Public Enemy's It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back

by Weingarten, Christopher R.

  In the video, Chuck raps in front of Washington Heights’ Audubon Ballroom, the site where Malcolm X was shot in 1965. Said Rose, “The Audubon Ballroom is a symbol of black protest and loss. Twenty-three years [before the video], it was a site where ‘truth’ was spoken. But, today, the Audubon is closed and gutted — Chuck cannot speak from its podium.”82 Being captured by a gang of anti-rap activists called the “brown bags” who obscure their faces behind plain, brown shopping bags compares anti-rap hysteria to the centuries-old tradition of the Ku Klux Klan hiding hatred behind hoods.

  The song’s intro offers a speech from Nation of Islam minister and onetime Farrakhan protégé Khalid Muhammad: “Have you forgotten that once we were brought here we were robbed of our name? Robbed of our language. We lost our religion, our culture, our God. And many of us, by the way we acted, we even lost our minds.” In the context of the song, the final line takes on a double meaning: losing one’s mind to drugs. Speeches like this one came from cassettes that Professor Griff and the S1Ws collected. On their first tour, a trip out with the Beastie Boys in 1987, Griff would play tapes of Muhammad and Farrakhan on the tour bus. Sometimes Chuck and Griff would pick choice sections to quote in interviews to provoke journalists.

  While a lot of the lyrics on Nation of Millions focus on national matters, the lyrics to “Baseheads” were directly inspired by Chuck’s experiences from his year as a label-endorsed rapper. He was moved to write the song after looking out the windows of the Def Jam offices and seeing addicts breaking into cars. Similarly, “Louder Than a Bomb” is about Chuck’s life as a real public enemy, after the release of the rabble-rousing Bum Rush. His phone would go dead every night somewhere between 11 p.m. and 2 a.m. Constant calls to the phone company didn’t alleviate the problem. The MC concluded that — like with the black leaders who were documented on “Party for Your Right to Fight” — this was the work of the FBI tapping his line, keeping their ears on a potential insurgent. “So what?” was Chuck’s official answer. “What I say comes through on records and in interviews. It’s no secret at all what I say, ’cause I’m louder than a bomb.”83

  The rapid patchwork of hip-hop samples used in “Night of the Living Baseheads” and “Louder Than a Bomb” are a testament to the decade leading up to Nation of Millions. The records used are a laundry list of dreamers and risk takers who shaped recorded hip-hop’s first nine years, influencing Public Enemy as they grew from a Long Island DJ crew to go-getter college-radio DJs to Def Jam family to the most important rap group in the world.

  A fatherly “’Twas the night—” that fights to tell a story in “Night of the Living Baseheads” and the brusk “Hold it now” that interrupts it are both sampled from the Kurtis Blow single “Christmas Rappin’” — the first rap record released by a major label. The partnership that birthed the “Christmas Rappin’” 12-inch formed in 1979, just a few months after Adelphi freshman Carlton Ridenhour met Hank Shocklee. In Long Island, Hank was fretting outside after a bummer show, trying to figure out how he was going to tell his mother that he blew his yearbook and school-ring money on a party that didn’t recoup. Chuck rolled up and said, “You know why nobody came to your party, man? Because your flyer was wack.”84 Hank thought nothing of the conversation, but he would recruit Chuck later that year when looking for a full-time MC for his Spectrum City crew.

  The initial meeting behind “Christmas Rappin’” was far more fortuitous. Robert Ford was writing about R&B for Billboard magazine and made it a point to find the kid behind the Rush Productions stickers he saw affixed to subway cars while commuting to his home in St. Albans, Queens. While researching a story on the burgeoning breakbeat culture, he saw a young Joseph Simmons sticking a Rush Productions sticker on the inside of a bus. Ford approached him in hopes that he was the mastermind behind the massive street-team project. He wasn’t, but he hooked Ford up with a card with which he could contact his older brother Russell.

