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: #4254 in Music
• Released on: 2000-04-03
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Enhanced, Explicit Lyrics
• 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.

Influential Hip-Hop
The original political rap album. Released way back in 1988, it turned rap on it's head. Between them, Public Enemy and N.W.A tore up the east and west coasts of America respectively, with their devastating back beats and "funky-ass basslines" they brought rap into the mainstream for ever. Where Run DMC had started, Public Enemy and N.W.A carried on the tradition in fine form, evolving into world beating (and baiting) rap acts, it's Public Enemy though that I am talking about. Their debut album, 'Yo! Bumrush the Show' was a promising start and 'It Takes a Nation...' took things a step further, an absolutely astounding album that will blow anyone away. Starting with their live intro of an air raid siren, it is very apt, as this album hits you like a B-52 with nuclear capabilities. 'Bring the Noise' and 'Don't Believe the Hype' are true old skool hip-hop, funky back beats and hard-ass rapping from Chuck D make them instant classics and Flavor Flav as the court jester in PE's kingdom hits the spot every time. The album just keeps going at a devastating pace, classics like 'Louder Than a Bomb', 'She Watch Channel Zero', 'Night of the Living Baseheads', Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos' and the frantic 'Prophets of Rage' are enough to make a grown man cry. On top of being fantastic songs they hold a message which all should pay heed to, their anti-racist stance is strong enough to have white people joining the Black Panthers. Last track 'Party For Your Right to Fight' deserves a special mention, both Flavor and Chuck rap together to great effect. Quite simply, loosen your purse strings and buy this album.