment of people of color by whites both historically and presently...
as Chuck D assails the oppression of blacks in no uncertain terms. Besides the angry yet often illuminating messages, this record just plain sounds great". The State named it one of the year's best albums and hailed it as "possibly the boldest and most important rap record ever made. A sonic tour de force". Robert Hilburn of the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
ranked the album number five on his year-end list, noting that it "dissects aspects of the black experience with an energy and vision that illustrates why rap continues to be the most creative genre in pop".
Fear of a Black Planet was nominated for a Grammy Award
Grammy Award
A Grammy Award — or Grammy — is an accolade by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences of the United States to recognize outstanding achievement in the music industry...
for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group
Grammy Award for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group
The Grammy Award for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group was awarded between 1991 and 2011, alongside the Grammy Award for Best Rap Solo Performance. Previously a single award was presented for Best Rap Performance....
, for the 33rd Grammy Awards in 1991. The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
named it the fiftieth-best album of all-time in their 100 Best Albums Ever list, which was voted on by a panel of various artists, critics, and DJs. In 1998, the album was selected as one of The Source
The Source (magazine)
The Source is a United States-based, monthly full-color magazine covering hip-hop music, politics, and culture, founded in 1988. It is the world's second longest running rap periodical, behind United Kingdom-based publication Hip Hop Connection. The Source was founded as a newsletter in 1988...
s 100 Best Rap Albums. The album was ranked number 21 in Spin
Spin (magazine)
Spin is a music magazine founded in 1985 by publisher Bob Guccione Jr.-History:In its early years, the magazine was noted for its broad music coverage with an emphasis on college-oriented rock music and on the ongoing emergence of hip-hop. The magazine was eclectic and bold, if sometimes haphazard...
s "100 Greatest Albums, 1985–2005" publication. Pitchfork Media
Pitchfork Media
Pitchfork Media, usually known simply as Pitchfork or P4k, is a Chicago-based daily Internet publication established in 1995 that is devoted to music criticism and commentary, music news, and artist interviews. Its focus is on underground and independent music, especially indie rock...
named it the seventeenth-best album of the 1990s. It was included in Rolling Stones list of the Essential Recording of the '90s. In 2003, Fear of a Black Planet was ranked number 300 on Rolling Stones list of the 500 greatest albums of all time
The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time
"The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time" is the title of a 2003 special issue of American magazine Rolling Stone, and a related book published in 2005.Related news articles:...
. In 2004, it was one of 50 recordings chosen that year by the Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
to be added to the National Recording Registry
National Recording Registry
The National Recording Registry is a list of sound recordings that "are culturally, historically, or aesthetically important, and/or inform or reflect life in the United States." The registry was established by the National Recording Preservation Act of 2000, which created the National Recording...
, which selects recordings annually that are "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". According to a press release for the 2004 registry, "Fear of a Black Planet brought hip-hop respect from critics, millions of new fans and passionate debate over its political content. The album signaled the coupling of a strongly political message with hip-hop music".
Track listing
All tracks were produced by The Bomb SquadThe Bomb Squad
The Bomb Squad is an American hip hop production team, known for their work with the rap group Public Enemy. The Bomb Squad are noted for their dense, distinct, innovative production style, often utilizing dozens of samples on just one track...
.
