FEATURE:
Raise the Roof
Public Enemy's Yo! Bum Rush the Show at Thirty-Five
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LOOKING ahead to 10th February…
IN THIS PHOTO: Public Enemy in Hyde Park in 1987/PHOTO CREDIT: David Corio
I am excited by the approaching thirty-fifth anniversary of Public Enemy’s revolutionary and hugely influential debut, Yo! Bum Rush the Show. Not only one of the great Hip-Hop albums, the Long Island-formed group exploded onto the scene with an album that definitely shock the foundations and got people’s attention! Yo! Bum Rush the Show became one of the fastest-selling Hip-Hop records. As one would expect from Public Enemy, their honest and bold lyrics proved a sticking point. Their debut album was controversial among radio stations and critics, in part due to their lead, Chuck D's, Black nationalist politics. If that worried some of the more conservative quarters and meant that Yo! Bum Rush the Show did not get as much airplay as it deserved, the fact that the album got a lot of positive reviews and compelled a generation is the main thing. With Chuck D and Flavor Flav trading vocals in with their own styles, and Terminator X proving a potent force as the lead scratch, there are few albums as urgent, explosive, intelligent and powerful as Public Enemy’s 1987 debut, Yo! Bum Rush the Show. Just over a year after its release, the group put out the even more acclaimed and successful It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. To many, that remains their finest and most important album, though one cannot underestimate the strength of Yo! Bum Rush the Show. In a year where albums from Prince, The Smiths, U2, Guns N’ Roses, George Michael, INXS and Michael Jackson would rule and sell by the bucket-load, there were not many albums like Yo! Bum Rush the Show.
Maybe this was still early in the golden era of Hip-Hop. By 1988 and 1989, artists like Beastie Boys and De La Soul would join a small but indestructible army of Hip-Hop artists releasing some of the best albums ever. In a way, Yo! Bum Rush the Show paved the way and provided a breakthrough for so many other artists. I am keen, ahead of its thirty-fifth anniversary, to showcase some reviews for Yo! Bum Rush the Show. It is important to know about the story and impact of Public Enemy’s extraordinary debut album. Udiscovermusic gave us some detail behind the album in February 2021:
“Yo! Bum Rush The Show didn’t arrive out of thin air. Public Enemy had risen from Spectrum City, a group that released the single “Lies” in 1984 and featured the rapper who’d become known as Chuck D, along with future control-room maestros the Shocklee brothers. Flavor Flav, a rapper and hype man, joined too, bringing a massive stage presence and deeply underrated ability to spit rhymes. Another arrival was Terminator X, the DJ who communicated via his decks. Professor Griff and Eric “Vietnam” Sadler were associates from Spectrum City; in PE, Griff became “Minister Of Information” and handled interactions with the media, and Sadler was part of The Bomb Squad production team along with Chuck (as Carl Ryder) and the Shocklees.
While the group was basically Chuck, Flav, and Griff, all had a major part to play in shaping PE’s sound, attitude, and politics, as did Def Jam Records’ Bill Stephney, who was searching for a rap act that could deliver a desperately needed dose of reality to an increasingly pressured ghetto audience. The Bomb Squad got busy while PE was getting itself together, creating waves among the hip-hop hardcore with True Mathematics, a talented MC from the Public Enemy heartland of Hempstead, Long Island, and another “Strong Island” group, Kings Of Pressure, among others. So they knew the ropes.
Controversial lyrics
You can still hear echoes of the full crew’s previous work in Yo! Bum Rush The Show. These days some of its tracks sound more old school than you might have expected, but in ’87 this album was heading for revolutionary, though still reflecting the hip-hop heard on the street. The samples and cuts pile up, the beats are chopped and diced and used to add light and shade – and furious heaviness – to a complex and deeply funky attitude. That’s apparent from the opening “You’re Gonna Get Yours,” in which PE’s Oldsmobile 98 is refuge, symbol, and metaphorical weapon.