  Ford gelled with the restless and impossibly motivated Russell Simmons, who helped Ford with the contacts for his articles — the interviews and research that would yield the first national coverage of hip-hop culture. As the story goes, Simmons was dying to release the first rap record, and he reached out to Ford to open the doors at labels — or, as Simmons liked to tell it, Ford was inspired to cut a rap record and needed a conduit into the hip-hop world. Either way, the two of them wanted to get in on the ground floor, and had a symbiotic relationship that could make it happen. Ford, 30 years old and approaching fatherhood, even had some of the “Am I too old for this?” worries that Chuck had when he was approached for his Def Jam deal a decade later. But Simmons, who deftly played the role of young hip-hop ambassador, assuaged his fears. Ford was stuck on recording the then ubiquitous Eddie Cheeba, but consummate promoter Simmons steered Ford toward an artist he was actively promoting: Harlem MC Kurtis Blow.

  They had no precedent for making a record — and, save the Fatback Band’s proto-rap “King Tim III (Personality Jock),” there was no precedent for a rap record existing at all. So their first release was a home-crafted affair concocted among friends and co-workers. Billboard sales guy and onetime Perry Como songwriter Mickey Addy came up with the idea for doing a Christmas song; fellow co-worker J.B. Moore wrote a chunk of the lyrics and put up some cash; old friend (and future Def Jam producer) Larry Smith played bass; fellow Queens resident Eddie Martinez played guitar. According to Russell, his brother Joseph (later to be known as Run) contributed a slew of uncredited lyrics. Blow filled out the second half of the song with rhymes he wrote on the subway. The whole ordeal was the group’s first experience at Greene Street Recordings — the same downtown studio where Public Enemy would record a chunk of Nation of Millions.

  The Sugarhill Gang and “Rapper’s Delight” ended up beating everyone to the punch. Even worse, like “Christmas Rappin’,” their track was also based on a re-creation of viral breakbeat “Good Times” by Chic. When Simmons and Ford shopped their record, more than 20 labels rejected them. The vibe they got from executives was that it had missed its window of opportunity. Why would radio want two records with this novelty of rapping? Ever tenacious, Simmons put in a pile of fake orders to Polygram for the 12-inch, giving the impression of demand. Polygram division Mercury finally picked up the record, which quickly became a gold-selling hit that Christmas season — and miraculously, it kept selling a solid eight months afterward.

  The record provided Simmons with the energy and capital to take Blow under his wing and unleash Rush Artist Management, the management arm that would eventually launch the careers of Run-DMC, the Beastie Boys, LL Cool J and, of course, Public Enemy. Chuck had heard of Blow well before “Christmas Rappin’” was released, thanks to the merciless promotion of Simmons. But once he got a pair of gold records, Blow became the world’s first superstar MC, someone whom Chuck regarded as “almost like the Jackie Robinson of hip-hop.” He gushed to Blow during his Air America radio show in 2008, “I would say, Godfather . . . you made these things possible. In other music, other artists are revered, like the Who, the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, Bob Marley — but Kurtis Blow definitely deserves that ranking.”85

  Blow’s neighborhood of Harlem was being hit hard by the crack epidemic in the late ’80s. About ten months before Public Enemy recorded “Baseheads,” The New York Times reported on “cocaine psychosis,” leading with the vivid example of an East Harlem man who held four people hostage for 30 hours pleading for baking soda. In the beginning of January 1988, when Public Enemy started to work on the song, 17-year-old crack addict Leslie Torres was charged with a crack-fueled robbery spree that killed five people in East Harlem. Said the Times: “The police described the case as among the worst examples of crack-related violence in New York City since the highly addictive, smokable form of cocaine appeared more than two years ago.”86 In March, investigators linked drug gangs to anywhere from 359 to 523 deaths in upper Manhattan in five years.

  Accordingly — or coincidentally — �
��Baseheads” was packed with samples of rappers who had grown up in Harlem. The track includes exclamations from superstar Blow (“Hold it now”), the Disco Four (“One, two, three, four, five, six . . .”) and the Boogie Boys (“We are williiiing”). Harlem MCs the Fearless Four get in a “Word!” from “Problems of the World Today,” a classic political, reality rap that came in the wake of Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five’s pioneering “The Message.” Harlem crew Masterdon Committee get in a quick “Listennnn!” from their classic skate anthem “Funk Box Party.” Possibly the Committee’s biggest influence on Chuck was when they didn’t show up to a headlining gig he had booked at a roller rink in 1984. Upstart rhymer LL Cool J stepped in, doing a monumental, 10-minute a cappella freestyle that “defied all gravity,” and blew the crowd away, allowing Chuck to promote shows another day.

