Track Listing

1. Countdown To Armageddon
2. Bring The Noise
3. Don't Believe The Hype
4. Cold Lampin' With Flavor
5. Terminator X To The Edge Of Panic
6. Mind Terrorist
7. Louder Than A Bomb
8. Caught, Can We Get A Witness?
9. Show 'Em Whatcha Got
10. She Watch Channel Zero?!
11. Night Of The Living Baseheads
12. Black Steel In The Hour Of Chaos
13. Security Of The First World
14. Rebel Without A Pause
15. Prophets Of Rage
16. Party For Your Right To Fight
17. Black Steel In The Hour Of Chaos (Cd-Rom Video)
18. Night Of The Living Baseheads

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5290 in Music
• Released on: 2000-04-03
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Enhanced, Explicit Lyrics
• Dimensions: .22 pounds
• Running time: 68 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
It Takes a Nation of Millions was the sign that hip-hop had exploded like a grenade. A rap record as abrasive, hard-core and eloquent as a Winston Churchill speech, the 1988 disc is one classic track after another: tense, multilayered, harmonically wild music. Chuck D declaims like a master preacher with foil Flavor Flav's voice darting around his. They have got the desperate energy of people fighting for their lives, and everything from their pumped-up rhetoric ("Prophets of Rage") to the group's quasi-paramilitary organisation, to the sirens and sax squeals in nearly every track declares how urgent their mission is. It is a hugely influential album, and it still sounds fresh and frightening after all these years. --Douglas Wolk

CD Description
The title says it all. In 1988, when this album was released, Public Enemy's music cut with a wholly revolutionary edge. Rarely has fear, anger, paranoia and anxiety been so masterfully compressed onto a record's grooves. The Bomb Squad's artistry is the keynote to the hard, lean delivery, while Chuck D's supremely pointed lyrics leave no stone of the blackexperience unturned. It is not comfortable listening, but on tracks such as 'Don't Believe The Hype', 'Night Of The Living Baseheads' and 'Rebel Without A Pause' the listener is left in no doubt that they are facing a fantastically potent force.

Customer Reviews

A TIMELESS CLASSIC
In todays world of multiplatinum, woman clad,bling blinging hiphop there is no album that can match the raw power, agression, storytelling, in yer face attitude that nation of millions can offer. Chuck D and Flavour flav honour Terminator X's flawless production with the verbal onslaught that it deserves. "rebel without a pause" can take a claim to the greatest hiphop track ever written, while being supported by classics like "dont beleive the hype" and "night of the living baseheads". They even sample a gut churning riff from slayers "Angel of Death" for "she watch channel zero. All in all a true masterpiece.

Gansta-rap??? Shut up and listen
What can I say? If only hip-hop wasn't ransacked by gansta (similar thing that happened to grunge after Nevermind) then it would still be an essential music form. This album brims with more politics than 10 Houses of Lords and more funk than Aerosmith on a pub crawl. Countdown To Armageddon announces "This time the revolution will not be televised!" and you believe Chuck too! This track also gives birth to the Manic Street Preachers classic Repeat. The definitive hip-hop track comes next - Bring The Noise. Never has a song overflowed with so much content and brilliance, it is a screamed assault to everything that modern culture stands for and leaves you astounded. Ditto Don't Believe The Hype. So much manifesto and exchanges from Chuck to Flav, it fills me up with revolution. Falva Flav Cold Lampin' is hilarious (don't you just love this dude?), a light hearted interlude from the rhetoric and much appreciated. Not so for Terminator X To The Edge Of Panic: "Right the power is bold, the rhymes are politically cold/And who gives a **** about a Goddamn Grammy?". Fantastic. Mind Terrorist is just an interlude but we get back on the track again with Louder Than A Bomb, a seething attack on the FBI. Caught, Can I Get A Witness?! is another absolutely suberb beast of a funkster that has you singing along "Your singers are spineless/As you sing your senseless songs to the mindless/Your general subject love is minimal/It's sex for a profit". What other bands sing that, please? Another interlude in the form of Show Em Whatcha Got and then She Watch Channel Zero, which actually combines heavy metal riffs in with the verse to great effect - the ultimate moshing track! Night Of The Living Bassheads starts with a Martin Luther King or Malcom X (sorry Chuck, I can't quite remember(blush)) but other than that it's not as ground breaking as the others. After that comes the meanest, darkest track on any album I know, Black Steel In The Hour Of Chaos. It is so biting and true, I just can't praise it enough. Unfortunately there's another interlude after that but it's back to form again with Rebel Without A Pause and Prophets Of Rage. Finally, the sprawling, awe-enspiring Party For Your Right To Fight. The last track to send a shiver down my spine with a mixture of white-hot lyrics and bastardized slap funk. The only hip-hop album worth buying.

Bringing the noise....do believe the hype
Influential albums. Well there is The Velvet Underground and Nico( sold little but every one who heard it formed a band is the popular opinion) Never Mind the Bollocks Here's the Sex Pistols, Nevermind, Revolver Nuggets: Original Artyfacts From the First Psychedelic Era 1965-1968, Shaft: Original Soundtrack. Then there is the 1988 album from Public Enemy :"It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back".
Following on from their debut "Yo! Bum Rush The Show" ,in itself a notable album, this album took politicised rap to a whole new level. Along with N.W.A. ( whose rhetoric is more plainly aggressive, less socio-political and less lyrical) Public Enemy took the anger and disgust, at the way things were, of the original punk movement but allied it to the booming bass heavy rhythms of the burgeoning hop-hop movement. Sonically it's mighty but lyrically Chuck D ( still for my money the best hip hop vocalist) became the most vociferous and erudite commentator on life as part of the perceived social underclass in the U.S.
The now defunct music magazine "Melody Maker" likened listening to this album as "being beaten over the head in four/four time with a skip" and that's not a bad analogy of what it's like at all. Though in good way. Production team "The Bomb Squad" (Hank Shocklee and Carel Ryder) gave the sound a dense quality like all the instruments are coated in layers of code 5 lead and they also utilised up to 80 samples to create a multi-layered sonic palette comparable to a heavy guitar band using multiple overdubs.
The difference being that this music has a inherent funkiness way beyond the reach of most guitar based bands( unless you include a band like Chic) This is an album that could tear up the dance floor while tearing down the social barriers . It is profane, exciting ,visceral,apoplectic,uncompromising and quite brilliant . It takes the funk edge that crept into a lot of post punk music but ratchets the sound all the way up till the needles straining at the leash. It sounds like revolution but is in fact evolution of sorts. Taking the anti-establishment stance of punk and much post punk and putting it in the socio-economic climate for black Americans Public Enemy whip up a riveting cacophony , a righteous storm.
Along with Consolidated( far more liberal but still well worth hearing ) The Disposable Heroes Of Hiphoprisy the Def Jux roster and British rap artists like Fundamental and Blade, Public Enemy are one of the hip-hop bands who still sound fresh and relevant today. They sure do bring the noise. Do believe the hype.