Public Enemy

It's been almost two years since Public Enemy released It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold
Us Back – two long, hot years filled with controversies over Tawana Brawley, Yusuf
Hawkins, Willie Horton, Do the Right Thing and rap's breakthrough on the pop charts. That
doesn't even include Public Enemy's own crisis, which saw the group pitted against its
"minister of information" – the loudmouthed Professor Griff – and the Jewish co... More >

All preemptive strikes to the contrary, this is a much better record than there was any reason to expect under the circumstances. It's not unusually inflated or self-involved, though its brutal pace does wear down eventually, it's got a sense of humor, not just from a Flav who keeps figuring stuff out, but from Chuck, whose "Pollywanacraka" message and voice--people keep bringing in Barry White or Isaac Hayes, but he's playing the pedagogue, not the love man, maybe some Reverend Ike figure--is the album's most surprising moment. And it's no more suspect ideologically than they've ever been, with the anti-Semitic provocation of "Terrordome" and the homophobic etiology of "Meet the G That Killed Me," both objectionable and neither one as heinous or as explicit as it's made out to be, countered somewhat by a clumsy attempt at a pro-woman slant and the spectacularly sure-footed rush of "Terrordome" itself. Shtick their rebel music may be, but this is show business, and they still think harder than anybody else working their beat. (Grade: A)