| # | Title | Writer(s) | Samples | Length |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | "Contract on the World Love Jam" | Keith Shocklee Keith Shocklee Keith Matthew Boxley , better known as Keith Shocklee or Wizard K-Jee, is an American hip hop producer and DJ. He was an original member of Public Enemy and The Bomb Squad... , Eric Sadler The Bomb Squad The Bomb Squad is an American hip hop production team, known for their work with the rap group Public Enemy. The Bomb Squad are noted for their dense, distinct, innovative production style, often utilizing dozens of samples on just one track... , Carl Ridenhour Chuck D Carlton Douglas Ridenhour , better known by his stage name, Chuck D, is an American rapper, author, and producer. He helped create politically and socially conscious rap music in the mid-1980s as the leader of the rap group Public Enemy.- Early life :Ridenhour was born in Queens, New York... |
|
1:44 |
| 2 | "Brothers Gonna Work It Out" | Shocklee, Sadler, Ridenhour |
Let's Go Crazy "Let's Go Crazy" is a 1984 song by Prince and The Revolution, from the album, Purple Rain. It was the opening track on both the album, and the film Purple Rain. "Let's Go Crazy" is one of Prince's most popular songs, and is almost always a staple for concert performances, often segueing into other... " by Prince Prince (musician) Prince Rogers Nelson , often known simply as Prince, is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and actor. Prince has produced ten platinum albums and thirty Top 40 singles during his career. Prince founded his own recording studio and label; writing, self-producing and playing most, or all, of... Atomic Dog "Atomic Dog" is a song by George Clinton from his 1982 album Computer Games. The track was released as a single in December 1982 and became the P-Funk collective's last to reach #1 on the U.S. R&B Chart... " by George Clinton George Clinton (funk musician) George Clinton is an American singer, songwriter, bandleader, and music producer and the principal architect of P-Funk. He was the mastermind of the bands Parliament and Funkadelic during the 1970s and early 1980s, and launched a solo career in 1981. He has been cited as one of the foremost... Buffalo Gals (Malcolm McLaren song) Buffalo Gals is a hip-hop single released by Malcolm McLaren & the World's Famous Supreme Team as a single in 1982 and on their 1983 album Duck Rock. The song is composed of extensive scratching with calls from square dancing... " by Malcolm McLaren Malcolm McLaren Malcolm Robert Andrew McLaren was an English performer, impresario, self-publicist and manager of the Sex Pistols and the New York Dolls... Roy Ayers Roy Ayers is an American funk, soul, and jazz composer and vibraphone player. Ayers began his career as a post-bop jazz artist, releasing several albums with Atlantic Records, before his tenure at Polydor Records beginning in the 1970s, during which he helped pioneer jazz-funk .- Biography :Ayers... Sing a Simple Song "Sing a Simple Song" is a 1968 song by the soul/rock/funk band Sly & the Family Stone, the b-side to their #1 hit "Everyday People". The song's lyrics, sung in turn by Sly Stone, Freddie Stone, Rose Stone, and Larry Graham, with spoken word sections by Cynthia Robinson, offer a simple solution for... " by Sly & the Family Stone Sly & the Family Stone Sly and the Family Stone were an American rock, funk, and soul band from San Francisco, California. Active from 1966 to 1983, the band was pivotal in the development of soul, funk, and psychedelic music... Dyke & the Blazers Dyke and the Blazers was an influential American funk band led by Arlester Christian . The band was formed in 1965 and recorded until 1971, when Christian was shot dead... Don't Believe the Hype "Don't Believe the Hype" is the second single of Public Enemy's second album, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. The song's lyrics are mostly about the political issues that were current in the U.S. at the time of its release. "Don't Believe the Hype" charted at number 18 on the U.S.... ", and "Rebel Without a Pause Rebel Without a Pause Rebel Without a Pause is a single by hip hop group Public Enemy from their groundbreaking 1988 album, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. The title is a spoof of Rebel Without a Cause, a 1955 drama movie.-History:... " by Public Enemy |
5:07 |
| 3 | "911 Is a Joke 911 Is a Joke "911 Is a Joke" is a 1990 song by American hip hop group Public Enemy, from their third album, Fear of a Black Planet. It was released as a single and became their first Top 40 hit in June 1990, reaching number 34 on the Billboard Hot 100.... " |
William Drayton Flavor Flav William Jonathan Drayton, Jr. , better known by his stage name Flavor Flav, is an American rapper and television personality who rose to prominence as a member of the rap group Public Enemy... , Shocklee, Sadler |
