The rap legend describes the greatest hip-hop album ever as “a call to arms and a challenge.”
Bum Rush the Show.
But even that bold introduction could not have prepared anyone for what would come next.
‘It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back’ by Public Enemy.Def Jam
Was that something you all were consciously trying to capture on wax?
CHUCK D:Well, our first album,Yo!
Let’s raise the intensity."
Chuck D of Public Enemy.Al Pereira/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
What were some of your biggest influences when you were making this record?
Bob Marley, James Brown.
The first words you hear are from London.
Public Enemy.Suzie Gibbons/Redferns
We also wanted you to know that hip-hop at its best is a live performance.
I think that’s the first two things thatItTakes a Nation…signify.
A: It happened in London.
Chuck D and Flavor Flav of Public Enemy.Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
And B: It was live at a concert that you wasn’t at.
How did that happen?
We made our albums for cassettes because that was our biggest medium.
Chuck D of Public Enemy.Raymond Boyd/Getty Images
We wanted our albums to pretty much transmit in tapes.
They had an A side and a B side.
That was our radio experience.
Chuck D and Flavor Flav of Public Enemy.Raymond Boyd/Getty Images
If you hear two seconds of dead air on the radio, you notice it.
We don’t want no dead air.
It’s such a startling way to start your record, though.
Chuck D of Public Enemy.Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
It was made for live.
So, we don’t bulls—.
What was the process like of incorporating all those vocal samples from speeches all over the album?
Public Enemy.Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
How did you find and catalog them and figure out what would work where?
I cataloged three rooms of records for Spectrum City, our DJ outfit.
My whole job was to conjure up the voices.
Again, we didn’t want any dead air whatsoever.
Even if a record faded and then the next record came in, that was taboo to us.
If anything, that fade better happen and that silence better be a microsecond before the next joint.
So I was filling those spaces up with interstitials that had words in key areas.
At that time, Wattstax was a concert that by 1987 was forgotten.
We didn’t take any of the music.
We took the live event!"
We’ve lost ourselves in the culture of guns.
It’s mass nihilism.
I opened and read it.
It said they were suckers."
That actually might be my favorite lyric ever.
Yeah, that’s a lot of people’s favorite.
In my prime, people gave me credit for being the first out of the blocks.
That came off of the running track.
“Here it is,bam!
And you say, ‘Goddamn!'”
Or “Yes, the rhythm, the rebel!”
How low can you go?"
That became a signature.
It’s also how Berry Gordy did his stuff at Motown.
He said the first 10 seconds better not be playing around.
It starts with the speech, and then you and the beat just jump in so hard.
So we had no other choice but to fill those empty spaces with what we call cram-sampling.
It comes across as carefully orchestrated chaos.
What was the approach you were going for in terms of cramming in all that stuff?
The first thing Hank looked for is a steadiness of the studio.ForYo!
Bum Rush the Show,we used Spectrum City Studios.
The Beastie Boys and Run D.M.C.
‘sRaising Hellhad been recorded there.
Then we recorded bits and pieces of “Bring the Noise” at Sabella Studios.
Hank wanted to have a place to call his own, which became Greene St.
Studio, where Run-D.M.C.
did some initial work.
So all of a sudden, we began using Greene St.
Studio and engineer Rod Hui.
And then, Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore are like, “Oh, come in.
We’re doing a song.”
That’s how I did my vocals on “Kool Thing.”
That made a lot of waves in D.C. We’re a go-go town, Chuck.
We came from Philadelphia, which was a raucous takeover, changing-of-the-guard pop in of gig.
And then when we played D.C., we got no response because it was a whole different city.
I just said, “F— go-go.
What the f— are y’all doing?”
Love and hate’s the same emotion."
And then you said, “I’m not talking to you white people.
you’ve got the option to sit down.”
Which is what I then did.
My answer was, “I’m talking to Black.”
I had white folks all around me.
I grew up in Long Island.
I went to college and university.
I went to a white high school.
Def Jam was white.
You know what I’m saying?
Rick was from Long Island too.
White folks are getting messages from everywhere."
I mean, the biggest thing is that we knew everything about white America.
They knew nothing about us.
I knew everything about white America.
That’s what that was.
We were asked to challenge Black people.
We were like, “All right.
Your white friend knows more about you than you know yourself, so you’re volunteering yourself to slavery.
Once somebody knows more about you than you know, what are you doing?”
Really,It Takes a Nation…was a call to arms and a challenge.
How did you settle onIt Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Backas the album title?
It was actually a lyric in “Raise the Roof,” which was onYo!
Bum Rush the Show.
The original title of the album was going to beCountdown to Armageddon.
So I had the article and I come back to our headquarters.
If you are going to use something long, why not?"
“Countdown to Armageddon” then became the name of a track on the album.
And the cover art and photo by Glen E. Friedman are so arresting no pun intended.
And then by the third album [Fear of a Black Planet], no group at all.
If the group had eight people on it, everybody had to be on it.
Anybody left out, then it’s f—ed up.
Hank railed against that.
The jail shot was in midtown Manhattan.
It was cold up in there.
That camera roll ended up being iconic in itself.
But yeah, we shot it to make those visual statements.
Any thoughts on this album’s themes in terms of where we stand today, 35 years later?
“Don’t Believe the Hype” actually fits right now.
We’re talking about challenging misinformation.
I mean, the “beat is for Sonny Bono and Yoko Ono and Run-D.M.C.
I actually haven’t heard the album in a while.
Maybe one day this year I’ll listen to it.