The raw metallic guitar which drives “Sophisticated Bitch” sounds like a sample, though it’s Vernon Reid of Living Colour who’s playing it; there are shades of Run-DMC and Eddie Martinez and Joe Perry here, where rock and 80s rap collide. The song’s lyrics were attacked for misogyny, marking the album’s first controversial moment, as Chuck passes judgment on a black woman who rejected a brother in favor of a “devil” in a suit and tie. Her fate in the final stanza is literally hard-hitting.
Chuck said they were observing, not delivering, but the lyrics made for uncomfortable listening, even more so in today’s current social and political climate. It meant that, from the start, PE were under fire, and this sense of being beyond mainstream mores and preset thinking helped them live up to their name. It also put them on a level with potential rivals on the West Coast, like Ice-T and his celebrations of outlaw lifestyles, a gangsta groove which would soon explode with NWA’s rapid rise in 1988. PE and the gangstas shocked polite society equally. It was surely no coincidence that NWA star Ice Cube would soon turn to The Bomb Squad to supervise his first solo album.
A classic sample
The standard form of defense in late 80s hip-hop was attack: rising stars knew they’d get dissed and were ready to come out fighting, and that attitude appears in “You’re Gonna Get Yours” and “Timebomb,” which kicks off with Flav warning that PE faced skepticism, setting up Chuck to let rip with an unarguable statement about why they are the real deal. Flav gets the whole of “Too Much Posse” to explain how PE could not be beaten. “Public Enemy No.1,” the debut single from Yo! Bum Rush The Show, sees Chuck fight off detractors over little more than a beat and the distinctive buzzing synth lines from Fred Wesley’s “Blow Your Head” – the fashion for Moog lines heard in hip-hop’s G-Funk era can be partially traced back to here. It was a tour de force from Chuck and Flav – but Public Enemy were just starting to roll.
Revolutionary lyrics
“Rightstarter (Message To A Black Man)” is Chuck’s declaration that the revolution has started, and whatever the reaction to his words, he won’t shut up. This wasn’t the first song to (approximately) quote the title of Nation Of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad’s 1965 religious, political, and biographical book Message To The Blackman In America, but The Temptations’/Spinners “Message From A Black Man,” first released in 1970, was by no means as hard-hitting as Chuck’s black nationalism. “MPE” drops the tempo, the lyrics floating over the most basic funk backing. The album’s title track is almost as minimal, but the approach is different, bringing the noise behind Chuck D’s story of busting in after being refused entry to a nightclub – and wider society.
“Raise The Roof” starts like a call to a musical event, explains a touch of PE lifestyle, then grows criminal-minded before Chuck declares himself a terrorist and drops the line that would feed PE’s undisputed classic: “it takes a nation of millions to hold me back.” By the end, Chuck is razing crack houses, an attitude explained by “Megablast,” a grim tale of falling into a pit of rock cocaine, brilliantly carried off on the mic by Chuck and Flav, who sounds truly desperate when his voice is thrown into reverse gear – showing the confusion this lifestyle brings. (His regrettable problems in this realm were yet to arrive.) The album closes by giving the DJ some with “Terminator X Speaks With His Hands,” a glorious exhibition of mixcraft as we knew it then: raw funk.
Released on February 10, 1987, Yo! Bum Rush The Show was a big success despite being considered too rough for airplay; black fans felt it was a necessary development in hip-hop, saying what had to be said; white fans felt how real it was. But it was just the start. Public Enemy would soon hit bigger highs, drawing in a mass audience barely able to believe what they had the guts to say”.