Parliament (band) Parliament was a funk band most prominent during the 1970s. It and its sister act Funkadelic, both led by George Clinton, began the funk music culture of that decade.-History:... Thriller (song) "Thriller" is a song recorded by American recording artist Michael Jackson, composed by Rod Temperton, and produced by Quincy Jones. It is the seventh and final single from his sixth studio album Thriller. It was released on January 23, 1984 by Epic Records... " by Michael Jackson Michael Jackson Michael Joseph Jackson was an American recording artist, entertainer, and businessman. Referred to as the King of Pop, or by his initials MJ, Jackson is recognized as the most successful entertainer of all time by Guinness World Records... Robin Harris Robin Hughes Harris was an American comedian and actor, known for his recurring comic sketch about Bébé's Kids.-Childhood:... Sound Experience Sound Experience was an American funk ensemble, founded at Morgan State College in Baltimore, Maryland in 1970.The group played locally and recorded with producer Stan Watson, recording with him in Philadelphia. They recorded several singles and one full-length album in 1974, Don't Fight the... Eddie Murphy Edward Regan "Eddie" Murphy is an American stand-up comedian, actor, writer, singer, director, and musician.... |
3:17 |
| 4 | "Incident at 66.6 FM" | Shocklee, Sadler, Ridenhour |
Alan Colmes Alan Samuel Colmes is an American radio/television host, liberal political commentator for the Fox News Channel, and blogger. He is the host of The Alan Colmes Show, a nationally syndicated talk-radio show distributed by Fox News Radio that also airs throughout the United States on Fox News Talk... |
1:37 |
| 5 | "Welcome to the Terrordome" | Shocklee, Sadler, Ridenhour |
Kurtis Blow Kurt Walker , better known by his stage name Kurtis Blow, is an American rapper and record producer. He is one of the first commercially successful rappers and the first to sign with a major record label... Gwen Guthrie Gwen Guthrie was an American singer-songwriter, who also sang backing vocals for Aretha Franklin, Billy Joel, Stevie Wonder, and Madonna, among others, and who wrote songs made famous by Ben E. King, and Roberta Flack.... Mikey Dread Michael George Campbell , better known as Mikey Dread, was a Jamaican singer, producer, and broadcaster. He was one of the most influential performers and innovators in reggae music... Jungle Boogie "Jungle Boogie" is a funk song recorded by Kool & the Gang for their 1973 album Wild and Peaceful. It scored number four as a single and became very popular in nightclubs. The song's spoken main vocal was performed by the band's roadie Don Boyce... " by Kool & the Gang Kool & the Gang Kool & the Gang are an American jazz, R&B, soul, and funk group, originally formed as the Jazziacs in Jersey City, New Jersey in 1964.They went through several musical phases during the course of their recording career, starting out with a purist jazz sound, then becoming practitioners of R&B and... Instant Funk Instant Funk were a 1970s disco band, best known for their disco classic, "I Got My Mind Made Up ".-History:Instant Funk came out of New Jersey consisting of Raymond Earl, Scotty Miller and guitarist Kim Miller. The group was then called The Music Machine and they were very successful as a back-up... The Jackson 5 The Jackson 5 , later known as The Jacksons, were an American popular music family group from Gary, Indiana... Psychedelic Shack (song) "Psychedelic Shack" is a 1969 single for the Motown label performed by The Temptations and produced by Norman Whitfield. It became a hit single in 1970.... " by The Temptations The Temptations The Temptations is an American vocal group having achieved fame as one of the most successful acts to record for Motown Records. The group's repertoire has included, at various times during its five-decade career, R&B, doo-wop, funk, disco, soul, and adult contemporary music.Formed in Detroit,... Cold Sweat "Cold Sweat" is a song performed by James Brown and written by his bandleader Alfred "Pee Wee" Ellis. Brown recorded it in May 1967. An edited version of "Cold Sweat" released as a two-part single on King Records was a #1 R&B hit, and reached number seven on the Pop Singles chart... ", "I Got to Move", "Give It Up or Turnit a Loose", "Soul Power, Pts. 1 & 2", "Get Up, Get into It, Get Involved" by James Brown |
5:25 |
| 6 | "Meet the G That Killed Me" | Shocklee, Sadler, Ridenhour | —— | 0:44 |
| 7 | "Pollywanacraka" | Shocklee, Sadler, Ridenhour |
