No. 497: Yo! Bum Rush the Show

Band: Public Enemy
Album: Yo! Bum Rush the Show
Why Rolling Stone gets it right: Public Enemy's debut is a product of its times. It features some young, angry men practicing hip hop in a great way. It's not as solid as the group's later work, but it remains excellent.
Why Rolling Stone gets it wrong: Again, it's a dated record.
Best song: "Timebomb" is great.
Worst song: "Too Much Posse" is what happens when you give Flavor Flav a mic. This is a bad thing.
Is it awesome?: It's not totally awesome, but it's the precursor to something awesome.

As with almost all debut albums, "Yo! Bum Rush the Show" portends the general sound that Public Enemy would later perfect on albums like "It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back" and "Fear of a Black Planet." Chuck D's low rap and the Bomb Squad's production flow through the album.

With that said, the record is also a product of its time and its producer. Rick Rubin executive produced the album, despite actual production from the Bomb Squad. The record echoes LL Cool J's "Radio" in its old school feel. With all that said, the Bomb Squad's attachment to the samples and scratches of Terminator X. Some of the record sounds old, there's no way around it. "Public Enemy No. 1" is ridiculous and "Miuzi Weighs a Ton" is to gangsta rap as cro-magnon man is to a modern human.

Here's the other thing, Flavor Flav's prescence on the record is a little grating. "Too Much Posse" is a Flav track and he's awkward and stupid, rhyming "cool" with "fool" at one point. Flavor Flav is, in and of himself, a total joke. The hype man is one of the worst inventions in popular music. The Dickipedia entry on him sheds light on the silliness within, so I'll just link to it.

Again, I look to PE as the group many liberal boomers see as the extension of black people they knew from the 60s and 70s: The Panthers. They're mad, but they're old now, so they're harmless.

No. 300: Fear of a Black Planet

Band: Public Enemy
Album: Fear of a Black Planet
Why Rolling Stone gets it right: P.E.'s third album shows the group at its peak. The Bomb Squad's production is more complex and eschews the easy old-school hip hop traditions by layering more sounds and Chuck D's writing became more pointed and political
Why Rolling Stone gets it wrong: I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the Professor Griff mess and the abject homophobia of "Meet the G That Killed Me."
Best song: Well, obviously, "Fight the Power" is the highlight of the album and, possibly, the band's entire repertoire.
Worst song: "Can't Do Nuttin' for Ya Man" isn't all that good.
Is it awesome?: Sure.

I've addressed this issue before, but it bears repeating. Public Enemy is an example of the tyranny of boomer thought. PE is a group that looked like the Black Panthers and sang about racism.

And this album furthers that cause. "Fight the Power" is the band's highlight, containing probably the best sneered lyric on a rap record:

Cause I'm black and I'm proud
I'm ready and hyped plus I'm amped
Most of my heroes don't appear on no stamp

"Fight the Power" also has the famous "Motherfuck him and John Wayne," a classic Flavor Flav interjection and one that reflects the group's general ideal.

The album isn't just "Fight the Power." "Burn Hollywood Burn" -- with guest spots form Ice Cube and Big Daddy Kane -- is a scathing attack on the movie system that has ignored and insulted black culture from the time of "Birth of a Nation." "911 is a Joke" is Flavor Flav's best recorded moment -- by far -- and was oddly prescient, as years later 9111 responders in Phildelphia left a beating victim die on the street.

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As someone of Jewish background, I have to address the Professor Griff mess and the subsequent lyrics on "Welcome to the Terrordome."

At the risk of sounding like a total jerk, classic anti-semitism is born out of jealousy. People envy Jews in the world because Jews -- for whatever reason -- have been more successful than they (we, I guess) should be. Certainly in the United States, Jewish people have gained more power than their (our) numbers should indicate. There simply aren't a lot of Jewish people in the U.S. -- According to the census, Jews make up approximately 1.5% of the US population. But, you can't turn on the TV without seeing Jews everywhere. Jewish people occupy top spots in entertainment, academia, government and high finance; All powerful and/or highly visible positions in American life. This level of success doesn't reflect the sheer numbers, so, inevitably, people get jealous.

So, when someone like Louis Farrakhan goes on about Jews being evil and scheming and whatever, I look at it as pure envy.

I can understand some stereotypes and why people believe them. If someone says "Jews are greedy" or "Jews are cheap," that makes some level of sense in the same way stereotypes of other groups make sense. They're simple prejudices, no different than the classic "Group X is lazy" or "Group Y is greasy."

But, when Professor Griff says "The Jews are wicked. And we can prove this" and that Jews are responsible for "the majority of wickedness that goes on across the globe..." It reflects the old European (and current Middle Eastern, by the way) idea that Jews have a secret cabal that runs global finance or the world Zionist government.

Each is patently ridiculous is only because the amount of coordination to achieve any of those things -- especially in a pre-Internet world, as most of those stereotypes come from the pre-Internet days -- is so large that no one could pull it off. It would have to involve help from many non-Jews (heads of state and the like) that it's patently ridiculous.