  * * *

  The scratching on “Louder Than a Bomb” is primitive, noisy, the fader wide open as the record spins back — “Come on,” skwwwwwik, “come on.” It’s a fitting tribute to the Bronx’s Grand Wizard Theodore, whose crew, the Fantastic Romantic Freaks, appear on the track, telling everyone to come on, telling the soundman to turn it up, begging for everything to get louder. Theodore’s earliest scratches were similarly noisy and curt; they were, for all intents and purposes, the very first scratches anywhere. Like the Shocklee brothers, Theodore was part of a two DJ household. His older brother Mean Gene Livingstone worked with Grandmaster Flash, and a preteen Theodore would serve as their breakbeat intern, lugging amps, connecting speaker cables, pulling out the right records from the crates or going beat-digging in Manhattan at Downstairs Records. He would practice on his brother’s equipment — the improbably young DJ standing on a milk crate — and soon developed an acute ear (and thumb) for dropping the needle on the break over and over again in perfect rhythm. One day while he was practicing, his mom started to bang on the door telling him to turn the volume down. He stopped the record with one hand while the other continued to spin — the abrupt rubbing sound started some gears turning in his head. After some finessing, Theodore invented the scratch.

  Theodore broke out with his own crew, the L Brothers, who would rock massive block parties, blowing minds with Theo’s telekinetic ability to lift and drop the needle on a break. When it came time for Theodore to go out on his own, he took along a crew of rappers that would evolve into the lineup of the Fantastic Five, a.k.a. the Fantastic Romantic Freaks: Dota Rock, Master Rob, Kevie Kev, Ruby Dee and Prince Whipper Whip. The group picked their name because they loved the “number” posses that were coming out at the time — Treacherous 3, Funky 4, Furious 5. Incidentally, the seven-deep Public Enemy gravitated toward this posse style of recording groups as well, but only because they had fallen out of favor by 1986, replaced by MC and DJ duos. Unlike P.E., the Freaks were not focused on taking over the world: They made one 12-inch (1981’s “Can I Get a Soul Clap, Fresh Out the Pack”), refused to do interviews and were rarely photographed. They were the type of performers who simply took it to the stage.

  Ultimately, their biggest exposure was in the 1982 film Wild Style, the quasi-documentary that finally gave a vivid, global stage to the hip-hop culture that had been draining streetlight power for years. Wild Style came from a brainstorm pitched by graffiti artist and metropolitan scenester Fab 5 Freddy. He felt that the DJ culture and graffiti art he was introducing to the art elite and punk rockers should be immortalized in film. In the untrained-but-nimble hands of Super 8 kung-fu flick director Charlie Ahearn, the intention was to make a grafsploitation movie ready to play between the grindhouse karate-chop movies in Times Square. But Wild Style was hip-hop’s first step toward becoming an international phenomenon, thanks to Ahearn’s reverential depictions of popping and locking B-boys, MCs in heated rhyme battles, DJs slicing records in dewy clubs and graffiti snaking alongside the steel torsos of subway cars.

  Two denizens of the art world, Freddy and Ahearn were fast friends. Freddy loved hip-hop for the punk-rock element — the destruction and détournement of vinyl, the brash statement of graffiti tags, the way limited resources turned into grand gestures. He also linked it to pop art’s reflection of cultural symbols, even going so far as to spray paint Warhol’s iconic Campbell’s soup cans on a subway car. Ahearn loved the avant-garde element — the expressionistic lettering of graffiti, the post-modern recycling of familiar sounds into new forms. Years later, when critics would throw around phrases like “punk rock” and “avant-garde” about Public Enemy, their “louder, louder” backspin of a Wild Style sample would embody the aesthetics with a violent fwiiiikk. Not to mention the punk dictum of doing it yourself, which — despite their being part of the major-label system — Public Enemy embodied via the massive amount of pre-production they did at their South Franklin home base, mapping out their records in advance instead of writing in the studio. Wild Style itself was a testament to DIY art, beyond its focus on the Bronx visionaries who turned records, spray paint and cardboard into vibrant art forms. The entire Wild Style production was performed by non-actors, filmed by a non-professional director and culminated in a guerrilla party that transformed a decrepit East River amphitheater into a legendary party fueled by a single power box under the Williamsburg Bridge.