Parliament A parliament is a legislature, especially in those countries whose system of government is based on the Westminster system modeled after that of the United Kingdom. The name is derived from the French , the action of parler : a parlement is a discussion. The term came to mean a meeting at which... Atomic Dog "Atomic Dog" is a song by George Clinton from his 1982 album Computer Games. The track was released as a single in December 1982 and became the P-Funk collective's last to reach #1 on the U.S. R&B Chart... " by George Clinton Syl Johnson Syl Johnson is an American blues and soul singer and record producer.-Biography:Born Sylvester Thompson in Holly Springs, Mississippi, United States, Johnson sang and played with blues artists Magic Sam, Billy Boy Arnold, Junior Wells and Howlin' Wolf in the 1950s, before recording with Jimmy Reed... Jungle Boogie "Jungle Boogie" is a funk song recorded by Kool & the Gang for their 1973 album Wild and Peaceful. It scored number four as a single and became very popular in nightclubs. The song's spoken main vocal was performed by the band's roadie Don Boyce... " by Kool & the Gang Zapp (band) Zapp is a soul and funk band formed in 1978 by brothers Roger Troutman, Larry Troutman, Lester Troutman, Terry Troutman, Bobby Glover and Gregory Jackson [Cincinnati Ohio Funk Keyboardist]... Schoolly D Jesse B. Weaver Jr. , better known by the stage name Schoolly D, is an American rapper from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.- Career :... Boogie Down Productions Boogie Down Productions was a hip hop group that was originally composed of KRS-One, D-Nice, and DJ Scott La Rock. DJ Scott La Rock was murdered on August 27, 1987, months after the release of BDP's debut album, Criminal Minded. The name of the group, Boogie Down, derives from a nickname for the... Leon Haywood Otha Leon Haywood is an American funk and soul singer, songwriter and record producer. He is best known for his 1975 hit single "I Want'a Do Something Freaky To You", which has been much sampled by Dr. Dre and others.... DJ Mark the 45 King DJ Mark the 45 King , also known as the 45 King, started DJing in New Jersey in the mid-1980s. The nickname "the 45 King" comes from his ability to make beats using obscure 45 RPM records.-Career:... featuring Lakim Shabazz Lakim Shabazz Lakim Shabazz is a former hip-hop emcee who was one of the founding members of the original version of the Flavor Unit crew. His birth name is Larry Welsh. His stage name refers to the so-called Lost Tribe of Shabazz, which is based on the teachings of Wallace Fard Muhammad... Rufus Thomas Rufus Thomas, Jr. was an American rhythm and blues, funk and soul singer and comedian fromMemphis, Tennessee, who recorded on Sun Records in the... |
3:52 |
| 8 | "Anti-Nigger Machine" | Shocklee, Sadler, Ridenhour |
Malcolm McLaren Malcolm Robert Andrew McLaren was an English performer, impresario, self-publicist and manager of the Sex Pistols and the New York Dolls... Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos "Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos" is a song by the American hip hop group Public Enemy from their second album, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back... " by Public Enemy Esther Williams Esther Jane Williams is a retired American competitive swimmer and MGM movie star.Williams set multiple national and regional swimming records in her late teens as part of the Los Angeles Athletic Club swim team... |
3:17 |
| 9 | "Burn Hollywood Burn" (featuring Ice Cube Ice Cube O'Shea Jackson , better known by his stage name Ice Cube, is an American rapper and actor. He began his career as a member of the hip-hop group C.I.A. and later joined the rap group N.W.A. After leaving N.W.A in December 1989, he built a successful solo career in music, and also as a writer,... & Big Daddy Kane Big Daddy Kane Antonio Hardy better known by his stage name Big Daddy Kane, is an American rapper who started his career in 1986 as a member of the rap group the Juice Crew. He is widely considered to be one of the most influential and skilled MC's in Hip Hop... ) |
O'Shea Jackson, Antonio Hardy, Shocklee, Sadler, Ridenhour |
|
2:47 |
| 10 | "Power to the People" | Shocklee, Sadler, Ridenhour |
Trouble Funk Trouble Funk is an American R&B and funk band from Washington, DC. It helped to popularize that area's local funk subgenre known as go-go. Among the band's well-known songs are the go-go anthem "Hey, Fellas." They released several studio albums including Drop the Bomb, In Times of Trouble, Live,... The J.B.'s The J.B.'s were James Brown's band during the first half of the 1970s. On record the J.B.'s were sometimes billed under various alternate names such as The James Brown Soul Train, Maceo and the Macks, A.A.B.B., The First Family and The Last Word... Theme from Shaft "Theme from Shaft", written and recorded by Isaac Hayes in 1971, is the soul and funk-styled theme song to the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film, Shaft... " by Isaac Hayes Isaac Hayes Isaac Lee Hayes, Jr. was an American songwriter, musician, singer and actor. Hayes was one of the creative influences behind the southern soul music label Stax Records, where he served both as an in-house songwriter and as a record producer, teaming with his partner David Porter during the... The Time (band) The Time is a funk and dance-pop ensemble formed in 1981. They are close Prince associates and arguably the most successful artists who have worked with him.-Prince, Formation and Success:... |