Honestly, here's the secret about Jews in America: Jews in America are normal Americans. Totally normal. Jews aren't evil, scheming or malevolent. Jews want to have a good life and raise children with their values. Just like every other American. Jewish culture is such that education is important and the history of Judaism in Europe mostly thrust the banking profession on European Jews in the Middle Ages. Trust me. It was no conspiracy.

America Jews like to scream (to other Jews) that the sky is falling in regards to assimilation into American culture. They write books like "The Vanishing Jew," arguing that intermarriage and assimilation is killing Judaism.

This argument is all good and well, but this change was long coming. Jews are the last European people to assimilate in America and remain, probably, the most exclusive European group. Two hundred years ago, Dutch-Americans only married Dutch-Americans and Anglo-Americans only married Anglo-Americas, but they eventually started to intermarry. One hundred years ago, Irish-Americans only married within their communities and Italian-Americans did the same. Jews are the only group that hasn't assimilated totally.

Any Facebook member can see the bizarre amount of groups populated by young(ish) Jews. A ridiculously attractive high school classmate of mine is in, I believe, 10 different Judeocentric groups. I assume there are many more.

So, my point is this: It's not just people like my mother and Alan Dershowitz -- boomers both -- who believe Judaism needs to be preserved by not intermarrying and proclaiming your Jewishness all the time. Judaism is insular and has been for a long time.

(For the record, I despise this stuff. I don't believe in god; Jewish, Christian or otherwise. I'm ambivalent towards the issues in the former Judea. I basically think everyone is crazy over there. I'm actually something of an anti-semite myself, socially, as I prefer not to hang with Jews -- they're always into that stuff. I have several close Jewish friends, but I prefer the insular community of indie rock hipsters and video game idiots to the Jewish community.)

People like Louis Farrakhan see this and, I believe, get jealous. Because these people -- not secretive, by any means as this is not a Mason situation -- have achieved success without becoming something they're not, people like Farrakhan think something is amiss. It isn't.

So... we end up with lyrics like this:

Crucifixion ain't no fiction
So-called chosen frozen
Apology made to whoever pleases
Still they got me like Jesus

It's all good and well, but that's just hateful. "Welcome to the Terrordome" is a great song in a lot of ways, but that and the "Rabs on the rag" line are just awful. There's no way around it.

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The anti-semitism obviously affects me, but the record remains a classic. It's probably not as good as RS makes it out to be -- PE is this dream hip hop group -- but it's still a quality record, reflecting a period in history that needs to be noted.

No. 48: It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back

Band: Public Enemy
Album: It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back
Why Rolling Stone gets it right: At the cusp of hip hop's huge surge in popularity, Public Enemy made socially conscious rap music. It was angry, smart and catchy and has been copied by many "backpack" hip hop artists.
Why Rolling Stone gets it wrong: You could make an argument that it shouldn't be the highest-ranking hip hop record on the list.
Best song: "Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos" and "Bring The Noise" are the standout tracks.
Worst song: "She Watch Channel Zero?!" isn't very good.
Is it awesome?: Yes.

Let me say this first: "It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back" is a wonderful album. It's a frenzied time capsule of mid-80s hip hop and is incredibly influential. Taking the musical influence of Run-DMC (the concept of "rap group as rock band" is huge here) and the sociopolitical/style influence from the Black Panthers, PE made a record that doubled as a phenomenon.

"Bring The Noise" is a look into this. The rapid-fire production and the give/take of Chuck D and Flavor Flav works the revolutionary lyrics ("Follow for now, power of the people, say/Make a miracle, d, pump the lyrical/Black is back, all in, were gonna win/Check it out, yeah yall, here we go again") nearly perfectly.

But...

Public Enemy is the most-represented hip hop group or artist on the list. They have three records on here and are the highest-ranked hip hop group on the list. This, of course, speaks to the tyranny of the boomer ideals.

Hip hop is underrepresented on the list. Three of the high-ranking artists with more than one record on the list are Run-DMC, Eminem and Public Enemy. Each makes sense to the boomer as being important in their little boomer minds.

Run-DMC were the first superstar hip hop group, taking the mantle from Grandmaster Flash and Sugarhill Gang. As well, their biggest success is probably their recording "Walk This Way" with Aerosmith, a white rock and roll band.

Eminem is pretty self-explanatory, in that he's been the great white hope for hip hop since his first record. It helps that he's hugely talented (he is) and that he's more introspective than your average rapper. He's certainly one of the more talented rappers around, but he's also not the most talented (Tupac, B.I.G., Nas, etc.).

Public Enemy fits the boomer ideal in a different way. Unlike Run-DMC (inoffensive because they did records about shoes) or Enimem (inoffensive because of his skin tone). The last thing PE did was be inoffensive (backing Farrakhan is hardly inoffensive), but they also were the most "black power" of any really popular rap groups. Again, because they took a lot of their styles (specifically, the SW1s) from the Black Panthers, I think the boomers wo made the list liken PE to what they think black artists should be. PE fits the profile of a modern musical Black Panther group and that's very attractive to the boomers, at least fifteen years later.

Whereas a lot of hip hop artists are more interested in (what the boomers see as) violence for violence's sake, bling and partying, PE was a serious, scary group of young black men. This is what boomers think rap music should be.

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It's still a great record. I'm not sure that it's the best hip hop record of all time, or the most influential.