It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back is the second studio album by American hip hop group Public Enemy, released on June 28, 1988, by Def Jam Recordings and Columbia Records. It was recorded from 1987 to 1988 in sessions at Chung King Studios, Greene St. Recording, and Sabella Studios in New York.
Noting the enthusiastic response toward their live shows, Public Enemy intended to make the album's music at a higher tempo than their 1987 debut Yo! Bum Rush the Show for performance purposes. The group also set out to create the hip hop equivalent of Marvin Gaye's What's Going On (1971), an album noted for its strong social commentary. Through their production team the Bomb Squad, Public Enemy introduced a densely aggressive sound influenced by free jazz, heavy funk, and musique concrète as a backdrop for lead rapper Chuck D, who employed sociopolitical rhetoric, revolutionary attitudes, and dense vocabulary in his performances.
It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back charted for 47 weeks on the US Billboard 200, peaking at number 42, and was certified Platinum by the RIAA in 1989. The album received widespread acclaim from critics, who praised its production techniques and Chuck D's socially and politically charged lyricism. It also appeared on many publications' year-end top album lists for 1988 and was the runaway choice as the best album of 1988 in The Village Voices Pazz & Jop critics' poll, a poll of the leading music critics in the US.
Since its initial reception, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back has been regarded by music writers and publications as one of the greatest and most influential albums of all time. In 2000, it was voted number 92 in Colin Larkin's book All Time Top 1000 Albums, and in 2003, it was ranked number 48 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time, the highest ranking of all the hip hop albums on the list, and the only one acknowledged in the top 100. In the 2020 version of the same list, the album was ranked number 15, while other hip-hop albums moved into the top 100.
Background
Public Enemy's 1987 debut album Yo! Bum Rush the Show, while acclaimed by hip hop critics and aficionados, had gone ignored for the most part by the rock and R&B mainstream, selling only 300,000 copies, which was relatively low by the high-selling standards of other Def Jam recording artists such as LL Cool J and Beastie Boys at the time. However, the group continued to tour and record tirelessly. "On the day that Yo! Bum Rush the Show was released [in the spring of 1987], we was already in the trenches recording Nation of Millions," stated lead MC Chuck D.Coleman (2007), p. 352.
With It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, the group set out to make what they considered to be the hip hop equivalent to Marvin Gaye's What's Going On, an album noted for its strong social commentary.Myrie (2008), p. 102. As said by Chuck, "our mission was to kill the 'Cold Gettin' Dumb' stuff and really address some situations." In order to ensure that their live shows would be as exciting as those they played in London and Philadelphia, the group decided that the music on Nation of Millions would have to be faster than that found on Yo! Bum Rush the Show.Myrie (2008), p. 106. "Years of saved-up ideas," noted Chuck, "were compiled into one focused aural missile."Mojo, #21, August 1995
Recording
Public Enemy began making the album at Chung King Studios in Manhattan but ran into conflicts with engineers prejudiced against hip hop acts.Myrie (2008), p. 101. The group resumed recording at Greene St. Recording where they were more comfortable. Initially, the engineers at Greene Street were also apprehensive about the group but eventually grew to respect their work ethic and seriousness about the recording process. Recorded under the working title Countdown to Armageddon, the group ultimately decided on It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back instead, a line from their first album's song "Raise the Roof".Coleman (2007), p. 353. The material was recorded in 30 days for an estimated $25,000 in recording costs,Charnas, Dan. "Respect : Making Noise". Scratch (July/August 2005): pg. 120. due to an extensive amount of preproduction by the group at their Long Island studio. The album was completed in six weeks. "It was aggressive, race-against-the-clock teamwork, taking chances in sound," recalled Chuck D.
Rather than touring with the rest of the group, Eric "Vietnam" Sadler and Hank Shocklee would stay in the studio and work on material for the Nation of Millions album, so that the music was ready when Chuck D and Flavor Flav returned from tour. When the group began planning the second album, the songs "Bring the Noise", "Don't Believe the Hype", and "Rebel Without a Pause" had already been completed. The latter track was recorded during the group's 1987 Def Jam tour, and the lyrics were written by Chuck D in one day spent secluded at his home.Myrie (2008), pp. 83–84. Instead of looping the break from James Brown's "Funky Drummer", a commonly used breakbeat in hip hop, "Rebel Without a Pause" had Flavor Flav play the beat on the drum machine continuously for the track's duration of five minutes and two seconds. Chuck D later said of his contribution to the track, "Flavor's timing helped create almost like a band rhythm". Terminator X, the group's DJ/turntablist, also incorporated a significant element to the track, the renowned transformer scratch, towards its end. Named for its similarity to the sound made by the Autobots in The Transformers, the scratch was developed by DJ Spinbad and popularized by DJ Jazzy Jeff and Cash Money, and Terminator X had honed his take on the scratch on tour. The group was satisfied with its sound after having removed the bass from his section of the track.