3:50 |
| 11 | "Who Stole the Soul?" | Shocklee, Sadler, Ridenhour |
Think (About It) "Think " is a funk song recorded by Lyn Collins and released as a single on James Brown's People Records in 1972. The recording was produced by Brown and featured instrumental backing from his band The J.B.'s... " by Lyn Collins Stand! (song) "Stand!" is a 1969 song by the soul/rock/funk band Sly & the Family Stone. The song's title and lyrics are a call for its listeners to "stand" up for themselves, their communities, and what they believe in... " by Sly & the Family Stone Bring the Noise "Bring the Noise" is a song by the hip hop group Public Enemy. It was included on the soundtrack of the 1987 film Less Than Zero and was also released as a single that year. It later became the first song on the group's 1988 album It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back... " by Public Enemy A Day in the Life "A Day in the Life" is a song by The Beatles, the final track on the group's 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Credited to Lennon–McCartney, the song comprises distinct segments written independently by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, with orchestral additions... " & "Getting Better Getting Better "Getting Better" is a song written mainly by Paul McCartney, with lyrical contributions from John Lennon . It was recorded by The Beatles for the 1967 album Sgt... " by The Beatles The Beatles The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr... Make It Funky "Make It Funky" is a song recorded by James Brown with The J.B.'s. It was released as a two-part single in 1971, which reached #1 on the U.S. R&B chart and #22 on the U.S. Pop chart.. The song features the band members chanting the song's title and a prominent organ part played by Brown himself... " by James Brown Chuck Brown Chuck Brown is a guitarist and singer who is affectionately called "The Godfather of Go-go". Go-go is a subgenre of funk music developed in and around Washington, D.C. in the mid- and late 1970s... and The Soul Searchers |
3:49 |
| 12 | "Fear of a Black Planet" | Shocklee, Sadler, Ridenhour |
Mountain (band) Mountain is an American hard rock band that formed in Long Island, New York in 1969. Originally comprising vocalist and guitarist Leslie West, bassist Felix Pappalardi and drummer N. D. Smart, the band broke up in 1972 before reuniting in 1974 and remaining active until today... The Blackbyrds The Blackbyrds were an American rhythm and blues and jazz-funk fusion group, formed in Washington, D.C. in 1973.-History:The group was inspired by trumpeter Donald Byrd and featured some of his Howard University students: Kevin Toney , Keith Killgo , Joe Hall , Allan C. Barnes , and Barney Perry... Eddie Murphy Edward Regan "Eddie" Murphy is an American stand-up comedian, actor, writer, singer, director, and musician.... |
3:45 |
| 13 | "Revolutionary Generation" | Shocklee, Sadler, Ridenhour |
Run-D.M.C. Run–D.M.C. was an American hip hop group from Hollis, in the Queens borough of New York City. Founded by Joseph "Run" Simmons, Darryl "D.M.C." McDaniels, and Jason "Jam-Master Jay" Mizell, the group is widely acknowledged as one of the most influential acts in the history of hip hop culture.Run–D.M.C... Baby Huey Baby Huey is a gigantic and naïve duckling cartoon character. He was created by Martin Taras for Paramount Pictures' Famous Studios, and became a Paramount cartoon star during the 1950s. Although created by Famous for its animated cartoons, Huey first appeared in comic-book form in an original... Pass the Dutchie "Pass the Dutchie" was a song recorded by the British group Musical Youth from their 1982 album The Youth of Today. It was a major hit, holding the number one position on the UK singles charts for three weeks in September and October 1982.-Background:... " by Musical Youth Musical Youth Musical Youth are a British reggae band. The group originally formed in 1979 at Duddeston Manor School in Birmingham, UK. They are best remembered for their successful 1982 Grammy-nominated single, "Pass the Dutchie". The group featured two sets of brothers, Kelvin and Michael Grant, plus Junior... Brothers Johnson The Brothers Johnson is a band consisting of American musicians and brothers George aka 'Lightnin' Licks' and Louis E. Johnson aka 'Thunder Thumbs'.-Formation:... Sugar Ray Leonard Sugar Ray Leonard is an American retired professional boxer and occasional actor. He was named Ray Charles Leonard, after his mother's favorite singer, Ray Charles... by E.U. Experience Unlimited Experience Unlimited is a Washington, D.C.