http://open.spotify.com/album/1wiSjwzZjO3zt6VrUsATfCSurprisingly low down this, you could make a decent shout for this being one of the most influential debut albums of the last 25 years (look out for my next blog, when I attempt to listen to Rolling Stone's '500 Greatest Debut Albums of the Last 25 Years'- my reaction on finding out number 1 is '1 Polish, 2 Biscuits and a Fish Sandwich' by the Outhere Brothers is a classic) and, while the production values on tracks such as the title track may leave some of the album sounding massively dated (not to mention the very occasional blast of casual misogyny which, depressingly, don't sound very dated at all) much of the album manages to retain its massive visceral impact and capacity to excite. Plus, in 'Timebomb' and 'Public Enemy No.1' it contains two of the greatest hip-hop songs of all time (even Puff daddy couldn't manage to make the latter sound bad). This is also the first album so far that I own, so this next 45 minutes is going to be more of a refresher course really
00:07 That intro to 'You're Gonna Get Yours' still sounds amazing
00:53 'Suckers to the side, I know you hate, my 98'- I've never been quite sure what a '98' is, a smaller version of a Mr. Whippy?
02:23 'My 98 automobile...'- that'll be it then
05:03 Aaaaaaaaaaah, 'Sophisticated Bitch', what a charming slice of good ol' fashioned woman-hating. To be fair, it's slightly incorrect to state that this kind of lazy sexism is endemic in a lot of hip-hop, when in fact it's endemic in a huge swathe of male-made music, from rock, to pop, to classical (Verdi's 'Rhapsody for a Skank Ho' being a case in point)
08:21 The AOR guitars date the song slightly too
08:31 'Yo Chuck, run a power move on them'- someone ran a power move on me once, it was most unpleasant. No-one's ever bum rushed my show though... Unless you count that one time in 1996... Shudder...
10:56 'Miuzi Weighs a Ton' sounds like a slowed down demo of the kind of furious white-noise of samples and mixing sound they'd pretty much perfect on their second album
13:09 The Outhere Brothers' Best-Of is called 'The Fucking Hits'
14:00 The Outhere Brothers have a Best-Of????
14:16 'Timebomb' is one of those fantastic songs that, on the surface, don't seem to do anything much at all- all it is is one tiny sample repeated ad infinitum with Chuck D rapping breathlessly over the top, no chorus, no break, no cow-bell solo (although that would've only improved it)- and yet somehow, magically and completely illogically, it sounds like an almost perfect pop song.
17:40 Aaaaaah, 'Too Much Posse'- the massively unhinged Flave Flav song that's as much an obligation on a Public Enemy album as the really, really rubbish Ringo song is on a Beatles album
19:05 'Too much posse' sounds like an odd complaint, I can't imagine that going down too well in the old west; 'Sorry Rattlesnake Bill, I know you wanna go and rescue my daughter from those Injuns too, but we've simply got too much posse, and you were the last to join...'
20:45 How amazing is 'Rightstarter'?? I'd completely forgot about it, I think this may qualify for a list of 'fantastic forgotton songs on classic albums' list. I'm on it...
22:48 'Mind over matter, mouth in motion, can't defy cos I'll never be quiet let's start this'- brilliant.
23:45 To be fair to 'Rightstarter', most songs that were sequenced one track before the monolithicly amazing 'Public Enemy No.1' are always likely to be forgotten'
23:55 'Monolithicly'???
24:45 I am completely, embarassingly in awe of this song like it was captain of the football team and I was the speccy bookworm who's never even held a boy's hand. Is there a more viscerally striking and complete statement of intent in the history of recorded music?
26:54 Well, yes, 'Cleopatra Comin Atcha' obviously...
27:03 'All you suckers, liars, you cheap amplifiers, your crossed up wires are always on fire...' Ah oui, oui oui!
28:48 'MPE' is a strange mix of classic PE sirens and turntable assault and minimal verses that actually make it sound more like 'I'm Bad' by LL Cool J. As I keep stating: this isn't necessarily a bad thing...
31:33 Chuck D wouldn't truly nail the incendiary politics and social commentary until the second album, a lot of his lyrics here are just classic rap bravado (usually about how heavy his uzi, funnily enough)
34:00 Actually, the title track doesn't sound half as dated as I remember it being (is that possible??), and is actually closer to the sound of their later, more complete, work than a lot of the tracks on the album
37: 41 The heavy metal guitars on 'Raise the Roof' have Rick Rubin's big hairy palm marks all over them
40:16 'At School I'm cool throughout the week'- I hear that
40:30 Did he say he's 'down with the Greek'??
43:25 'Megablast' is just bizarre
44:27 Backwards vocals... Did he just say 'worship satan and kill all your friends'????
44:48 Ah no, it actually says 'shop at Lidl', fucking sell-outs...
46:49 A spectacularly pointless instrumental, and we're done...
An album that absolutely still deserves to be called a classic, in my memory they was a lot more filler and dud tracks than there actually was, and the standard throughout is actually consistently very high. 'Yo! Bum Rush the Show's problem is that Public Enemy's next two albums raised the bar for what hip-hop could actually achieve so high that their debut can't help but sound like a dry run for what the band were about to achieve, but although it does suffer in comparsion to their later work (as would 99.9856124% of all other records) it can still stand up on its own as one of the greaest hip-hop albums of all time, and reaistically should be a lot higher in any definitive list of greatest albums.
Kiss next, from the sublime...
A
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