According to Chuck D, Hank Shocklee made the last call when songs were completed. "Hank would come up with the final mix because he was the sound master... Hank is the Phil Spector of hip-hop. He was way ahead of his time, because he dared to challenge the odds in sound." This was also one of the details which Chuck felt to be unique to the time and recording of the album. "Once hip-hop became corporate, they took the daredevil out of the artistry. But being a daredevil was what Hank brought to the table." It was decided amongst the group that the album should be exactly one hour long, thirty minutes on each side. At the time, audio cassettes were more popular than CDs and the group did not want listeners having to hear dead air for a long time after one-half of the album was finished.Myrie (2008), p. 104. The two sides of the album were originally the other way around, the album beginning with "Show Em Whatcha Got" which leads into "She Watch Channel Zero?!". This instead became the start of side two or the "Black Side". Hank Shocklee decided to flip the sides just before the mastering of the album and start the record with Dave Pearce introducing the group during their first tour of England.
Music and lyrics Under Hank Shocklee's direction, the Bomb Squad, the group's production team, began to develop a dense and chaotic production style that relied on found sounds and avant-garde noise as much as it did on old-school funk. Along with a varied selection of sampled elements, the tracks feature a greater tempo than those of the group's contemporaries. Music critic Robert Christgau noted these elements and wrote that the Bomb Squad "juice post-Coleman/Coltrane ear-wrench with the kind of furious momentum harmolodic funk has never dared: the shit never stops abrading and exploding".Christgau, Robert. "Consumer Guide: It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back ". The Village Voice: September 27, 1988. Archived from the original on 2009-12-06. Note: Christgau revised original rating of (A) to (A+). As with the group's live performances, Flavor Flav supported Chuck D's politically charged lyrics with "hype man" vocals and surrealistic lyrics on the album.Hess, Mickey, 2007, Icons of Hip Hop: An Encyclopedia of the Movement, Music, and Culture, Greenwood Publishing Group, p. 176.
On the album's content, music journalist Peter Shapiro wrote "Droning feedback, occasional shards of rock guitar, and James Brown horn samples distorted into discordant shrieks back the political rhetoric of lead rapper Chuck D and the surreality of Flavor Flav".Shapiro, pp. 304–306 Ethnomathematics author Ron Eglash interpreted the album's style and production to be "massively interconnected political and sonic content", writing that "[the Bomb Squad] navigated the ambiguity between the philosophies of sound and voice. Public Enemy's sound demonstrated an integration of lyrical content, vocal tone, sample density and layering, scratch deconstruction, and sheer velocity that rap music has never been able to recapture, and that hip-hop DJs and producers are still mining for gems".Eglash (2004), p. 130.
In an interview with the New York Daily News, Shocklee noted that the album's dynamic sound was inspired by Chuck D's rapping prowess, stating "Chuck's a powerful rapper. We wanted to make something that could sonically stand up to him". Of his own contributions to its production, Shocklee cited himself as being the arranger and noted that he had "no interest in linear songs". When using records for sampling, Shocklee stated that he'd sometimes put them on the ground and stomp on them if they sounded too "clean."
Hank referred to Chuck D as being the person who would find all the vocal samples, Eric Sadler as "the one with the musical talent," and noted that his brother, Keith Shocklee, "knew a lot of the breakbeats and was the sound-effects master." Shocklee's sentiments were reinforced by Chuck D while explaining the group's working methods during production. "Eric was the musician, Hank was the antimusician. Eric did a lot of the [drum] programming, [Hank's brother] Keith was the guy who would bring in the feel." For his contributions to the production side, Chuck stated that he "would scour for vocal samples all over the Earth. I would name a song, tag it, and get the vocal samples." Chuck D also noted the productiveness of Sadler and Shocklee's differing approaches to the creative process. "The friction between Hank and Eric worked very well. Hank would put a twist on Eric's musicianship and Eric's musicianship would put a twist on Hank."
Some production mistakes were kept for the album. The breakdown in "Bring the Noise" in which the kick-drum sample from James Brown's "Funky Drummer" plays solo was a mistake. Apparently, the wrong sequence came up in the SP1200 sampler and Shocklee decided not only to keep it but to have Chuck rewrite his rhyme to fit the pattern. The album itself was mixed with no automation, instead being recorded on analog tape and later painstakingly mixed by hand. This is a significant fact due to its nature as being one of the most intricate albums of digitally sampled music. Asked years later if replicating the number of samples used on the album would be possible (due to increased clearance costs for copyrighted material), Hank Shocklee said while possible, it would be far more expensive.
Songs
Throughout the album, Chuck D delivers narratives that are characterized by black nationalist rhetoric and regard topics such as self-empowerment for African Americans, critiques of white supremacy, and challenges to exploitation in the music industry.Eglash (2004), p. 131. "Caught, Can We Get a Witness?" directly addresses the issue of sampling in hip hop and copyright violation from a perspective that supports the practice and claims entitlement due to "black ownership of the sounds in the first place".