  Ahearn and Freddy would frequent Bronx clubs like the T-Connection, Ecstasy Garage and Harlem World while the movie was in its research stages. The headlining buzz was the explosive rivalry between the Fantastic Freaks and the bombastic Cold Crush Brothers. The two crews spent a year battling to see which could be second-biggest group in the Bronx — the clear winners, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, were busy touring Europe with the Clash. The Freaks and Cold Crush would take their battles public with onstage fights and drama. Sometimes they would revert to being the old neighborhood friends who occasionally partied backstage; other times they would stop talking to one another entirely. One such occasion was one of the most anticipated battles in hip-hop history, the Harlem World Showdown in 1981. The Freaks showed up in tuxedos, and Theodore cut records with handcuffs on. They took the glory and 500 bucks, but they ended up getting the silent treatment from Cold Crush for quite a while.

  When it came time to film Wild Style, the rivalry was at a fever pitch. For the movie, Cold Crush and the Freaks battled in a West Side Story homage on the basketball courts — both groups still tired from rocking shows the evening before, Dota Rock still wearing the previous night’s clothes under his sweatshirt. For their battle in the Dixie club, one of Flash’s old haunts, the animosity was as real as they could make it, with the two groups being at the top of their game, reaching for the true spirit of competition. You can hear the urgency of the moment, the amp-peaking distortion and deafening volumes of hip-hop in its most unadulterated form. The excitement of kids with limited tools making the biggest impression possible was palpable in the way they shouted “Louder!” (used in “Louder Than a Bomb”) or “Soundman, say, ‘Turn it up!’” (used in “Bring the Noise”). Twelve years later, with the beef presumably squashed, both Cold Crush and the Freaks reunited on friendlier terms on Terminator X’s slept-on second solo album, Super Bad. Said Chuck in the liner notes: “Getting these brothers back into the flow was not only a joy, but an obligation.” Kevie Kev has said that having the Freaks’ Dixie chant sampled by Public Enemy was like “throwing a lottery ticket in the hamper and it hits.”87 However, the first time Public Enemy shared studio space with the Wild Style pioneers was during the Nation of Millions sessions, when Fab 5 Freddy dropped by to kick some background vocals in “She Watch Channel Zero?!”

  The Bomb Squad loved to give slipmat service to the funk, soul and hip-hop that paved the way for them, but “Night of the Living Baseheads” and “Louder Than a Bomb” are also full of their immediate family: the close-knit Def Jam/Rush Management crew, whose meteoric rise throughout the ’80s changed the way hip-hop looked, sounded, toured and got paid. For starters, Run-DMC were not only P.E.’s Rush cohorts, but also their heroes. As Chuck said
in a Rolling Stone article, Run-DMC were “the Beatles of hip-hop . . . a model for Public Enemy in that we both made loud, blasting records for arenas, not clubs. You couldn’t rap in a low tone over a blaring guitar in an arena.”88 Public Enemy wouldn’t storm arenas with Run-DMC until the summer of 1988, but their history goes back to the most embryonic stages of both groups.

  After Chuckie D joined the Spectrum City mobile DJ crew in 1979, they spent the next few years promoting parties, making mixtapes, manning the Super Spectrum Mix Hour on WBAU and trekking from Long Island to Soho to pick up vinyl from their record pool offices. A concept pioneered by New York disco DJs in 1974, a record pool was a group of DJs who paid a fee to grab the first pieces of promotional vinyl that were printed up by record companies. Spectrum City were involved with the Intermetro record pool, which was described by Chuck as “predominantly a pool of gay house DJs who were also into rap.”89 They were pretty much the only crew in the pool playing all rap records. One time Keith Shocklee came back from the Intermetro offices with a white-label promo carrying a name they thought sounded more like a machine than a rap group. It was one of the first copies of Run-DMC’s debut single, “It’s Like That” b/w “Sucker MCs (Krush Groove 1)” — a copy that has since been saddled with the (probably untrue) rumor that it was the very first copy anywhere. It thrilled the crew with just one listen. WBAU program director and future Public Enemy marketing guru Bill Stephney was the first person to play the record on the radio. He played both sides of the record on the air for a solid four weeks before it started making buzz on the streets, raising the profile of both the rap group and the rap station in the process.