It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back

After the debut sold modestly, Public Enemy set out to make the hip-hop equivalent of Marvin Gaye's What's Going On, and to play faster so that their records matched their live shows. They began at Chung King Studios in Manhattan but ran into engineers who were prejudiced against hip hop, and moved to Greene St. Recording, where they were more comfortable. The working title was Countdown to Armageddon, and the final title is a line from Raise the Roof on the first album. After heavy preproduction at their Long Island studio, the material took 30 days to record, at an estimated cost of $25,000, and the album was finished in six weeks.

Hank Shocklee gave the final say on every song. Chuck D hunted for vocal samples, Eric Sadler programmed drums and Keith Shocklee knew the breakbeats and made the sound effects. Shocklee said he would sometimes stomp on a record if it sounded too clean. The group decided the album should last exactly one hour, thirty minutes a side, so that nobody sat through dead air on a cassette. The sides were first the other way round, with Show 'Em Whatcha Got opening, but Shocklee flipped them just before mastering so the record begins with Dave Pearce introducing the group on their first English tour. The mix was done by hand, with no automation.

Critics read it as a landmark. Rolling Stone's David Fricke described a Molotov cocktail of scratching, minimal electronics and revolution rhyme, and Robert Christgau called it the bravest and most righteous experimental pop of the decade. It won the 1988 Pazz & Jop poll. It sold 500,000 copies in its first month, reached 42 on the Billboard Top Pop Albums chart and number one on Top Black Albums, and went platinum in August 1989. Rolling Stone ranked it 48 in its 2003 list of the 500 greatest albums and 15 in the 2020 list. Pitchfork's Craig Jenkins wrote that it netted the group the American audience that the debut had not.