When the calendar flipped to 1990, it seemed that the world may or may not have been going to hell, but was certainly changing. It was ripe for Public Enemy's Fear Of A Black Planet to hammer through the changes, and challenge listeners and society.
There simply aren't enough pages to chronicle the nuclear blast this album had. So let us cover some basics.
Unlike other hip hop albums, Public Enemy did not put photos of themselves on the album cover.
This was recorded before artists had to pay for sampling. So the album is densely-packed with samples and snippets, and becomes its own sonic entity and tapestry. This is why music after the early-90s no longer sounded like this.
As the title proclaims, Fear Of A Black Planet exposed whites' fear of blacks, something so pertinent in today's BLM happenings. Moreover, Chuck D's voice just had a power, which centered the layers of music. The lack of silence is a metaphor for densely-packed urban areas. Oddly enough, this piqued the interest of suburbanites, and had a hand in breaking hip hop into those communities. And all this, without much aid from radio.
There's just too much to unravel, from "Welcome To The Terrordome." Audiophiles like turning off the main stereo, putting on headphones, and trying to identify the numerous R&B, funk, and soul samples. The song references Yusef Hawkins, a black boy our age, who, when checking out a used car in Brooklyn, was ambushed and killed. The song also cites the Greekfest riots at Virginia Beach. Chuck D is also critical of Blacks' self-destruction (both Huey Newton* and Malcolm X were killed by brothers).
In 2010, I started working at Stanford University. There, I discovered that multiple departments included Public Enemy's Fear Of A Black Planet as part of the curriculum.
-Lummy The Loch Monster
* In 1990, when Fear Of A Black Planet came out, I was a freshman at UC Santa Cruz, from which Huey Newton earned a Ph.D.
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Topic - Public Enemy, "Welcome To The Terrordome" - Luminator 09:23:47 06/20/20 (0)