It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back is released

Why it matters

It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back came out on Def Jam on June 28, 1988. It is Public Enemy's second LP and the album everybody means when they say "Public Enemy." The Bomb Squad (Hank Shocklee, Eric "Vietnam" Sadler, Keith Shocklee, Chuck D) produced. The album is dense. It is loud. It samples something like 150 records across its 16 tracks, stacked so thick that you cannot pull out a single source listening with the casual ear. This is the record that proved rap could be art-school. The Bomb Squad's production is closer to musique concrète than to anything that had come before in rap (or anything that has been allowed to exist in commercial music since Grand Upright v. Warner shut sample density down in 1991). The lyrics are political, specific, dense with proper-nouns and 1980s American context. "Bring the Noise," "Don't Believe the Hype," "Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos," "Night of the Living Baseheads," "Rebel Without a Pause," "Prophets of Rage," "Party for Your Right to Fight." The Library of Congress added it to the National Recording Registry. They were not the first to call it one of the greatest rap albums ever made. You should not be the last.