Rebel Without a Pause

It was the first song created for It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, and its first single. The title plays on the 1955 film Rebel Without a Cause. Chuck D felt the debut already sounded dated, and with Hank Shocklee he decided to speed the music up. He recalled that most rap records ran at around 98 beats per minute and theirs near 109.

Shocklee sampled a saxophone glissando from the J.B.'s instrumental The Grunt, which became the track's high whistle. He made his demo on a Mirage sampler that held about three seconds. The studio's S-900 held thirty seconds, but the group decided to go with the Mirage version. They could not find a drum sample they liked, so Flavor Flav played an original beat on the drum machine for the length of the song. Chuck D wrote the rhymes in less than a day and needed three takes. Terminator X had asked for a chance to scratch, and produced the Transformers scratch. Shocklee mixed it with Steve Ett, and Chuck D said on hearing it that he could die tomorrow.

Live and video

Shocklee said he knew it would be a hit when kids ran through Madison Square Garden as it came on halfway through a set. The video features footage of the group winning Best Hip-Hop Record for it at the DMC International Awards in London in 1988. It is on the 2004 Sound + Vision edition of the album. It appears in 198 of the 311 logged setlists. It also plays in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas on the radio station Playback FM.