Public Enemy - Apocalypse 91… The Enemy Strikes Black '1991;2021

Tracks list

       Coming down after the twin high-water marks of It Takes a Nation of
Millions and Fear of a Black Planet, Public Enemy shifted strategy a bit for
their fourth album, Apocalypse 91...The Enemy Strikes Black. By and large, they
abandon the rich, dense musicality of Planet, shifting toward a sleek,
relentless, aggressive attack -- Yo! Bum Rush the Show by way of the lessons
learned from Millions. This is surely a partial reaction to their status as the
Great Black Hope of rock & roll; they had been embraced by a white audience
almost in greater numbers than black, leading toward rap-rock crossovers
epitomized by this album's leaden, pointless remake of "Bring the Noise" as a
duet with thrash metallurgists Anthrax. It also signals the biggest change here
-- the transition of the Bomb Squad to executive-producer status, leaving a
great majority of the production to their disciples, the Imperial Grand
Ministers of Funk. This isn't a great change, since the Public Enemy sound has
firmly been established, giving the new producers a template to work with, but
it is a notable change, one that results in a record with a similar sound but a
different feel: a harder, angrier, determined sound, one that takes its cues
from the furious anger surging through Chuck D's sociopolitical screeds. And
this is surely PE's most political effort, surpassing Millions through the use
of focused, targeted anger, a tactic evident on Planet. Yet it was buried there,
due to the seductiveness of the music. Here, everything is on the surface, with
the bluntness of the music hammering home the message. Arriving after two
records where the words and music were equally labyrinthine, folding back on
each other in dizzying, intoxicating ways, it is a bit of a letdown to have
Apocalypse be so direct, but there is no denying that the end result is still
thrilling and satisfying, and remains one of the great records of the golden age
of hip-hop.

Tracklist:
 01. Public Enemy - Lost At Birth (03:52)
 02. Public Enemy - Rebirth (01:00)
 03. Public Enemy - Nighttrain (03:30)
 04. Public Enemy - Can't Truss It (05:26)
 05. Public Enemy - I Don't Wanna Be Called Yo Niga (04:27)
 06. Public Enemy - How To Kill A Radio Consultant (03:12)
 07. Public Enemy - By The Time I Get To Arizona (04:52)
 08. Public Enemy - Move! (05:03)
 09. Public Enemy - 1 Million Bottlebags (04:09)
 10. Public Enemy - More News At 11 (02:41)
 11. Public Enemy - Shut Em Down (05:08)
 12. Public Enemy - A Letter To The New York Post (02:47)
 13. Public Enemy - Get The F... Outta Dodge (02:39)
 14. Public Enemy - Bring Tha Noize (03:49) 

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