Fear of a Black Planet is released

Why it matters

Fear of a Black Planet came out April 10, 1990, on Def Jam. It is Public Enemy's third LP and the one where the Bomb Squad's wall-of-sound production reaches its peak density. The album has "Fight the Power" on it (the same Fight the Power that had appeared in Do the Right Thing the year before, here rerecorded for the album), "Welcome to the Terrordome," "911 Is a Joke," "Brothers Gonna Work It Out," and "Burn Hollywood Burn" with Ice Cube and Big Daddy Kane. The album is dense in a way that rap albums largely stopped being after 1991, because in 1991 the Grand Upright ruling broke uncleared sampling and the Bomb Squad's working method became commercially impossible. Fear of a Black Planet is one of the last great albums made under the old rules. It is also one of the best of them. The Library of Congress added it to the National Recording Registry. You can put it on at any volume and the production will still feel like it is happening too fast for you to catch all of it. That is the point. That is what makes the album what it is.