-based go-go band that enjoyed its height of popularity in the 1980s and early 1990s. Fronted by lead singer/bassist Gregory "Sugarbear" Eliot, the group has had a fluctuating membership over the years, but they have maintained a fairly loyal following... Double Dee and Steinski Double Dee and Steinski was a duo of hip hop producers, composed of Doug "Double Dee" DiFranco and Steven "Steinski" Stein. They achieved notoriety in the early 1980s for a series of underground hip-hop sample-based collages known as the "Lessons".... The Soul Children The Soul Children was an American vocal group who recorded soul music for Stax Records in the late 1960s and early 1970s. They had three top ten hits on the Billboard R&B chart – "The Sweeter He Is" , "Hearsay" , and "I'll Be The Other Woman" – all of which crossed over to the Hot... |
5:43 |
| 14 | "Can't Do Nuttin' for Ya Man" | Shocklee, Sadler, Ridenhour |
The Jackson Sisters The Jackson Sisters were an American soul and disco family group in the 1970s... Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough" is a single by American recording artist Michael Jackson. Released under Epic Records on July 28, 1979, the song is the first single from Jackson's fifth studio album, entitled Off the Wall. Written by Jackson, it is in the key of B major and in common time... " by Michael Jackson |
2:46 |
| 15 | "Reggie Jax" | Shocklee, Sadler, Ridenhour | —— | 1:35 |
| 16 | "Leave This Off Your Fu*kin Charts" | Norman Rogers Terminator X Norman Rogers is a retired American DJ, best known for his work with rap group Public Enemy, which he left in 1999... |
I Can't Go for That (No Can Do) "I Can't Go for That " is a 1981 song recorded by Daryl Hall and John Oates.It was the fourth number-one hit single of their career on the Billboard Hot 100 and the second hit single from their album Private Eyes... " by Hall & Oates Hall & Oates Hall & Oates are an American musical duo composed of Daryl Hall and John Oates. They achieved their greatest fame in the late 1970s and early to mid-1980s. Both sing and play instruments. They specialized in a fusion of rock and roll and rhythm and blues styles, which they dubbed "rock and soul."... Stop the Violence Movement The Stop the Violence Movement was begun by rapper KRS-One in 1989 in response to violence in the hip hop and African American communities.In 1988, during a concert by Boogie Down Productions and Public Enemy, a young fan was killed in a fight. The killing occurred shortly after Scott La Rock, a... Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five was an influential American hip-hop group formed in the South Bronx of New York City in 1978. Composed of one DJ and five rappers Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five was an influential American hip-hop group formed in the South Bronx of New York City in... Big Daddy Kane Antonio Hardy better known by his stage name Big Daddy Kane, is an American rapper who started his career in 1986 as a member of the rap group the Juice Crew. He is widely considered to be one of the most influential and skilled MC's in Hip Hop... featuring Biz Markie Biz Markie Marcel Theo Hall better known by his stage name, Biz Markie, is an American rapper, beatboxer, DJ, comedian, singer, reality television personality, and commercial spokesperson. He is best known for his single "Just a Friend", an American Top 10 hit in 1989... |
2:31 |
| 17 | "B Side Wins Again" | Shocklee, Sadler, Ridenhour |
Kool & the Gang Kool & the Gang are an American jazz, R&B, soul, and funk group, originally formed as the Jazziacs in Jersey City, New Jersey in 1964.They went through several musical phases during the course of their recording career, starting out with a purist jazz sound, then becoming practitioners of R&B and... |
3:45 |
| 18 | "War at 33⅓" | Shocklee, Sadler, Ridenhour | —— | 2:07 |
| 19 | "Final Count of the Collision Between Us and the Damned" | Shocklee, Sadler, Ridenhour | —— | 0:48 |
| 20 | "Fight the Power Fight the Power "Fight the Power" is a single by American hip hop group Public Enemy. First released on the soundtrack for the film 1989 Do the Right Thing, a different version was released on the group's third studio album, Fear of a Black Planet . The single reached number one on Hot Rap Singles and number 20 on... " |
Shocklee, Sadler, Ridenhour |
