![]() ![]() The following year, Public Enemy released their greatest contribution to hip-hop: “Fight the Power”, a raucous anthem of Black angst-from the soundtrack of Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing-that became an inextricable part of America’s language of protest. An Afrocentric, media-skeptic ideology wasn't exactly welcome in the mainstream, but their confrontational approach proved impossible to ignore: first came PE’s aptly titled 1987 debut Yo! Bum Rush the Show, and then 1988’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, a masterpiece of bleakly clanging beats and uncompromisingly radical lyrics. ![]() The crew: Chuck D, whose booming voice and convictive rhymes made him a civil rights leader on wax Flava Flav, the flamboyant hype man “Minister of Information” Professor Griff their surgical DJ, Terminator X and The Bomb Squad, a production crew whose layered, chaotic soundscapes matched the havoc of the crack- and racism-plagued era. Formed around a preexisting DJ crew in the early ’80s, they earned a rep for expanding minds with the trend-setting college radio Super Spectrum City Mix Show before catching Rick Rubin’s ear and signing to a then-building Def Jam. The Long Island group built the foundation for politically charged, pro-Black rap while simultaneously demolishing the sonic status quo with an artfully noisy, experimental sound-in short, they completely revolutionised the genre. No act embodies the rebelliousness and ferocity of hip-hop like Public Enemy. ![]()
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