Every now and then you’re listening to music (on your phonograph, obviously) and you hear a song that you haven’t heard in ages. The nostalgia forces you put the whole album on, and, every now and then, you end up listening to this album on repeat for the next week. I present to you…
…Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back.
Now, I’ll admit I never got into PE until my late highschool/early college years, and I was still just in elementary school (or… god… kindergarten) when the group was in its golden years, but this is easily one of my favorite early rap artists. It’s kind of funny, because artists like PE and NWA were always considered too “topical” (or the dreaded “hardcore” label) for little white suburban kids when I was young. Now if you ask most white hipsters what their favorite rap artists are–chances are they’ll name both groups (and they’ll go on to sing Straight Outta Compton without a pause). My guess is it’s because (comparatively) old-school rap has become “safe” for white kids to like now and these names hold an incredible amount of legitimacy for their influence.
Anyways, to get on with the post, I wanted to mention how incredible it is that ITaNoMtHUB (mmmm… acronyms) is still absolutely relevant today. Not lyrically or topically, necessarily, but in its quality as a musical endeavor. Take a look at Bring the Noise. Despite Flav’s antics (which are now even more silly considering his television debut) that thumping bass at the beginning of the song and especially at the beginning of the second verse is WAY ahead of its time (brings to mind the bassline that comes in at the end of the first chorus in Lil Wayne’s aptly named Fuck You from his 2002 album, 500 Degreez or the intro to Clipse’s 2002 club anthem, When the Last Time). My point is that it was quite some time before bass that deep and that aggressive became popular again.
The last two weeks or so, I’ve been listening to ITaNoMtHUB pretty close to non-stop while I’ve been at work marking (oh yeah, I get some pretty funny looks from my Singaporean colleagues when they see me in my cubicle bobbing my head and throwin’ up my hand every time Chuck D shouts “Bass!”).
For more audio/video pleasure, here are two videos of PE putting on a more recent show at the House of Blues: Rebel Without a Pause and Bring the Noise. Some of the best showmanship I’ve seen in a rap group. However, I wish they wouldn’t play the vocals from the audio track behind the live vocals. It cheapens the effect (and they obviously don’t need it).