Guy (band) Guy are a hip hop, R&B and soul band most closely associated with the new jack swing style of the 1980s and 1990s.-Origins :Guy was formed in Harlem, New York in 1987 by R&B singer-songwriters Aaron Hall, young musician/record producer Teddy Riley and Timmy Gatling... Uriah Heep (band) Uriah Heep are an English rock band formed in London in 1969 and regarded as a seminal classic hard rock act of the 1970s. Uriah Heep's progressive/art rock/heavy metal fusion's distinctive features have always been massive keyboards sound, strong vocal harmonies and David Byron's operatic vocals... Spoonie Gee Spoonie Gee is one of the earliest rap artists, and one of few rap artists to release records in the 1970s. He has been credited with originating the term 'hip hop' and some the themes in his music were precursors of Gangsta rap.... Give It to Me Baby "Give It to Me Baby" is the title of a 1981 song by American R&B / funk singer Rick James. Taken from his album Street Songs, the song charted on the Billboard Hot 100, spending two weeks at #40 in July of 1981. However, the song proved to be more successful with R&B and dance club audiences... " by Rick James Rick James James Ambrose Johnson, Jr. , better known by his stage name Rick James, was an American singer, songwriter, musician and record producer. James was a popular performer in the late 1970s and 1980s, scoring four number-one hits on the U.S. R&B charts performing in the genres of funk and R&B... I Shot the Sheriff "I Shot the Sheriff" is a song written by Bob Marley, told from the point of view of a man who admits to having killed the local sheriff, but claims to be falsely accused of having killed the deputy sheriff. He also claims to have acted in self defense when the sheriff tried to shoot him. The... " by Bob Marley Bob Marley Robert Nesta "Bob" Marley, OM was a Jamaican singer-songwriter and musician. He was the rhythm guitarist and lead singer for the ska, rocksteady and reggae band Bob Marley & The Wailers... I Know You Got Soul (Bobby Byrd song) "I Know You Got Soul" is a song recorded by Bobby Byrd with James Brown's band The J.B.'s. The recording was produced by Brown and released as a single in 1971. It reached #30 on the Billboard R&B chart. It was prominently sampled on the 1987 song of the same name by Eric B... " by Bobby Byrd Bobby Byrd Bobby Byrd born Robert Howard Byrd was an American funk/soul/R&B/gospel musician, songwriter and record producer. He was born in Toccoa, Georgia, and is a 1998 winner of the Rhythm and Blues Foundation's prestigious Pioneer Award... The Dramatics The Dramatics are an American soul music vocal group, formed in Detroit, Michigan in 1962. They are best known for their 1970s hit songs "In the Rain" and "Whatcha See is Whatcha Get", both of which were #1 R&B and Top 10 Pop hits.-Career:The Dramatics originally formed in 1962 recording as the... West Street Mob West Street Mob were a boogie and electro music trio, active between 1981 and 1984, best known for their 1983 song "Break Dance – Electric Boogie". The band comprises Joey Robinson, Jr... Funky President "Funky President " is a funk song by James Brown. Released as a single in 1974, it charted #4 R&B. It also appeared on the album Reality. According to Brown the "funky president" of the song's title was meant to refer to U.S... " and "Funky Drummer Funky drummer "Funky Drummer" is a funk song recorded by James Brown and his band. The recording's drum break, performed by drummer Clyde Stubblefield, is one of the most frequently sampled rhythmic breaks in hip hop and popular music; indeed, it lays a strong claim to being the most sampled recording ever,... " by James Brown Planet Rock (song) "Planet Rock" is a 1982 song by Afrika Bambaataa & the Soulsonic Force. In the background and hooks featured Marvella Murray, Yvette Murray, Melissa Johnson and Sandra Wheeler. Although it was only a minor hit in the US, Canada, and UK, it helped change the foundations of hip-hop and dance music... " by Afrika Bambaataa Afrika Bambaataa Afrika Bambaataa is an American DJ from the South Bronx, New York who was instrumental in the early development of hip hop throughout the 1980s. Afrika Bambaataa is one of the three originators of break-beat deejaying, and is respectfully known as the "Grandfather" and the Amen Ra of Universal... and the Soulsonic Force Soulsonic Force The Soulsonic Force are an American electro-funk and hip-hop ensemble led by Afrika Bambaataa who helped establish hip-hop in the early 1980s with songs such as "Planet Rock"... |
4:42 |
Personnel
Credits for Fear of a Black Planet adapted from liner notes.- Agent Attitude – performer
- Kamarra Alford – assistant engineer
- Jules Allen – photography
- Big Daddy Kane – rapper
- The Bomb Squad – producer
- Mike Bona – engineer, mixing
- Brother James I – performer
- Brother Mike – performer
- Chris Champion – assistant engineer
- Chuck D – arranger, director, producer, rapper, sequencing
- Jody Clay – assistant engineer
- Tom Conway – assistant engineer
- The Drawing Board – art direction
- Paul Eulin – engineer, mixing
- Flavor Flav – rapper
- Dave Harrington – assistant engineer
- Robin Holland – photography
- Rod Hui – engineer, mixing
- Ice Cube – rapper
- James Bomb – performer
- B.E. Johnson – cover art
- Steve Loeb – engineer
- Branford Marsalis – saxophone
- Dave Patillo – assistant engineer
- Alan "JJ/Scott" Plotkin – engineer, mixing, vocals