Prior to me finishing off, here are a couple of glowing reviews for an album that still causes waves and tremors. Such is the brilliance of You're Gonna Get Yours, Timebomb, Public Enemy No. 1 and Raise the Roof, Yo! Bum Rush the Show will inspire and stir generations to come. This is AllMusic’s opinion about one of 1987’s most incredible albums:
“Sometimes, debut albums present an artist in full bloom, with an assured grasp on their sound and message. Sometimes, debut albums are nothing but promise, pointing toward what the artist could do. Public Enemy's gripping first album, Yo! Bum Rush the Show, manages to fill both categories: it's an expert, fully realized record of extraordinary power, but it pales in comparison with what came merely a year later. This is very much a Rick Rubin-directed production, kicking heavy guitars toward the front, honing the loops, rhythms, and samples into a roar with as much in common with rock as rap. The Bomb Squad are apparent, but they're in nascent stage -- certain sounds and ideas that would later become trademarks bubble underneath the surface. And the same thing could be said for Chuck D, whose searing, structured rhymes and revolutionary ideas are still being formed. This is still the sound of a group comfortable rocking the neighborhood, but not yet ready to enter the larger national stage. But, damn if they don't sound like they've already conquered the world! Already, there is a tangible, physical excitement to the music, something that hits the gut with relentless force, as the mind races to keep up with Chuck's relentless rhymes or Flavor Flav's spastic outbursts. And if there doesn't seem to be as many classics here -- "You're Gonna Get Yours," "Miuzi Weighs a Ton," "Public Enemy No. 1" -- that's only in comparison to what came later, since by any other artist an album this furious, visceral, and exciting would unquestionably be heralded as a classic. From Public Enemy, this is simply a shade under classic status”.
The final piece that I want to source is from We Plug Good Music. They ran through the amazing and incendiary tracks on the iconic and legendary Yo! Bum Rush the Show:
“Firing off the starting blocks is “You’re Gonna Get Yours”, which opens with urgent, badass guitar before Flavor Flav heralds the first Chuck D verse. “Suckers to the side I know you hate/My ninety eight” is then heralded by emphatic, funky bass for the chorus. Scratching, courtesy of Terminator X, reminds the listener that, rocking as it is, you’re dealing with a hip-hop track.
They then deplore that certain “Sophisticated B*tch”, next. This one’s also got some fairly dominant guitar on the track, both flourishes and a doomy hard rock and heavy metal type vibe going on. This one basically decries gold diggers of the female variety, turning their noses at regular guys like the Public Enemy boys.
“Never kept a name, never seen a face/She could pass ’em in the street like it never took place” really conveying the two faced nature of some of those of the opposite sex. Wailing guitar lines convey, perhaps in equal measure, both contempt and lust for this very sophisticated lady. “And still to this day people wonder why/Did he beat the b*tch down ’til she almost died?” ends it bluntly.
Weapons drawn, they tell you “Miuzi Weighs A Ton”, which’s chopped up in typical Public Enemy fashion.
“’Cos it’s plain to see, it’s a strain to be/Number one in the public eye enemy/’cos I’m wanted in fifty, almost fifty-one/States where the posse got me on the run/It’s a big wonder why I haven’t gone under/Dodgin’ all types of microphone thunder/A fugitive missin’ all types of hell/All this because I talk so well” a string of lyrical gold before heralding the chorus: “Get up, get down/Miuzi weighs a ton”.
It’s an absolute assault of noise, like the discovery of the electric guitar all over again. That ring of piano really the only real semblance of melody, but mostly deployed for its rhythmic nuances. The first instance of the pre chorus only a small sample of how Chuck races to the finish line for the chorus, stringing, as said, lyrical gold.
Run for cover from the “Timebomb”. It’s a funky one, more tuneful than maybe all preceding it. That wah-wah guitar helps the listener to harness lines like, “And hear my jam, with a funky piano”. The aforementioned a real sample of hip-hop history, sampled by the similarly legendary EPMD (“Funky Piano”). He goes hell for leather, right until the track’s very end. Hunger akin to classic era LL Cool J.
“Too Much Posse” is really where Flavor Flav is given some breathing space. “Either join the crew or get beat down” really putting across his point that Public Enemy are the posse. “Too, too, too much posse” emphatically hardcore, indeed. This like a statement of intent, how the group intended to take over the industry.
There’s a moral in “Rightstarter (Message To A Black Man)”, with that, “Mind over matter, mouth in motion, can’t defy it/’cos I’ll never be quiet” which’s absolutely ferocious. Horns, intermittent between sizeable scratches, make the backdrop loud and triumphant, the perfect foundation to lace big, bold raps.
