Free Public Enemy's It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back (33 1/3) by Christopher R. Weingarten Page A

When they brought the tapes home, Public Enemy decided to use pieces of them on
Nation of Millions
to make it clear to everyone in America who had slept on
Yo! Bum Rush the Show
that they needed to, in the words of Professor Griff, “get a late pass.” Said Chuck in a London interview at the time: “There’s a certain situation over here that’s ready for us. In the States, they’re just about rockin’ boots, but over here, it’s some kind of awareness that theydon’t have in the States . . . as of yet. But they will.” 61
    The voice at the beginning of
Nation of Millions
is British DJ Dave Pearce, host of BBC Radio’s pioneering show “Fresh Start to the Week,” one of the first shows to bring hip-hop to the U.K. “Hammersmith Odeon, are you ready for the Def Jam Tour? Let me hear you make some noise!” The crowd obliged. If you listen to tapes of the concert, the audio for “Rebel without a Pause” is mostly whistles. Chuck and Flav stalked the stage, both wearing white for ultimate visibility. Back then, both Chuck and Flav wore big bathroom clocks that they had copped from Long Island retailer Fortunoff, a style they borrowed from high school kids. Flav made his look timeless, eventually bringing it to prime time. Chuck abandoned his clock after it kept hitting him in the chest.
    Segments from the high-energy, 35-minute set would be peppered throughout
Nation of Millions
— from Flav calling out for a “Hoooooo” to Chuck D giving props to Terminator X, to Professor Griff counting down “Armageddon.” With this glue eventually binding the album’s 16 tracks, the samples would give
Nation of Millions
a cohesion that, for the first time, established hip-hop as an
album
genre. American rock critics and rap fans would take note: Unlike any rap album that came before, this was a 57:51 statement, not a collection of singles.

Chapter Six –
“All in, we’re gonna win”
    After the initial three singles and the riotous Hammersmith Odeon interludes, the bulk of
Nation of Millions
was recorded within the first eight weeks of hip-hop’s golden year: 1988. Using the working title
Countdown to Armageddon
, the Bomb Squad toiled in January and February as the world continued to burn. Every day, the newspapers were peppered with incidents of racial discrimination. An all-white village board of a Chicago suburb was petitioning against a black church that was moving into its neighborhood. A 50-year-old African-American mother of five was attacked and rubbed with feces by two white assailants in the predominantly white city of Newton, New Jersey. A Texas court ruled that three police officers were guilty of beating an African-American Louisiana truck driver to death in a Texas jail. New York newspapers had shocking daily updates on the slowly unfolding case of Tawana Brawley, a 15-year-oldwho claimed that a gang of white men abducted her, sexually assaulted her and scrawled racial slurs on her body. Brawley would later make a cameo in Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power” video. It was clear that a fiery response was overdue.
    With a $52,000 budget, the gang once again did pre-production at 510 South Franklin and finished up at Def Jam home base Chung King. Sometime in the middle of the sessions, operations were moved to Greene Street, where Salt-N-Pepa producer Hurby Luv Bug had set up shop. Unlike the three-minute Rick Rubin-curated riff-rap that was falling off the end of the Def Jam assembly line, it was very important to Hank Shocklee that Public Enemy were awarded full creative control. “Executive producer” Rubin thankfully had the trust and foresight to grant it to them, but Hank wasn’t taking any chances. He wouldn’t allow Russell Simmons, Rubin or anyone not directly involved with the creative process near the studio. His motto: They can hear it when it’s done. After
Nation of Millions
blew up and the Bomb Squad were commissioned to do remixes for Janet Jackson and Madonna, Hank wouldn’t