- Professor Griff – rapper
- Eric "Vietnam" Sadler – arranger, director, programming, producer, sequencing
- Nick Sansano – engineer, mixing
- Paul Shabazz – programming
- Christopher Shaw – engineer, mixing
- Hank Shocklee – arranger, director, producer, sequencing
- Keith Shocklee – arranger, director, producer, sequencing
- James Staub – assistant engineer
- Terminator X – scratching
- Ashman Walcott – photography
- Howie Weinberg – mastering
- Russell Winter – photography
- Wizard K-Jee – scratching
- Dan Wood – engineer, mixing
- Kirk Yano – engineer
Album
| Chart (1990) | Peak position |
|---|---|
| UK Albums Chart UK Albums Chart The UK Albums Chart is a list of albums ranked by physical and digital sales in the United Kingdom. It is compiled every week by The Official Charts Company and broadcast on a Sunday on BBC Radio 1 , and published in Music Week magazine and on the OCC website .To qualify for the UK albums chart... |
4 |
| US Billboard Top Pop Albums Billboard 200 The Billboard 200 is a ranking of the 200 highest-selling music albums and EPs in the United States, published weekly by Billboard magazine. It is frequently used to convey the popularity of an artist or groups of artists... |
10 |
| US Billboard Top Black Albums | 3 |
Certifications
Singles
| Year | Single | Chart | Peak position |
|||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1989 | "Fight the Power Fight the Power "Fight the Power" is a single by American hip hop group Public Enemy. First released on the soundtrack for the film 1989 Do the Right Thing, a different version was released on the group's third studio album, Fear of a Black Planet . The single reached number one on Hot Rap Singles and number 20 on... " |
Hot Rap Singles | 1 | |||
| 1990 | "911 Is a Joke 911 Is a Joke "911 Is a Joke" is a 1990 song by American hip hop group Public Enemy, from their third album, Fear of a Black Planet. It was released as a single and became their first Top 40 hit in June 1990, reaching number 34 on the Billboard Hot 100.... " |
Hot Rap Singles | 1 | |||
| Hot Black Singles | 15 | |||||
| Hot Dance Music/Maxi-Singles Sales | 26 | |||||
| Hot 100 (Sales) | 34* | |||||
| "Brothers Gonna Work It Out" | Hot Rap Singles | 22 | ||||
| Hot Black Singles | 20 | |||||
| Hot Dance Music/Club Play | 31 | |||||
| Hot Dance Music/Maxi-Singles Sales | 36 | |||||
| "Welcome to the Terrordome" | Hot Rap Singles | 3 | ||||
| Hot Black Singles | 15 | |||||
| Hot Dance Music/Club Play | 49 | |||||
| Hot Dance Music/Maxi-Singles Sales | 8 | |||||
| 1991 | "Can't Do Nuttin' for Ya Man" | Hot Rap Singles | 11 | |||
| "" denotes first sales only Hot 100 single. | ||||||
See also
- The 500 Greatest Albums of All TimeThe 500 Greatest Albums of All Time"The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time" is the title of a 2003 special issue of American magazine Rolling Stone, and a related book published in 2005.Related news articles:...
- Assemblage (composition)Assemblage (composition)Assemblage refers to a text "built primarily and explicitly from existing texts in order to solve a writing or communication problem in a new context". The concept was first proposed by Johndan Johnson-Eilola and Stuart Selber in the journal, Computers & Composition, in 2007...
- East Coast hip hopEast Coast hip hopEast Coast hip hop is a regional subgenre of hip hop music that originated in New York City, USA during the 1970s. Hip hop is recognized to have originated and evolved first in the East Coast...
- Hip hop productionHip hop productionHip hop production is the creation of hip hop music. Though the term encompasses all aspects of hip hop music, it's most commonly used to refer to the instrumental, non-lyrical aspects of hip hop. This means that hip hop producers are the instrumentalists involved in a work...
- Music and politicsMusic and politicsThe connection between music and politics, particularly political expression in music, has been seen in many cultures. Although music influences political movements and rituals, it is not clear how or even if, general audiences relate music on a political level...
- Political hip hopPolitical hip hopPolitical hip hop is a sub-genre of hip hop music that developed in the 1980s. Inspired by 1970s political preachers such as The Last Poets and Gil Scott-Heron, Public Enemy were the first political hip hop group...
External links
- Fear of a Black Planet at DiscogsDiscogsDiscogs, short for discographies, is a website and database of information about audio recordings, including commercial releases, promotional releases, and bootleg or off-label releases. The Discogs servers, currently hosted under the domain name discogs.com, are owned by Zink Media, Inc., and are...
- Fear of a Black Planet at AcclaimedMusic
- 'Radical' Rap: Of Pride and Prejudice by The New York TimesThe New York TimesThe New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...