“Mind revolution/Our solution/Mind over matter, mouth in motion/Corners don’t sell it, no you can’t buy it/Can’t defy it cause I’ll never be quiet/Let’s start this right” another line spat with sizeable venom. “As the world turns, it’s a terrible waste/To see the stupid look stuck on your face/Timebomb alarm for the world, just try it/Known to all zones as the one man riot” really enforcing you’re listening to the mind of a rebel in Chuck.
The self-referencing “Public Enemy No. 1” starts squidgy, Flavor heckling Chuck to spit that hook to the ensuing song. This rings out, the vocals reverberating as the backdrop drones mostly atonally.
“I’m not a law obeyer, so you can tell your mayor/I’m a non-stop, rhythm rock, poetry sayer/I’m the rhyme player, the ozone layer/A battle what? Here’s a bible, so start your prayer” really tells, bearing in mind hip-hop as the mainstream knew it was still in its infancy, that this is an art form.
It’s a real earworm, that monotonous drone making you absorb all you hear, whether the lyrics or the beat itself. Dramatic hits of cymbal snap you out this trance, brainwashed for the new subversive generation.
“M.P.E” is another sonic assault, via Terminator X and The Bomb Squad, sounding like, and it’s hard to verbalise, construction apparatus, like a crane or some sort of digger locked in construction site war. “My car is movin’, fast like a train/Never skid off the road, even in the rain” a good dose of braggadocio, witty and never put off course.
Title track, “Yo! Bum Rush The Show”, is chopped up with intermittent bass and crashing piano keys; the letter akin to, another construction analogy, a ton of bricks being dropped from height onto concrete streets. A whistle heralds the chorus, hardcore and almost shouted.
Scratching, expertly rhythmic, heralds drop after drop of brick load crashing onto roads below. “Get that sucker who shot that gun/Whip his monkey ass till it ain’t no fun” maybe a surprising attitude to criminality soon to ensue through the genre.
They urge you to “Raise The Roof”, and it’s perhaps more indicative of the oldschool than a fair slice of tracks on this album. Particular braggadocio, again, resurfaces, with the chorus a countdown to raise the roof. “I’ll quench your desire and raise the roof” perhaps indicative of this.
Intermittent and bassy, it rings out; blaring like a public address system for the streets and urban youth. “And for real it’s the deal and the actual fact/It takes a nation of millions to hold me back” emphasising a swagger that would carry onto the title for their equally seminal follow up, It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back.
Then comes the “Megablast”, with lines, “Ya couldn’t make the money cause ya smoked up the product/Walkin’ round the town, skeptalepsy illaroduct/Can’t be trusted cause you’re living in the past/Ya should have kept yo ass away from that blast”.
Then “Oh, please, oh, please, oh please, just give me one more hit” another a real sample of hip-hop history, sampled by the similarly legendary Ice Cube (“Who Got The Camera”). The track features a peculiar vocal sample played in reverse, maybe akin to the nonsense blurted by drug addicts suffering from the megablast?
It’s farewell to the album with “Terminator X Speaks With His Hands”. It’s really an opportunity, “bass for your face”, for the resident super deejay to stretch his skills. Construction site wars recommence, cranes warring with diggers, and so on. “Yeah, that’s right. Kick it!” sees another, perhaps, overlooked member on this album, Flavor Flav, get the final word.
There are so many highlights on this album; you’d be aswell just stating the two tracks that don’t quite reach those peaks, “Sophisticated B*tch” and “Raise The Roof”.
Public Enemy really hit the ground running with this debut, and in some respects their first is largely overlooked when set against the likes of It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back and Fear Of A Black Planet. What they maybe lack in political conscience compared to the above, they make up for with sheer energy and verve. Public Enemy’s Yo! Bush Rush The Show can be bought on iTunes here”.
On 10th February, we mark thirty-five years of Public Enemy’s debut. One of the cornerstones of the golden age of Hip-Hop, it announced this group to the world who would go on to release some of the most important albums ever. Their fifteenth studio album, What You Gonna Do When the Grid Goes Down?, was released in 2020. There is no doubting the fact that Public Enemy’s Yo! Bush Rush the Show ranks…
AMONG the greatest albums ever.