Please post your recreated Fight the Power beat when you finish. I’d love to hear it.
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Yes, Paul’s Boutique in particular has that energy to it.
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I got most of the samples cut but they just sounded shit together. They must of really processed each sample alot. But maybe I’ll have another go. I think I was missing some drum machine or something I’m not sure for the kick.
NWA had that same kind of band call and response ethos in their production as well, maybe that’s why ice cube and the bomb squad melded so well together when they got together.
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In my formative years (mid-80’s) I had been exposed to some hip-hop like Run DMC, Grandmaster Flash, BDP etc… but when I first heard Fear of a Black Planet my mind exploded. It wasn’t just the brilliant lyricism and delivery, it was the sound: the way jazz horn samples were warped into harbingers of the apocalypse, the way there was always some wailing drone way in the background, the way the drums sounded so “live” compared to everything else at the time. I was also getting way into goth industrial at the time and that album was the first exposure to that kind of intensity in urban music.
I got to see them live in the 90’s, with Chuck D and Terminator X bringing it as hard as ever… but Flav tripped me the f*ck out. I was right up front, and he did his hype-man thing with a swagger and maniacal look in his eyes that I’ll never forget. Right up there with Johnny Rotten and Nick Fiend for stage presence for sure.
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HA!! I totally forgot about the VW badge theft. Brilliant!!
@DonovanDwyer i never did see PE live, but yeah, the energy in their music, soo good. I remember playing Fight the power at a local event in our old sleepy seaside town and a lad, on his own, right in the dance floor area absolutely going for it with the energy that music delivers. Music that does that really is something.
@captain8 yeah that’s a good point, also reminds me of how Wu-Tang Clan talked about how they supported each other in solo work after the first album, basically being the whole group but with the energy behind one person. Almost like an exchange of a front man with each solo and with 36 Chambers almost that exchange per track, the classic Jazz style pass the mic.
@J_C_SelectorV2 also very keen to hear/see this. You need to wear a clock or maybe get your S1W get-up on, or those beats wont boom.
@new_drugs yeah totally with you on that, the information availability and connectivity is out of dreams, but for sure, it’s a technology that needs to be learnt as much as the studio itself I reckon.
Now that you mention it, they seem like an act that could’ve been on WaxTrax, though certainly would’ve sold less copies due to their smaller reach 
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I think Public Enemy and the Bomb Squad are revolutionaries. And not everybody is ready or willing to go there.
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This!!
I was thinking this series from Preemo should have it’s own thread. Bit off topic, but he has gotten more comfortable as the series has gone on and the tales behind the beats are so interesting, Spike Lee, Janet Jackson, Hugh Hefner, a probation judge! as well as all the big names in hip hop.
The State of the Union track he did with PE recently is just awesome, a proper blend of both PE and Preemo (with a sledgehammer hook)
Saw PE headlining the Reading festival, after a day of guitar based music, they just made it their own, so impressive!
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There’s nothing like classic PE. The rage, the aggression, the drive…it came out in the music and lyrics. A true synergy.
Different times, different motivations, different production techniques, and an actual message. This type of music can never be emulated.
An aside: Public Enemy was the Skinny Puppy of hiphop (or or was Skinny Puppy the PE of industrial?)
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Loving this thread. Been a big fan of PE since the fifth grade. They warmed me up to the beauty of sampling before I even knew that’s what they were doing. Everything about their sound is perfect for what they do. Making music that matches chucks delivery has to be quite a challenge.
I’ve been lucky enough to have seen them twice in the 90s. Really amazing both times.
Charming but not significant; I once saw flav in a diner in the middle of the night in seattle. He was eating the biggest stack of pancakes I’ve ever seen. I’d had a few drinks and wanted to go say hi but was scared off by the two enormous dudes flanking him who were clearly there to keep people like me away.
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@blurrghost, the idea of Flavor eating a gigantic stack of pancakes while two huge bodyguards look on is somehow funnier than it should be to me.
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I was lucky enough to see them twice at their peak once at the uea in Norwich wch was around the time rebel without a pause was blowing up and and also at the royal Albert hall for the 86 DMC champs, both times they were stellar, my little anecdote re flavor was that me and mate left the Albert hall auditorium to grab a drink during the show and whilst we were at a vending machine we were stood behind a guy with a Gucci track suit and a massive hi top, we kinda laughed naively that he was a bit overdressed and carried on our way back to the floor, 5 minutes later he was clocking and rocking on stage and we stood catching flies not quite believing what we were seeing… I was fifteen at the time… halcyon days indeed…
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Yeah it was. Still makes me smile more than 20 years later. The goofiness of the scene was like seeing a cartoon character in real life. Even though he was dressed down (by his standards anyway) he was still larger than life but he was singularly focused on his comically huge stack of pancakes. Weird juxtaposition.
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I live in Seattle- do you remember what restaurant it was?
In middle school a friend gave me a 4th (maybe 5th… or 6th) generation copy of It Takes a Nation of Millions and I listened to it constantly on my Walkman for months. The lyrics, the beats and the interplay between Chuck D and Flav all got me hooked. When the tape finally got chewed up I took my money and went to my local music store and picked up the actual album on cassette… popped it in my Walkman and…
To hear all that music and layers of sound so crisp and loud totally blew my mind. I listened to it with fresh new ears and couldn’t believe the density of the production… and what were all these samples?!
I’ve never heard music the same ever since.
PE + the bomb squad fundamentally changed what I thought music could be
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I do. It was the old capital hill Minis. That place is long gone now. This would have been in ‘99 or 2000.
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The only thing that bugs me about those early releases is that the mastering was way too quiet and it wasn’t limited to just P.E.s stuff, bdp, epmd, big daddy Kane, de la soul to name but a few they all suffered to a lesser or greater degree…
Yeah, it’s incredible to revisit those records now with the ears of someone who has been making music in different forms for years and actually be more astonished by the production than when I was a kid. I think because I sort of just accepted it as a kid for what it was and didn’t question it much but as an adult i think that these productions shouldn’t work but they do. There is just so much noise and dissonance that somehow works so well.
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Ha! I moved to Seattle in ‘99 and remember Minis. I actually had a hunch that was where it was.
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